Husband-wife general election showdown averted in House District 45

Rep. Karlee Provenza won her uncontested Democratic primary. Her husband, Nate Martin, received the most write-in votes on the Republican side, but said he is turning down the nomination.

As Albany County headed to the polls on Primary Election Day, the House District 45 race looked like it might be the most uneventful contest of the day.

In some ways, it was.

Rep. Karlee Provenza, first elected in 2020, was running again, this time unopposed. She glided to victory in the Democratic primary, earning 363 of the 365 votes cast.

No one had filed to run for the Republican primary, so it looked like Provenza would keep running unopposed through the general. But the absence of any official Republican candidate left the field wide open for write-ins.

And that’s how Nate Martin, Provenza’s husband, won the Republican primary with just 32 votes.

“I was stunned — I did not see that coming,” Provenza said. “I mean we had heard rumblings about a possible write-in candidate and I knew that that was a possibility, but I really didn’t anticipate that.”

Martin is the executive director of Better Wyoming, an organization that promotes progressive policies in Albany County and across Wyoming. He is currently serving as a member of the Albany County School Board and plans to run for re-election this year.

To do so, he must turn down the Republican nomination for House District 45; candidates can only run for one seat at a time.

“I am humbled and grateful for this show of support from the Republican voters of House District 45,” Martin said in a statement. “However, I believe that there is much work for me still to do as a trustee on the Albany County School Board, and it's in that position that I can best continue to serve our community. So, I plan to decline the nomination to run for HD-45 and will instead seek re-election for the school board in November.”

But if he had wanted to, Martin had every legal right to accept the nomination.

Albany County Clerk Jackie Gonzales said that in an open field such as the House 45 Republican primary, 25 votes is the relevant threshold.

If a write-in candidate has the highest vote total in their respective primary, and has received at least 25 votes, the nomination is theirs. The Wyoming Secretary of State is tasked with notifying the write-in candidate about their nomination; they have five days to respond.

If Martin had accepted, his name would have appeared on the general ballot — printed aside the word “Republican,” despite his running a progressive organization.

It’s not clear whether the local Republican party would have endorsed Martin or not, but that would not have mattered when it came to printing the general election ballot.

The Albany County Republicans do not have a say in whether the victorious write-in candidate appears on the general ballot. So long as that candidate is a registered member of the party, which Martin is, the will of the party cannot supersede the will of the voters.

Albany County Republican Committee Chair Roxie Hensley did not respond to a request for comment; nor did the party’s vice-chair. Hensley was the Republican nominee for House District 45 in 2020; she lost to Provenza in a close — and expensive — general election.

There was a total of 177 write-in votes cast during the Republican primary. Martin was the only candidate to surpass the 25-vote threshold.

Second place in the Republican primary went to Karlee Provenza.

In addition to the 363 votes she earned in her own primary, Provenza received 24 in the Republican primary.

How did two progressives dominate the Republican primary? One possible explanation is crossover voting. Crossover voting occurs when a citizen registers as a member of a party they are not normally affiliated with in order to take part in a different primary election.

Gonzales said she would not have a final tally of how many people switched parties on election day for a few weeks still, but several groups — and even some candidates — encouraged crossover voting ahead of the 2022 Wyoming primaries.

“I think it’s a strange year given how many people switched over,” Provenza said. “So, it might have been a product of who was going to vote in the Republican primary, just wanting to put in names of people they support.”

But Provenza said other factors could be at play.

“It’s also not totally out of the realm of possibility that there are genuine, real Republicans who would want to write my name in, just given that I had to earn Republican voters’ support in 2020 when I ran,” she said. “I built relationships with folks in the other party. I try to represent everybody. So maybe they wanted to support me in that way. So it’s probably a combination of all those things.”

Officially unopposed in the primary, and now officially unopposed in the general election, Provenza said she still plans to run a campaign. It’s possible that she could face an Independent challenger, but even if she doesn’t, Provenza said it’s important to canvass one’s district.

“I have to run a campaign because that is how I can be a good advocate for the people of House District 45,” she said. “I don’t see it as a good idea to go to Cheyenne without having talked with my constituents and brought the people’s power to them at their doorstep. Because of redistricting, I have a substantial number of people who weren’t in my district before that I have to go out and meet and understand what their concerns are and how I can best advocate for them. So, I’m going to run my race the same way. I’m going to make sure I go talk to the people.”

Third place in the Republican primary went to Andy Smith — the father of local anti-mask activist Grace Smith — but he received just 5 votes. There were another 2 write-in votes for an “Andrew Smith,” but the different spelling disqualifies those votes from being counted toward Andy Smith’s total.

“Andy Smith” was actually tied for third place with “Nathan Martin” — presumably a variant of “Nate Martin.”