Knezovich drops out of Wyoming governor race due to eligibility requirement

Former Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich dropped out of Wyoming’s gubernatorial race Thursday after realizing he was ineligible to run.

Knezovich, the county’s four-term sheriff who now lives in Wyoming, announced he was running for governor on Tuesday. But when a Spokesman-Review reporter pointed out that 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.

Knezovich left the sheriff’s office in December 2022. He said in a Facebook post Thursday that he missed the citizenship requirement by a year.

“Even though we have owned a house/property in Wyoming for 9 years now, born and raised here, went to the University of Wyoming, 36 combined years of living here, served in the Wyoming National Guard I don’t qualify to Gov.,” Knezovich wrote. “Well we will have to look forward to 2030. Hope all is well.”

Knezovich, a Republican, ended his nearly 17-year tenure as the sheriff because he had accomplished everything he felt he could in Washington, he told reporters at the time. Knezovich left the Spokane area to return to his home state of Wyoming, a place that bore three generations of his family.

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

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.