2023 Session Retrospective: Rep. Ken Chestek of House District 13
Chestek spent his freshman term learning the ropes of the Wyoming Legislature. He brought a bill aiming to limit allowable train lengths that died the same day as the East Palestine, Ohio derailment.
Throughout the 2023 General Session of the Wyoming Legislature, Albany County Rep. Ken Chestek (HD-13) advocated for stronger rail regulations and election integrity measures. Chestek is the newest addition to the Albany County delegation, having won his first election in November.
The freshman representative said there’s a steep learning curve for those new to Cheyenne.
“It’s a lot to get used to in the beginning,” Chestek said. “It took a few weeks to get my sea legs, but then I finally figured out how things worked and got more into the rhythm of it and got better. But the first couple of weeks were just kind of a blur.”
Chestek sponsored a bill that would have reassigned the Wyoming Secretary of State’s election supervision duties to a bipartisan state canvassing board. While the state canvassing board currently consists of four Republican members, Chestek’s bill would have added a fifth member from the minority (Democrat) party.
Chestek said the Secretary of State should not have the sole power to oversee elections.
“To me, that is not election integrity,” Chestek said. “Having one partisanly elected official supervising elections doesn't feel right.”
In 2022, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray was elected to the office despite regularly sharing and promoting baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. Since taking office, it does not appear his views have changed.
Chestek’s election administration bill failed to get introduced. The other bill Chestek sponsored this session, House Bill 204, got a little further.
HB204 would have limited the maximum allowable length of trains. The bill spoke to an issue that’s cropped up in national discourse since the early February train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio — but Chestek crafted the bill before that disaster. The bill was assigned to the House Corporations Committee, which voted to crush the bill on Feb. 3 — the same day as the East Palestine train derailment
“The train companies showed up to the committee with their suits and their fancy lobbyists and they argued against it — and they have significant power,” Chestek said. “And they were saying that, ‘this is our business, we run our business the way we want to run it, you can't tell us what to do.’”
Despite dying in committee, Chestek said he hopes the debate around the bill will lead to further discussions in the interim.
“Maybe we'll get lucky and maybe Congress will figure out how to pass stuff and Congress will provide a solution, but right now, there's no federal law that helps.” Chestek said. “Until that happens, somebody has got to protect the citizens of Wyoming and it's gotta be the state legislature.”
Previous to his role in the Wyoming Legislature, Chestek served as the chairperson of Wyoming Promise, a grassroots organization with several goals, including the overturn of Citizens United v. FEC — a controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision that defined campaign contributions as political speech and ruled the government could not limit corporation’s campaign donations.
Since the ruling, there’s been a flood of “dark money” — untraceable campaign contributions — in American elections nationwide.
In his freshman session, Chestek sponsored a joint resolution calling on the U.S. Congress to take action against this dark money spending. The resolution was assigned to committee but died without receiving a vote.
“That was devastating to me because that's been my project for the last six years,” Chestek said.
Chestek said he was proud to vote for another bill called the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). The ICWA gives enrolled tribal members priority when it comes to adopting parentless Native American children.
Chestek served on the Select Committee on Tribal Relations, which endorsed the bill. He voted for it again on the House floor, where there was some debate.
According to Chestek, he and a small coalition stood up against a vast majority in the chamber who did not want to see the bill passed, that the proposal represented racial discrimination against white or non-native people looking to adopt.
Others, including Chestek, reiterated that the bill does not deal with race but with political identification and the sovereignty of Native American tribes.
“The argument I made, which I think persuaded some people and got this over the finish line, was, this is not at all racial discrimination. This is cultural protection,” he said. “We're trying to protect the culture of the Native Americans. And that's not racial discrimination. That's protecting a culture. That needs to be protected because the history of the United States has been trying to eliminate that culture.”
With the proud moments also come areas of disappointment for Chestek. The Wyoming Legislature received and passed two bills aimed at restricting abortion access — “Life is a Human Right Act” and “Prohibiting Chemical Abortions.”
“I knew my views of the abortion bill were shared by my constituents and it made me very comfortable to vote against the “Life is a Human Right Act,”” Chestek said.
Chestek added the bill and its amendments are unconstitutional and appalling.
“It's basically more explicitly enforcing religious views on the beginning of life — which is an Establishment Clause problem,” Chestek said. “We can't have people who don't share that religious belief being forced to live by that religious belief by the state.”
Chestek sits on the Judiciary Committee, where the “Life is a Human Right Act” advanced out of the committee with a tight 5-4 vote. Despite being opposed to the abortion restrictions adopted by the legislature this year, Chestek did not sign onto the pro-abortion rights bill brought by a coalition of Albany and Teton County Democrats. That would have provided some limited abortion protections in an attempt to halt the backslide of such reproductive rights red states have seen since the overturn of Roe v. Wade last year.
Chestek said he was not aware of the coalition of Teton and Albany Democrats or their abortion bill before it was filed. He said he would have joined them in co-sponsoring the legislation if time had permitted.
Chestek said he is looking forward to adopting the knowledge and strategies he learned during the session and applying them in the future.
“I'm not judging my own performance on how many bills I got passed,” Chestek said. “I choose my battles on things that I thought were very important and those are the hardest bills to pass. I will still probably look for [larger] important issues to sponsor, but I'll be more open to the smaller bills that still cover important but limited areas and issues.”
Committees:
House Journal
House Judiciary
Select Committee on Tribal Relations
Bills Sponsored:
[Failed] HB115: Elections administration
[Failed] HB204: Allowable train lengths
Bills Co-Sponsored:
[Failed] HB230: Driver license penalties-time for imposition
[Failed] SF175: Hazing
Joint Resolutions Sponsored:
[Failed] HJ10: Political expenditures
Joint Resolutions Co-Sponsored:
[Failed] HJ8: Ballot initiative process
 | A guest post by
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I would invite those interested in the freshman’s votes in the Judiciary Committee to compare his votes to Representative Provenza’s votes. Based on the votes I witnessed, Ken went the wrong way every time.