There's a special kind of cruelty in American politics — the kind where a man who's been the target of his own party's homophobia decides the best survival strategy is to punch down at everyone else. Enter Reid Rasner, the 42-year-old Casper businessman and self-funded vanity candidate who's turned Wyoming's Republican primary for its lone House seat into a masterclass in bigotry, self-destruction, and the grotesque spectacle of the modern GOP.

Screenshot from Reid Rasner's transphobic campaign video showing him kicking open bathroom stall doors

"Tranny-Pottie" and the Politics of Hate

Rasner's campaign isn't built on policy — it's built on viral videos designed to dehumanize the most vulnerable Americans. In one widely-shared clip, he stands in front of a porta-potty emblazoned with both male and female symbols, mimicking Donald Trump's voice and asking: "Why do we need a tranny-pottie?"

In another, he films himself kicking open bathroom stall doors while shouting, "I just watched a man walk into the women's restroom, come on let's get him out of here!" — a staged stunt where a man playing his political rival Chuck Gray is revealed inside. Rasner barks: "Get the hell outta here!"

This isn't policy disagreement. This is the same bathroom panic rhetoric that has fueled anti-trans legislation across the country — legislation that has real consequences for transgender Americans who just want to use the bathroom in peace. Rasner goes further than even Trump on trans rights, calling gender-affirming care for minors "child abuse" and saying parents who allow it should "lose their parental rights."

He has called to "ban all transgender surgeries" nationwide and made anti-trans content a centerpiece of his campaign messaging.

A Mosque in Wyoming: Islamophobia as Campaign Strategy

In February, Rasner drove two hours from Casper to Gillette — not to talk to voters about jobs or healthcare, but to film himself standing in front of Queresha Masjid, one of only three mosques in all of Wyoming, to declare: "It's time to ban sharia law. I can't believe one of these mosques is even in Wyoming."

The 13-second video racked up over 47,000 likes on Facebook. Rasner never provided a single example of any mosque in Wyoming — or anywhere in America — attempting to enforce sharia law. When asked directly whether the Gillette mosque was doing so, he responded: "You'd have to ask them."

Ali Rabih, a sheikh who has traveled to Wyoming for Ramadan for more than two decades, told the Casper Star-Tribune that the mosque's doors are open to everyone. "A mosque is a house of God, you know," Rabih said. "What is beautiful about this country is freedom of religion."

Rasner doubled down in a press release two days later, vowing to ensure "no more of this dangerous ideology infiltrates our communities" — again, without citing a single instance of the ideology actually infiltrating anything. Sharia, which literally translates from Arabic as "the correct path," refers to a set of personal and moral principles Muslims follow. It is not — and has never been — a threat to Wyoming or any other American community.

This is the same mosque that was targeted in 2015 by a Facebook group called "Stop Islam in Gillette," which had hundreds of members who harassed mosque-goers during prayers. Rasner is picking up exactly where they left off.

"No More Fat Kids" — Because Dignity Is Optional

In March, Rasner posted a video at a local football field proclaiming "No more fat kids!" and calling for a return to the presidential fitness test. The video was widely panned — but it revealed something deeper about his political instinct. For Rasner, the bodies of children are just another prop. Whether he's policing bathrooms, weaponizing kids' weight for engagement, or stripping parents of rights, the message is the same: some Americans are less worthy of dignity than others.

The SEC Problem

Behind the theatrics, Rasner's professional record tells its own story. On April 24, he was discharged by LPL Financial LLC — a $22 billion advisory and brokerage firm where he'd been registered since 2019 — for allegedly engaging in "unapproved outside business activity," according to a disclosure on the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure website.

His campaign insists he was "never an employee" but an independent contractor, and that the separation was a "negotiated business transaction." But the SEC filing says "discharged," not "separated by mutual agreement." When Daily Mail reached out to his own firm, Omnivest Financial — which Rasner owns — they returned the same prepared statement his campaign had already sent, declining to explain why the discharge language appeared on a federal regulatory filing.

The timing is notable: Rasner was discharged in April, in the middle of a congressional campaign he's pouring at least $1.2 million of his own money into.

Reid Rasner speaking at the 2024 Wyoming Republican Party Convention

The $1.2 Million Vanity Project

That $1.2 million — self-funded, according to FEC filings — tells you everything about Rasner's campaign. This is not a grassroots movement. This is a rich man who decided the U.S. Congress was the next thing to buy, after a failed $47 billion publicity stunt claiming he was going to purchase TikTok. That bid, announced in early 2025, generated national headlines and interviews. By July 2025, he quietly paused it. The whole thing had served its purpose — attention.

In 2017, Rasner ran for Las Vegas City Council and collected a grand total of 74 votes. In 2024, he tried to primary Senator John Barrasso and lost decisively. Now he's spending over a million dollars to lose a House primary in a crowded field of ten Republican candidates — a field that includes Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, former Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow, and Wyoming Senate President Bo Biteman.

Wyoming politicos from both parties have noted that Rasner's campaign looks like a parody. State Rep. Mike Yin, D-Jackson, said: "I think it's really hard to take him seriously." Even John Bear, former chair of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus and no liberal himself, called it "kind of silly." A retired drama teacher of 45 years gave Rasner's videos an "A" — for acting, not for politics.

The Hypocrisy Video

On July 8, just weeks before the August 18 primary, Rasner released a video on Facebook sharing a voicemail threat he'd received — a message containing explicit language and the warning, "You might want to check your brakes." In an accompanying press release headlined "Reid Rasner condemns death threats on campaign trail," he described receiving "hundreds of threatening messages" throughout his campaign and called on Wyoming leaders to denounce political violence.

"We have to get back to discussion," he told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. "We really need to get back to where we can talk with our neighbors again."

This is the same man who, in campaign videos, used a transphobic slur on camera, kicked open bathroom stall doors while hunting a man he accused of being transgender, stood outside a mosque calling for a ban on an entire religion's legal tradition, and body-shamed children for social media clicks. Now he wants to "tone down the rhetoric." Now he wants to share coffee with neighbors.

Rasner's sudden conversion to civility is not genuine. You don't get to spend months dehumanizing trans people, Muslims, fat kids, and immigrants, then clutch your pearls when the ugliness you helped mainstream finds its way to your own doorstep. The right to safety is universal. So is the responsibility for the atmosphere that makes hate acceptable.

Suing Everyone

When you run a campaign built on stunts and bigotry, you end up in court a lot. Rasner has filed five separate defamation lawsuits against people who've said bad things about him — including an Iowa man who called him a pedophile, and former Wyoming state senator Anthony "Romeo" Bouchard, who allegedly led a "whisper campaign" accusing Rasner of sexual misconduct stemming from his time at Casper College. Rasner says he was a student, not a teacher, and denies all allegations.

The pedophilia smear is reprehensible. It's the same tired playbook conservatives have used for years — equating homosexuality with predation, conflating identity with crime. The Log Cabin Republicans' president Ross Hemminger called the slur "the sort of discriminatory rhetoric he thought both parties had moved past."

But here's the thing: Rasner has built his entire political brand on the same logic. If equating gay men with pedophilia is bigotry, what is equating trans people with bathroom predators? If "groomer" slurs are wrong, what is filming yourself kicking open stall doors while hunting trans Americans? Rasner wants the protections of the marginalized while denying those protections to everyone else.

The Ultimate Irony

What makes Reid Rasner uniquely grotesque in the landscape of 2026 Republican politics isn't just the bigotry — it's the architecture of it. Here is an openly gay man who was called a pedophile by his own party's members, whose sexuality was weaponized in opponent polling, who was excluded from candidate forums by conservative groups — and whose response was not solidarity with other targeted communities, but to become the attacker.

He targets trans Americans with "tranny-pottie" videos. He targets Muslim Wyomingites by filming himself outside their mosque. He targets fat children for social media engagement. He targets immigrants with calls for mass deportation. He targets women with a national abortion ban.

The Republican Party hasn't changed — it's just expanded its cruelty to more communities while Rasner scrambles to prove he's the most eager participant. In Wyoming's August 18 Republican primary, voters will decide whether this particular brand of self-loathing performance art deserves a spot in Congress.

If there's any justice, they'll give him the same answer Las Vegas did: 74 votes.