Issues In the Wyoming Election. A Series. Issue No. 1 (e). The Economy again. . . what if we really don't want it to change?

 

God Bless Wyoming and keep it wild.

Helen Mettler*

Every single politician in the current race, no matter what position they are running for, is emphasizing the economy. At the larger level (local races really have a different focus on this point) the candidates all talk about diversifying the economy, save for Harriet Hageman.  Hageman seems to think the old reliance on oil and gas is just fine and everything should be left alone economically, only more so.  Hageman's close compatriot in views, Taylor Haynes, emphasizes education.  Bill Dahlin points out that education is great, but it doesn't matter much if there's no jobs to go to, and while he's against the ENDOW program (so is Haynes, and I'd guess Hageman likely is), he's for industrial hemp.**

Galeotos has a broad technology based vision that apparently particularly comes out if he's speaking to smaller groups.  I'm not sure what Gordon's view is, but he's for diversification.  Friess, like Galeotos, sees technology as the savior of the state's economy for the future and, in the recent debate, compared what technology can do for Wyoming to what air conditioning did for the South.

And that's where I think most Wyomingites, or at least most native Wyomingites, begin to recoil in horror.

Secretly, most Wyomingites don't share any of these visions, I suspect.  People both appreciate and fear the oil and gas industry. They appreciate it if it brings work to them, and almost everyone depends on it. But they don't like being flooded with Texan's and Oklahoman's when the industry is really hot.  They won't openly admit it much, but in small groups, when they are speaking to their friends, they often will.  Indeed, I've heard people who endured the boom of the 1970s speak wistfully of the crash that followed, even if they suffered economically due to it.  Heck, I was one of those people and while the crash completely altered my career path and changed where I was headed, before decisions of my own following up on that did the same to an even greater degree, I was basically one of those people.  Yup, no work. . . but nobody hanging out at my fishing holes either.

Indeed to be born in Wyoming and to stay here has always entailed a degree of voluntary suffering.  We've always grasped that we were exchanging wealth for a more local, wild, life. And we've been fine with that.  We don't begrudge the young that leave, if they come back, but we do actually, even if only secretly begrudge those who left while very young only to return when old. You left, we figure, and made your money elsewhere. . . so you should stay there.  

We don't begrudge those who moved in to work while in their working years, particularly if they're from the region, but its different if megabucks personalities who made their money in the outside economy and then bought a Stetson, or even worse a ranch, with that money later on.  Or who bought a house in Teton County with their out of state mega bucks.

This view is even stronger regarding people who made huge piles of money outside the state and then come in and throw their weight around or who just get in the way of locals.  And that's a problem that candidates like Friess and Dodson face.  It's not so much that they are outsiders who moved here and made money, as it is that they are outsiders who made money elsewhere and the used the money to move here and get in the way at our favorite spots, while telling us how the state can get rich.

So when people like Hageman speak of taking over the Federal lands and how that will open up ever stopcock in the oil patch, we fear what she's saying for a variety of reasons. We fear and detest it as we don't want the Federal lands taken over and then sold by the state.  And we fear it as we don't necessarily want a giant oil boom.  Steady work, if you please. . . .

Likewise, the thought that technology will do for us what air condition did for the South is a horrific thought.  We don't want any Houston's here. 

Maybe we just like things more or less exactly as they are.  A mostly agricultural landscape with a really small population.

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*Mettler's wild comment is frequently quoted and has been featured on posters, but people rarely know much about her. She was a 15 year old tourist in 1926 when she wrote the quote and, additionally, when she died in Teton County in a hiking/climbing accident when the ground she was on suddenly gave away and she fell into Taggert Canyon.  She was the daughter of Helen Mettler (nee Fleischmann) and John Wyckoff Mettler.  The family was one of successful businessmen and he was the president of the Interwoven Stocking Company and she was of the Fleischmann yeast family.  Both companies still exist. The family was vacationing in Wyoming at the time of Helen's death.

 Mettler as a very young girl

The quote apparently appears in Helen's diary and is attributed to 1925.  Her death came the following fall and I frankly have some suspicion that the diary entry is actually from 1926. 

Her diary entry expresses a common view in Wyoming and features on a popular poster that can frequently be found in the state.  Her early death somehow makes it more poignant and doesn't take away from the sentiment at all.  The fact that she was a New Yorker and not a Wyomingite, and so young, somehow emphasizes her point.

**The GOP candidates, or at least the second tier ones, have a lot of interesting inconsistent messages.  Dahlin is all for developing new industries but won't acknowledge that the lack of infrastructure hinders that.  Haynes is all for education but Dahlin is correct that great education with no jobs means that you simply export people. . . this is a really common feature of the economies of all of the Plains states.  Hageman's view on the economy seems to be stuck in about 1960.  Even the first tier candidates can be confusing on all of this. Galeotos is apparently impressive in small groups but panders to Trump loyalist in an illogical fashion in his wider campaign, or at least he was until the news on Trump matters began to sound more everyday like a plot from The Americans.  Gordon has some interesting direct emails but he is a blisteringly poor speaker and can't get those across in an address.  At least based on my very limited exposure to her, Throne is a remarkably poor speaker as well.