Various Cheney Signs Defaced as Republican Primary Approaches
As is the case with any campaign season, people in the Casper community have put up signs for the candidates they support in the Aug. 16 primary.
Whether that be for Liz Cheney and Harriet Hageman in the Republican House primary, Governor Mark Gordon, Brent Bien, and Rex Rammel in the governor race, or one of the 14 candidates running for Casper city council, all have their signs staked out in lawns across Casper and Wyoming.
However, while every candidate may have a sign, it seems only one of those signs gets defaced, and that's Cheney as she tries to win her primary against Hageman, who has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
While it is difficult to check every sign that Cheney supporters have placed on their property, in Casper, several of them have had stickers placed on them or have the remnants of having had stickers on them.
While in 2020, Cheney won the Republican primary by almost 50 percentage points, this time around, she appears to be trailing Hageman by over 20 percentage points, according to recent polling.
The reason for that stems almost entirely from Cheney's opposition to Trump following the attack on the U.S. capital on January 6, Cheney's vote to impeach Trump, and her work on the Jan. 6 committee over the past year, as throughout her time in Congress she agreed with Trump on 92.9% of issues.
It is unclear how many signs have been defaced, to what extent people have replaced their signs after having been defaced, or whether it is just Cheney signs that have been vandalized.
It is enough of an issue that at the Casper city council meeting on Aug. 2, Mayor Ray Pacheco said at the end of the meeting that he believes defacing signs sets a bad precedent for young people in the community.
"I've seen a lot of defacing of political signs and I think our community is better than that," Pacheco said. "Whatever stance you take, right, left, in the middle, whatever it is, I think our community should rise above that. And I find it to be just a very sad testament to political tribalism that we have moved towards. We are a better community than that. And we can have differing opinions, but we can respect one another with that dignity...And so as I've seen those political defacings of signs, it hurts me not only as a community member, because I've been here my whole life, cause my kids are the ones that have brought it to my attention and they're in high school and college, but it hurts my heart that our young people see this and think that's ok. We're better than that, and we can do better. So I'm calling upon the community of Casper to do better. It's not a direction we need to go or should go. We're going down a road that's ugly and we're better than that, and our community is better than that."
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