Cheyenne's mayor reelected, two newcomers to join City Council

CHEYENNE – On Tuesday, Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins was reelected to another term, and there will be two new faces on the City Council.

Although mail-in absentee ballots hadn't been counted by press time, the Laramie County Clerk's office posted final unofficial results shortly before midnight, and those are reflected below.

Patrick Collins: 14,990

Rick Coppinger: 10,413

Cheyenne voters reelected Collins to serve another four years as the city's top elected leader. This race was a repeat of the 2020 mayoral race, where Collins won with 18,070 votes to Coppinger's 9,002.

"I just love this job and am so very thankful the voters are going to let me do it for four more years," Collins said. "You're right about the fact that there's a lot of work to do, and I'm ready to do that."

Collins had initially planned on only serving one term as mayor when he was inaugurated in 2021. In the years since, he said, the people he works with and serving his community made him fall in love with the job, inspiring his decision to run for a second term.

Tuesday night, he said his top priorities for a second term will be addressing housing availability and affordability in Cheyenne and the need to replace water sourced from the Colorado River.

"There's a lot of other things that we need to work on, but those are definitely the two that are highest on my priority list right now," he said.

Other projects he hopes to address in a second term are supporting job growth and access to water, as well as some 2024 City Council goals like recreational access to Belvoir Ranch and the Reed Avenue Rail Corridor development as an entertainment district.

Collins was elected to three consecutive terms on City Council between 2000 and 2012 and has been mayor since 2021.

Cheyenne City Council

On Cheyenne's City Council, there were six open seats out of the nine council positions. Out of the three positions in each ward, two were on the ballot this year. The top two vote-getters in each ward will be inaugurated in January.

Ward 1

Travis French: 2,288

Pete Laybourn: 3,526

Miguel Reyes: 2,771

Jeff White: 3,968

Incumbents Jeff White and Pete Laybourn received the most votes in the August primaries and did so again on Tuesday, meaning they will each be serving another four-year term representing Ward 1.

White, the top vote-getter at 3,488, is a program manager for the Wyoming Department of Transportation, and Laybourn has experience in construction and property management. He has served on the council since 2015.

"This is my hometown. I've loved serving on the City Council," White said. "I think we've been able to accomplish a lot of great things over the last four years. We've accomplished much, but there's always much left to be done. And so I'm looking forward to that."

When he announced his bid for reelection earlier this year, White said his top priority would be addressing the housing shortage – and not just for those who qualify for low-income tax credit housing.

Laybourn will be inaugurated to his fourth term representing Ward 1 in January and has previously told the WTE this will be his final term. He was elected to the council in 2004, 2016 and 2020.

Laybourn's top priority for his final four-year term is to continue work on the Cheyenne Greenway. Ideally, he hopes to weave the path through downtown Cheyenne, particularly along 15th Street and the Reed Avenue Rail Corridor. He started work on this project 32 years ago, and the last piece of the original 1993 master plan is just now being realized.

Ward 2

Kathy Emmons: 5,830

Stephen D. Latham: 2,837

Tom Segrave: 5,635

Lynn Storey-Huylar: 3,734

Incumbent Tom Segrave will serve another four years on City Council, while Kathy Emmons will take Bryan Cook's seat representing Ward 2. Of the six council seats on the ballot this year, Cook was the only incumbent who did not seek reelection.

"I think she's bringing a lot of experience and a lot of talent," Segrave said of Emmons. "She ran a huge department for the state, is the city-county health director and is on the Laramie County Community College board of directors. She's got a lot of background that's just going to, I think, help the city, and help the council and help the mayor even more."

When Segrave announced his intent to seek another four years on the council earlier this year, he told the WTE that one of his top priorities would be to continue to pursue economic development. As the city continues to welcome more data centers and businesses, Segrave said he sees expanding business parks as one avenue to support development.

Segrave served two terms on City Council between 2001 and 2009, and was reelected to a third term in 2020.

Emmons has worked in health care, children's advocacy and serves on the Laramie County Community College Board of Trustees. She previously told the WTE she hopes to bring her experience as a former business owner to ensure Cheyenne is business friendly in an equal balance of fostering a people-friendly environment through investment in infrastructure and looking for ways to retain the workforce in town.

Ward 3

Michelle Aldrich: 4,904

Richard Johnson: 3,857

Mark Moody: 4,585

In Ward 3, there were only three candidates on the ballot in the August primary election. As the top four candidates advanced in each ward, all three candidates were on the general election ballot. After the ballots cast for the general election were counted, Michelle Aldrich and newcomer Mark Moody were the top two vote-getters and will be inaugurated as Ward 3 City Council members in January.

Aldrich is a former educator and current Wyoming career and technical education state supervisor with the Wyoming Department of Education. When she was elected to her first term on the governing body in 2020, she was the only new face on the council.

Tuesday night, she spoke with the WTE after the results came in as she was driving around town picking up her campaign signs.

"Over the next four years, I think we have a lot of projects that we've started in the last four years that I'd like to see us bring to completion, with the Reed Avenue corridor and the new Rotary Park and the East Cheyenne Park, which is now known as Kiwanis Park. We just have a lot of great projects that are going and want to make sure that we are able to finish those projects and also make sure that we continue to plan for Cheyenne's growth with an appropriate number of public safety resources," she said.

Moody works in geographic information systems. He bested incumbent Richard Johnson, who has served two nonconsecutive terms beginning in 2015 and in 2021. According to Moody's campaign website, he promises to remove at least one item from the unified development code every two weeks at council meetings to simplify and encourage development and wants to prevent corporations from purchasing single-family homes.

"I'm definitely humbled that the voters chose me. It's been a great experience," he said. "And now the real work begins working for the citizens of Ward 3 and for our community."

Laramie County Board of County Commissioners

Don Hollingshead: 33,044

Ty Zwonitzer: 32,208

In the August primaries, there were seven Republican candidates and no Democratic or independent candidates on the ballot. The two candidates who received the most votes in each party advanced to the general election.

Since all of the candidates were members of the Republican Party, those two are the only names on the general election ballot and will fill the two seats up for grabs on the Laramie County Board of County Commissioners.

Those candidates are Don Hollingshead, who spent most of his career working for the Laramie County Sheriff's Office, and Ty Zwonitzer, an engineer for Cheyenne Fire Rescue.

They will replace sitting commissioners Buck Holmes and Brian Lovett, who did not seek reelection.