In the wide-open spaces of Wyoming, where energy production powers the economy and local control is a point of pride, a Washington, DC Beltway-based operation—the kind of national advocacy organization that develops campaigns from the nation’s capital rather than from the communities it targets— is hard at work trying to rewrite the rules of democracy. Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the flagship political vehicle long associated with the Koch network, has set up shop in the Cowboy State and is flooding mailboxes with deceitful claims designed to sway voters in legislative races.
AFP systematically builds and directs state chapters—Wyoming became the 36th in 2023—to shape state legislatures according to their outsider agenda. State directors and staff receive guidance, messaging, and resources from the national apparatus. The result is a sophisticated operation that can appear “local” while advancing priorities fabricated in the Beltway.
The group’s current attack campaign fabricates three distinct lies about a single piece of legislation—House Joint Resolution 3 (HJ0003)—to smear lawmakers who dared prioritize Wyoming citizens over outside agendas. According to the mailers, legislators who supported HJ0003 voted to “drive up energy costs,” “destroy energy jobs,” and “stand with bureaucrats.” None of that is true.
HJ0003 simply proposed amending the Wyoming Constitution to require a statewide vote of the people before high-level radioactive waste or spent nuclear fuel could be permanently stored in the state. It imposed no new regulations on coal, oil, or natural gas. It created no new energy costs. It eliminated no energy jobs. It shifted decision-making power to Wyoming voters on one specific, high-stakes issue.
This is not an isolated Wyoming anomaly. It is the latest example of a deliberate national strategy: a D.C.-area organization using opaque funding, state-level chapters, and carefully crafted disinformation to influence—and often purge—state legislators who refuse to march in lockstep with their donors’ priorities.
Why State Elections Matter to a D.C. Operation
State legislatures control energy policy, tax structures, labor rules, education funding, and regulatory frameworks that affect national industries. By installing or protecting aligned lawmakers at the state level, AFP can create a more favorable environment for the policy preferences of its donor network without having to win every national fight.
Critics from across the political spectrum have noted that this style of politics hollows out local accountability. Lawmakers who answer primarily to distant organizations and their donors rather than local constituents face different incentives. When an out of state organization can spend significant sums on negative mailers that manipulate facts, the playing field tilts away from genuine grassroots competition. Voters cannot easily determine whether the “energy jobs” rhetoric is driven by genuine concern for Wyoming coal and oil workers or by broader national interests in nuclear development, regulatory relief, or ideological consistency. The mailers treat local voters as targets to be moved rather than citizens to be informed.
The Cost to Conservative Self-Government
State legislatures are where conservative policy often advances most effectively—on energy, taxes, education, and regulatory restraint. By intervening in these races with disinformation and misaligned values, AFP focuses on outcomes preferred by its national network over the judgment of local conservative voters and activists. In Wyoming, that means treating a vote to let the people decide on permanent nuclear waste storage as evidence of hostility to energy.
This is the core problem for voters. AFP deploys significant resources to pressure or primary Republican legislators who refuse to fully align with their DC priorities. In Wyoming, that means going after lawmakers who have advanced limited-government measures rooted in local conservative priorities.
When AFP misrepresents a resolution about nuclear-waste storage as an attack on Wyoming energy jobs, it does more than mislead voters. It forces genuine conservative candidates to spend time and resources debunking falsehoods instead of advancing their own platforms. It sows doubt among conservative voters about who can be trusted. And it signals to state legislators that fidelity to local conservative priorities can invite well-funded retaliation from a Beltway operation.
Americans for Prosperity presents itself as a champion of free markets, limited government, and individual liberty. But its methods tell a different story. Opaque funding, coordinated state chapters directed from the national level, disinformation in state races, and a willingness to deploy false claims against conservatives undermine the very principles the organization claims to defend. When voters cannot trust the basic facts presented in campaign materials, and when the entities producing those materials refuse to reveal their true agendas, informed self-government gives way to political theater.
The practical effect is to make it harder for grassroots conservatives to build durable majorities. Candidates who answer primarily to their districts face pressure from an organization that is not accountable to Wyoming voters. Primary challenges and negative mailers become tools to discipline the right rather than strengthen it.
The Wyoming episode crystallizes the issue. A resolution about whether citizens should vote on permanent storage of high-level radioactive waste is twisted into a morality play about destroying energy jobs. Three separate false claims are packaged into mailers and sent into communities where energy is both economic lifeblood and cultural identity. The goal is not persuasion through accurate information; it is persuasion through fear and misdirection.
Wyoming conservatives, and grassroots activists across the country deserve campaigns grounded in facts, not fabrications. And they deserve organizations that reinforce rather than undermine the local conservative movements that have delivered results. Until AFP Wyoming abandons the tactics of misrepresentation and putting DC priorities over Wyoming voters, it will continue to weaken the Wyoming Way it claims to advance—one misleading mailer at a time.
The question Wyoming voters are already asking remains the right one for the country: Why is a D.C.-area group setting up shop in our states and using disinformation to try to influence our elections? The answer, visible in the mailers and the money, is that local self-determination is less important to Americans for Prosperity than achieving the outcomes their donors prefer. That should concern every American who still believes elections belong to the people who live under the laws those elections produce.