Sandy Newsome

Park County Republican Central Committee officers acknowledged an error in the reported voting record of Rep. Sandy Newsome, R-Cody, from a July candidate forum in Cody and say it was unintentional.

Newsome, running for re-election in Cody House District 24, took exception with emailed proceedings of the July 14 forum distributed by the central committee, which credited her voting record with a 10% favorable rating by the website WyoRINO.com. The website had actually given her a 30% rating. The website rated almost half of Wyoming legislators as “Rinos” by its assessment for scores of less than 70%.

Karen Jones, secretary of the central committee, accepted responsibility for the mistake which she said “came as a complete surprise” when called out by Newsome. The PCRC secretary said the error resulted from a failure in converting a document entitled WyoRINO.com Voting Index Summary 2022.

“I am aware that this is upsetting, and I take complete responsibility for the erroneous data page and ask you to please accept my sincere apology for this mistake. I would also like to draw your attention to the replacement page that does show Rep. Sandy Newsome’s correct score, which is 30%.”

Martin Kimmet of Clark, chairman of the county Republican central committee, agreed. “It wasn’t meant as manipulation. It was not intentional.” 

“We will correct it and send it out to everyone who got that email,” Kimmet said. “And we will send a personal letter to Sandy with an apology.”

Newsome said she still takes issue with the party for including the WyoRINO information in the first place. It is not a Republican-created website, with no linkage to the Wyoming Republican Party. 

“I have no problem with the candidate profiles and the candidate Q&A being sent out, but why is the party including the WyoRINO website data in an official document? In fact, we don’t know who created it and what their qualifications are to decide what the Republican position should be. Manipulating data to get the desired outcome is just plain wrong,” Newsome stressed.   

 She also had questions about the page she submitted to the forum on request. Her original letter was submitted in the printed font Times New Roman. In the candidate’s page that was reproduced in the party email, only the third and seventh paragraphs were in the font Times New Roman.

“The change in formatting on my bio page makes me think that someone intended to change my bio. The change in font makes me look unprofessional, and that I lack attention to detail. Neither of which is true,” she emphasized.

The central committee secretary also had an explanation for that. “When copying and pasting from her file into mine, apparently the fonts changed, which is a common occurrence in word processing,” Jones said.

Newsome, who has served two terms in the House, faces a Republican primary challenge from Nina Webber of Cody, national committeewoman for the Wyoming Republican Party.