Former Spokane Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich announces bid for governor … in Wyoming. But he may not qualify

Former Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich’s campaign for Wyoming governor got off to a confusing start on Tuesday.

“It’s official,” Knezovich wrote on Facebook, with a photo depicting his campaign slogan, “Wyoming First.”

“My entire career as sheriff in Spokane has prepared me for this,” Knezovich said during a Tuesday phone interview. “The good, the bad and the indifferent.”

But after a Spokesman-Review reporter pointed out Tuesday evening that the Wyoming Constitution requires gubernatorial candidates to be Wyoming residents for five years before the election, he acknowledged the rule could cause his campaign a hiccup: “I’ll be back in 2030,” he texted a reporter.

He wasn’t fully giving up, however.

“I’m checking with an attorney because we have owned a residence here for nearly 10 years,” he said in a text.

Knezovich, running as a Republican, ended his nearly 17-year tenure as Spokane County’s sheriff in December 2022, saying at the time he had accomplished everything he felt he could in Washington. Knezovich left the Spokane area to return to his home state of Wyoming, a place that bore three generations of his family. His grandfather and great-grandfather came to the United States from Austria and began working in the coal mines. Wyoming will always be home to him, he said.

“As much as my wife and I loved the Spokane area, I am a Wyoming boy at heart,” he said. “You can take the boy out of Wyoming, but you can’t take the Wyoming out of the boy.”

Knezovich remains one of the longest-serving sheriffs in the county’s history.

Since living in Wyoming, Knezovich has taken up law enforcement-adjacent jobs, such as volunteering as the public safety director and chief of police in the town of Superior. He was also elected to the Wyoming Community College board of trustees in 2024.

Knezovich moved to Spokane in the summer of 1996 because his work as a police officer in Wyoming did not offer satisfactory pay or retirement benefits to provide for his family, he said. Washington did. It’s partly why Knezovich threw his hat into the ring to run as a Republican governor of Wyoming – because there aren’t enough opportunities in the state for people’s children to want to stay, he said.

“It’s been that way since I was a kid,” Knezovich said. “It is something I intend on changing.”

When he visited the state Capitol as a young boy, it was also a lifelong goal to go back one day.

“I said, ‘I want to be back here someday. And when I come back, I want to be governor,’ ” he said.

Knezovich, who mostly supports the policies of President Donald Trump, acknowledged the Wyoming superintendent of education already had the president’s endorsement for governor. It doesn’t faze him, he said.

“The most important endorsement is the people of Wyoming, and that is what I am working to get,” he said. “They are going to show their credentials, I will show mine.”

Knezovich is a U.S. Army veteran, but typically declines to accept people’s praises when they thank him for his service. Instead, he says, he asks them to go out and vote.

“If you wanna thank me, vote, and vote in the primary. It is in the primary we are losing control of this country,” he said. “The extremes vote in the primary, and that is why we get the candidates we get.”

Asked about Trump and immigration, a topic that has heated up in the last week over a federal agent’s killing of a 37-year-old mother in Minnesota, Knezovich said he hopes immigrants have the same opportunity that his family was given when they came to the U.S. from Austria.

“I wish that for every immigrant that comes in and does it the legal way … The laws need to be respected. It is disrespectful to every immigrant that has done it right because of others that didn’t,” Knezovich said. “I am very proud of my immigrant heritage and what it has done for my family.”

Knezovich said in a news release announcing his gubernatorial run that he wants to “stop wasting our tax dollars and spending money the government does not have.”

“I look forward to serving the People of Wyoming and working to make Wyoming the greatest place in America to live, work and raise a family. Thankfully we have a President who understands these priorities, and I look forward to working with President Trump to accomplish the mission of making America, and Wyoming, the manufacturing, energy, and tech giants we should be,” the statement said. “Time to bring back the American Dream for every Wyoming worker and family, while preserving Wyoming’s heritage for our kids and grandkids.”

At the time of his retirement, Knezovich was praised by other members of the sheriff’s office for creating a task force of law enforcement agencies to combat gang violence in the community, re-energizing the county’s Sheriff Community Oriented Policing Effort to improve neighborhood responses to crime and serving as a founding member of the Spokane County Human Rights Task Force.

He also led the charge to restart Crime Check, the area’s nonemergency line that was previously disbanded due to budget issues.

Knezovich, who said Tuesday he is a proud Republican but grew up in a Democratic home, was notably a vocal critic of former Republican state Rep. Matt Shea, even as other Republicans stood by him after he was ousted from the state House GOP Caucus in 2019. In later years, Knezovich turned his attention to members of the Democratic Party, including local and state elected officials, whom he accused of pushing policies that promoted lawlessness. He often sparred with Democratic members of Spokane’s city council during his time in office, including vehemently opposing higher fines for railway operations, a measure some progressives in Spokane had supported. The proposal was later rejected by local voters, something Knezovich touted as a win.

While states away, the former sheriff largely keeps up with the happenings in Spokane, but not because he calls current Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels repeatedly. It’s because people in Spokane choose to contact him.

“There are times I regret maybe not staying longer and fighting the fight,” he said of leaving Washington. “But after four terms, it was time for me to switch gears.”

Knezovich said much of Spokane hasn’t changed.

“I still have great passion for the people of Spokane County. It breaks my heart to see the current political environment … And it’s getting worse,” he said Tuesday. “Drugs, homelessness … It breaks my heart to see the Democratic Party in Spokane has been taken over by socialists and communists.”