LANDER – Early results from the primary showed incumbent Republican Rep. Lloyd Larsen trailing his challenger Tina Clifford, and by 9 p.m. the mood in this restaurant gathering was tense. But then someone updated the election results page, and Larsen was ahead by 227 votes in the final unofficial count.
“You have a few more gray hairs,” a friend teased Larsen as his supporters gathered to congratulate him.
Larsen was not the only incumbent in Fremont County who had to fight hard for victory. Incumbents Senator Tim Salazar and Representative Pepper Ottman of Fremont County’s 26th and 34th districts, respectively, had comfortable leads. But in the 55th House District in neighboring Riverton, District Attorney Ember Oakley was upset by political newcomer and conservative Christian Joel Guggenmos.
“It was a very close race,” Larsen said of his campaign. Political emails containing untruths about him did not help him, he said, as he had to work hard to establish the facts. “I think the nasty emails that came in really polarized Lander.”
The emails are the work of the WY Freedom PAC, a political action committee founded in 2023 to support the hard-line Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
Larsen, a longtime Fremont County resident and former private business owner, served in the House for 12 years and has a record consistent with conservative ideals such as limiting the size of government and supporting resource extraction.
Newcomer Clifford is a Fremont County native and economics teacher who has vowed to fight for freedom. Her campaign materials criticized COVID-19-era economic shutdowns, COVID vaccinations and inflation. She said insincere conservatives had taken power but did not represent Wyoming’s true values.
“The people we elected to represent us in Wyoming have failed to protect our freedom,” it said. Clifford declined to participate in a candidate forum organized by the League of Women Voters.
District 55
Incumbent Oakley is a fifth-generation Wyoming native and prosecutor in the Fremont County District Attorney’s Office. She was first elected to office in 2020. She has supported protecting agriculture from federal overreach, supporting law enforcement and maintaining Wyoming’s extractive industries. WyoFile was unable to reach her for comment Tuesday.
Riverton resident Joel Guggenmos, who will take office in January, owns a small business that installs flooring and custom showers.
Guggenmos is pro-life and against property taxes, according to his campaign page. He supports Wyoming getting “our land and resources” back from the federal government, as well as parental rights, school choice and against a movement to sexualize children. According to his Facebook page, he is an ardent Donald Trump fan.
“I am running for constituency HD 55 because I am concerned about the way some of our representatives have represented our community. Even though I have never had any desire to enter politics and do not want to be a ‘politician’, I am aware that I must be the one who wants to drive the change towards more freedom and independence,” he says on his campaign page.
Guggenmos also declined to participate in a candidate forum organized by the League of Women Voters.
