rep5@wyomingnews.com

CHEYENNE - For more than a week, the advertisement by the National Republican Congressional Committee has played on Wyoming airwaves in heavy rotation.

The ad says that Democrat Gary Trauner, who is challenging U.S. Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., for the state's lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, is not right for Wyoming.

The visual shows a grinning Trauner in an "I (HEART) NY" T-shirt standing in front of the backdrop of the New York City skyline. The text of the ad talks about Trauner's position on taxes, including the estate tax and the tax cuts that Congress has approved.

Where are you from?

The ad carries a geographic implication.

Because Trauner is from New York, it says, he's not right for Wyoming.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, the Washington, D.C.-based 527 organization that has spent more than $240,000 airing the ad in Wyoming, is more blunt.

Spokeswoman Mary-Sarah Kinner said Trauner is a "carpet-bagging, tax-hiking liberal" who is wrong on taxes and is trying to impose his liberal New York values on Wyoming.

A 527 group, which takes its name from the federal tax code, is a group that's created to influence the outcome of an election. It's not regulated by the Federal Election Commission, and it is not subject to the same contribution limits as political action committees.

While the argument could be made that the NRCC's message might not be right for Wyoming because it, too, has roots out of state, Kinner said she doesn't know that that's necessarily true.

"We're not running the ad because we're concerned about the race," Kinner said. "We want a decisive victory and to discourage other tax-hiking liberals from running. We want to win to keep the seat in Republican hands."

She added that where and when her organization places ads is campaign strategy, which is not publicly disclosed.

Trauner, who was campaigning Friday in Rawlins, said the idea that the more than 50 percent of the people who live in the Equality State but weren't born in Wyoming can't take part in the political process is an insult, and the ad reveals a clear bias.

"Is fiscal responsibility, smaller budgets and keeping the government out of people's lives a New York value? It's more of a Wyoming value," he said. "This is what people talk about when they can't talk about the issues."

Trauner said he has lived in Wyoming for 17 years. He gotten married here, and both his sons were born here.

"I can only vouch for the people I've talked to, but they think it's insulting because they weren't born here either," he said.

For him, he said, the irony is that Cubin is having her campaign determined by people in Washington, D.C.

Joe Milczewski, spokesman for the Cubin campaign, disputes the idea that the message of the ad is that voters should not vote for Trauner because he's from out of state.

"The ad says don't vote for Gary because his political philosophy is more in line with that of New York. It says he's out of step with Wyoming voters, which is accurate," Milczewski said.

There also is the idea of an Eastern New York politician who is slick and speaks out of both sides of his mouth, he said.

He noted that by law the Cubin campaign can't have any input on what the National Republican Congressional Committee chooses to put in its ads or where they are run.

"I can't speak for what other people think of the ad, but I know that Barbara has said she doesn't think where people are born matters. What people believe and what they say they will do is what people ought to think about when they go to vote," he said.

Cubin herself is not a Wyoming native; she was born in Salinas, Calif.

Because neither candidate was born here, they are part of the 54 percent of the state's population who can claim some other place as their native state.

State records show that about 42 percent of the people who live in Wyoming, or about 200,000, were born here. That margin, Wenlin Liu said, has been about the same for at least 15 years.

Liu, senior economist with the state's Division of Economic Analysis, said the population numbers come from the people who file tax returns in Wyoming, so it leaves out those temporary workers who are filling jobs in the energy sector and have not established residency.

Talk of the town

While the candidates argue about the ad's message, it is having an impact on voters, and it may not be the intended one.

Take Truett Thompson of Carpenter.

"It doesn't matter where people are from," said Thompson, who lives in Carpenter and is a Wyoming native.

The ad, which he termed a negative one, only hurts Cubin, in Thompson's estimation.

The 23-year-old is a union electrician. He said most of the other local members will vote for Trauner, just as he will.

Stephen Whitmire sits on the other side of the issue. Whitmire, 18, lives in Cheyenne now; his family moved here from Georgia about a decade ago.

He said he's voting for Cubin because she has better ideas for Wyoming, and that's what people should look at.

"It doesn't matter if you're from another state," he said. "If you have ideas that are good for the state, it doesn't matter if you are from someplace else."

Keith Luellan had given up on voting for a number of years in disgust, but he's voting this year and said he plans to vote for Trauner.

Luellan has been in Wyoming for 18 years, moving here from his native Illinois, and when he votes, he said, he'll vote for Trauner.

"Not being from here doesn't mean that if I were to run for office I would be the wrong person to run," he said.

Being from Wyoming is not a guarantee of a better candidate, he said, and the NRCC ad is unfair.

"It's sad that we have to resort to that," he said.

Margaret Maione said the fact that Trauner is from New York is a plus in her mind, because he has more of a worldview and brings more to Wyoming.

Maione, who is a Wyoming native, lived in New Jersey for a number of years before returning to the Cowboy State.

"The ads make me laugh," she said.

"I think after 16 years, he got an idea about Wyoming," Maione's co-worker, Erika Hanson, said. "I think she's trying to cover up what she hasn't done, with her votes. She's trying to pull attention away from her."

Both women are Republicans. Maione said she will vote for Trauner, while Hanson, who moved here from Florida a year ago, said she might vote for him.

Warren Burgess was not ready to disclose how he intends to vote on Tuesday, but he still has an opinion of the ads he's seeing.

"The negative ads are more of a turnoff," he said. "I don't see them making a valid point. They are using scare tactics that aren't very scary."

If there is a virtue in such an ad, he said, it's that it will air an issue that a candidate might otherwise avoid. The issue of a candidate's state of origin matters not at all, he said.

The key issue for him is taxes and which way they will go.

"It would help me out if the ads were more about issues. The negative ads don't really cut it."