JACKSON HOLE, WYO – As talk across the state blasted gubernatorial candidate Foster Friess and other GOP frontrunners for their insensitivity, Friess did something no one in the Bondurant community can ever remember a candidate doing. He stopped by for dinner at the Branding Iron Cafe yesterday.
Nearly a hundred community members turned out to sup with Friess Wednesday. Organizers Andrea Sramek, Jennifer Jensen, and Valerie Music said it was the first campaign stop they could ever remember in Bondurant.
“From the feedback that we’ve been getting, everybody thought it was great,” Jensen said. “With a population of just 100 people, we don’t get opportunities like this very often.”
After a brief speech outlining Friess’ strategy to eliminate government waste and stabilize the budget by optimizing Wyoming’s existing businesses using the experience he gained while building a $15 billion company from the ground up, Friess opened the floor to questions.
Many of those focused on public lands issues.
Friess said he wanted to reduce regulations holding back the state’s mineral potential, but he added that new developments must be done carefully so as to protect pristine wilderness areas.
Jensen, however, took particular note of Friess’ call for civility and kindness to build a more unified front in addressing Wyoming’s problems.
“That’s not something you hear in politics very often,” she said. “He really cares about Wyoming and you can tell it’s genuine.”
It was perhaps a truer sense of a caring man, more accurate than two soundbite quotes he is currently trying to live down.
First, there’s the “aspirin between the knees” comment Friess made in 2012 while being interviewed by MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell.
More recently, the Laramie Boomerang is reporting on the second annual PrideFest Tuesday night in Laramie where several gubernatorial candidates had a chance to make speeches and answer questions. When the topic of an LGBTQ nondiscrimination ordinance in Laramie possibly becoming statewide legislation, Friess stated he thought laws creating protection for special classes of people “unnecessary.”
When pressed by Wyoming PBS Public Affairs Producer Craig Blumenshine about Wyoming still battling the stigma as a state known for killing gays (referencing a joke from the movie “Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri” and the Matthew Shepard murder of 1998), Friess reportedly responded: “…that was one incident.”
Several groups including Wyoming Equality and The Matthew Shepard Foundation took immediate exception to the remark.
Seven other GOP candidates for governor agreed with Friess, however, with the unimportance of passing a statewide nondiscrimination statute. Only Democrat candidate Mary Throne said she would support such a law.
