Mark Gordon

Gordon declined to run for Cynthia Lummis's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2016, the same seat he ran for in 2008, and instead ran for governor of Wyoming in 2018. He won the Republican primary on August 21, 2018 and then won the general election on November 6, 2018, defeating Democratic state representative Mary Throne. Gordon was inaugurated on January 7, 2019.

Under Gordon's leadership, Wyoming's portfolio grew from $15 billion to nearly $21 billion. Nationally, Mark was elected to serve as Western Regional Vice President of the National Association of State Treasurers. He has earned recognition three years running for his leadership and expertise. The Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute named him one of the "Top 100 Most Significant and Impactful Asset Owners and Public Executives." In 2016, under Gordon's leadership, Wyoming's portfolio was ranked 3rd in the world for transparency by the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

As state treasurer, Gordon had success modernizing and professionalizing the office of state treasurer. Working with voters and the Wyoming Legislature, Gordon helped craft an amendment to Wyoming's Constitution which would allow the Legislature to designate certain funds of the State to be invested in stocks as well as bonds. The amendment passed in 2016.

Gordon was elected to a full term as treasurer in the 2014 Republican primary election.

Gordon was sworn in as treasurer on November 1, 2012, by Wyoming Supreme Court Justice William Hill.

In 2008, Gordon was an unsuccessful candidate in the Republican primary for the United States House of Representatives for Wyoming's at-large congressional district seat held by Cynthia Lummis, also a former state treasurer and the wife of a Democratic former state representative, Alvin Wiederspahn. Former U.S. senator Alan K. Simpson of Cody, considered a moderate Republican, defended Gordon's candidacy though he stopped short of an outright endorsement because he is also friendly with Lummis. Nevertheless, former U.S. senator Malcolm Wallop did endorse Gordon as did the late Joseph B. Meyer, who was serving as state treasurer at the time.

Gordon met his current wife, the former Jennie Muir Young, in 1998 and they were married in 2000. Together they own the Merlin Ranch east of Buffalo, also in Johnson County, Wyoming. In 2009, their ranch received the Society for Range Management Wyoming Section "Excellence in Rangeland Stewardship" award. They have four grown children: two sons and two daughters.

He graduated from St. Paul's School, an Episcopalian boarding school in Concord, New Hampshire, and Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, where he met his first wife, the former Sarah Hildreth Gilmore. The couple married on March 7, 1981, in the Second Congregational Church in Greenfield, Massachusetts, where her parents resided.

After graduating from college in 1979, he returned to Wyoming and worked on his family ranch before starting his own operation. Mark ran several successful businesses in Buffalo and Sheridan including two operations focused on outdoor recreation and tourism. He later worked in the oil and gas industry. In 1993, Gordon's first wife died in an automobile accident. After his wife was killed he focused on raising his two daughters who were four and two years old at the time.

Mark Gordon (born March 14, 1957) is an American politician serving as the 33rd governor of Wyoming since 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as state treasurer; he was appointed to that position by then-Governor Matt Mead on October 26, 2012, to fill the vacancy created by the death of Joseph Meyer.