Park County Republicans have put their support behind former President Donald Trump.

On Saturday, local Republicans elected Brent Bien of Cody as their delegate to the Republican National Convention — and the former gubernatorial candidate said he “unequivocally” backs Trump as the party’s nominee.

“He’s already proven. He’s an America First guy, and that’s exactly what we need right now,” Bien said in an interview. “And he’s somebody who’s going to clean up the fourth branch of government — all these unelected bureaucrats that are actually running our nation.”

Bien added that, “the one thing you know, regardless of what people think about his mean tweets and all this other stuff, is that Donald Trump loves America.”

Another local Republican, Nina Webber of Wapiti, is also set to attend the July 15-18 convention in Milwaukee as the state party’s national committeewoman.

Bien and Webber will be among 29 delegates representing Wyoming, and among an estimated 2,429 delegates from across the country. When all expenses are included, attending the event will cost around $5,000, said Park County Republican Party Chairman Martin Kimmet.

Trump became the GOP’s presumptive nominee on Tuesday, after a dominant showing in 15 more states led his last prominent challenger, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, to drop out of the race.

At last month’s Park County GOP caucus, 90% of the more than 100 attendees expressed support for Trump in an unofficial straw poll. However, unlike other states that hold primaries or open caucuses, the Wyoming Republican Party does not allow rank-and-file members to directly vote on the party’s presidential nominee.

Only precinct committeemen and women — who were generally elected in the August 2022 primary — and a handful of other delegates are allowed to participate at county conventions. Each of Wyoming’s 23 counties is allowed to elect one delegate to the RNC and can send a larger number of delegates to April’s state convention, where a few more national delegates will be chosen.

Speaking at Saturday’s convention at the Park County Fairgrounds, Precinct Committeeman Jim Vetter said the state’s process came “as kind of a shock” when he first got involved with the party.

“I was kind of surprised how things work in Wyoming that we as citizens don’t get a direct vote for president,” Vetter said.

During the last contested race for the GOP presidential nomination, in 2016, many local Republicans expressed dismay when they weren’t allowed to vote during the caucus. Party leaders at the time pledged to revisit the process, but only minor changes followed.

Vetter proposed calling on the state party to let all Republicans directly participate in the selection of the GOP nominee. His resolution noted that only a small number of Republicans currently make the choice on behalf of the others; at Saturday’s convention, there were 88 attendees representing the county’s roughly 12,700 registered Republicans.

Ultimately, Vetter was the only one to speak in favor of his resolution and it failed on a voice vote.

Precinct Committeeman Troy Bray of Powell spoke in favor of the current, indirect system.

“I’m a firm believer that direct election of [U.S.] senators is what started the ruination of our nation,” Bray said.

Although Americans have been allowed to vote on the presidency since the nation’s founding, U.S. senators were selected by state legislatures until the ratification of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913.

The county party did endorse a separate resolution calling for the state GOP’s caucuses and conventions to be held earlier in the year. It argues that “the current and erratic timing effectively disenfranchises Wyoming voters and all but eliminates Wyoming’s overall influence in the presidential nominee selection process.”

Resolutions and platform planks

At Saturday’s convention, Park County Republican Party leaders passed a few dozen resolutions and added planks to the county platform.

The resolutions adopted by the party include calling for:

• property tax relief;

• a hand count of elections;

• the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in public schools;

• country of origin labeling on food;

• opposing any government-funded diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs;

• banning foreign ownership or management of ag lands;

• a new tax on wind and solar power exported from the state; and

• giving recipients of donated blood the option of only receiving blood from people who were not vaccinated against COVID-19.

Convention delegates also made several additions to the Park County party’s platform. Most of the new planks — such as calls for state primacy over Wyoming’s wildlife, minerals and natural resources and support for schools teaching the country’s founding documents and “the role of faith and biblical principles” — were drawn from the state platform.

Another new plank for the county says that, “Gender is an immutable characteristic established by God and manifested by DNA.”

Precinct Committeewoman Sheila Leach of the South Fork said the plank seems like “a self-evident truth,” but she said more clarity was necessary “because of some of the insanity … and the confusion that we’re seeing in culture and society.”

In order to receive any support from the Republican Party, candidates must pledge to support the platform or, in the case of incumbents, have been deemed to have voted in-line with the document at least 80% of the time.