The 2022 Election Part VI. The Early Landing Lights Edition

January 11, 2022

Well, we've clearly reached a new stage of the campaign.  Last week, on the anniversary of January 6, Liz Cheney not only made it clear that she was not backing down in the face of a local and national party organization which now defines itself, to a large degree, with something akin to Trump, love him or leave us, but intends to campaign instead on "democracy, love it or leave it."  She didn't hold back her opinions at all.

The local GOP mostly sat January 6 accordingly, sitting it out, a telling move in that it suggests that more than one of the stolen election acolytes doesn't believe that at all.  Harriet Hageman, who has never said that she believed it, but instead is taking the loyalty to Trump theme while ignoring what that means, out of political calculation, was silent. After the date safely passed, however, the GOP party organization hit back, noting once again that Cheney wasn't loyal to Trump and that on January 22 they're going to hold a straw poll of who party heads in the state are voting for, and predicting it won't be her.

That's a safe, if meaningless, prediction.

What isn't clear is how far down the lie has sunk in, or how close it is to average Wyoming Republican voters.  Cheney could lose in the primary, giving the state a Representative whose views are not much different on most things but one who will obviously be in Trump's and the populist's debt, and completing the conversion of the state's GOP into a right wing populist party from what was a uniquely Wyomingite party for at least the time being.  If she wins, however, it'll be a sign that average Wyomingites are much more politically attune and independent and that maybe the GOP itself is returning to a small "d" democratic party.  

The party has been struggling over its identify for at least a decade, if not more, and this may definitively determine that for the time being.  Depending on how it resolves, it could also result in a stampede for the door, an action going on in much of the country's GOP already.

This same struggle is playing out in the national party. The overwhelming majority of senior leaders of the party don't accept the stolen election fable, but they are so cowed by Trump's acolytes that they have remained silent on it.  Having said that, a small but growing number is starting to speak up, if only cautiously.  

Mike Rounds, Republican from South Dakota, for example suggested that Trump should potentially be subject to criminal prosecution in a surprising interview on last week's This Week.  That provoked an amazingly childish, and even stupid, reply from Donald Trump which was truly in the nature of a tantrum, to which Senator Rounds did not back down but doubled down.

Rounds, I'd note, did not sound optimistic about the future of American democracy and put the blame squarely on Kevin McCarthy.  It was plain that Rounds felt that if McCarthy had not gone to Mara Lago to kiss Trump's ring, we'd not be where we now are.

Ted Cruz decried the insurrectionist as terrorists last week, before trying to retreat in front of Fox personality Tucker Carlson.  Cruz has been less than honorable in the wake of the insurrection and returned to form in from of Carlson, but ineffectively.  Meet The Press played an entire string of Cruz comments on Trump which probably, however, reflect his actual feelings, which show both how he really feels, and how much he is willing to grovel at the same time.

We'll see.

So who is running right now?

Republicans for the House: ^[1]. 

The big contest, of course, is in the House of Representatives where Liz Cheney is only one of two Republican Congressmen who is willing to admit so far, publically, that Donald Trump attempted what amounts to a coup in a bid to remain in office.  She voted to impeach Trump, which has become the casus belli for her opponents, a GOP captured by the right wing populist branch which has accepted the Trump line demonizing his opponents and attributing them with illegal machinations to co-opt the election, which in fact it was the other way around.

Liz Cheney:  Cheney really hasn't been in the House long, but she went from junior Republican to GOP leader remarkably fast.  However, she retains a streak of highly conservative independence, and a devotion to democracy, which has caused her to fall from populist favor as she's put the reality of the election ahead of devotion to Donald Trump.  That's the only thing the House race is about.

Harrient Hageman.  Hageman is a former Cheney supporter and Trump opponent who has switched on both in what Cheney has proclaimed as "tragic opportunism".  Her political positions, other than devotion to Trump and a willingness to benefit from the lost election fable, even if not really come out and endorse it, is her only distinguishing present political characteristic.

Hageman comes from a Wyoming political family of long-standing and is the only real candidate left in the race against Cheney, although others hang on.  She's had political ambitions for a while, having previously run for the Governor's office and coming in third behind Foster Freiss, which does show how deep the right wing populist line of thought has become in the party.

Robin Belinsky:  Belinsky is a businesswoman from Sheridan who is billing herself as Wyoming's Marjorie Taylor Greene.  While apparently still running, she has no chance and has been nearly silent for months.

Anthony Bouchard:  Bouchard is a member of the legislature from Goshen County who has been in a lot of local political spats and who is a far right firebrand in the legislature.  Most recently, however, he's been in the news for the revelation that when he was 18, he got a 14-year-old girl pregnant, and the drama that ultimately followed that.  This also revealed that he's originally from Florida, something that was pretty vague before.

Bouchard is effectively out of the running at this point, and is somewhat like a high school boy at a dance whose date has jilted him and who is no longer attracting the eye of any suitors.  He still has his supporters, but they're a thin and now pretty disgruntled minority on the populist side.  He'll be noisy, however, in the final stages of the campaign.

Bryan Eugene Keller:  He's a resident of Laramie County who has registered, but I don't know anything else about him.  We can probably regard him as effectively standing down.

Denton Knapp:  Knapp is a retired U.S. Army Colonel and a current Brig. Gen. in the California National Guard who is still, surprisingly, running.  He's from Gillette originally and claims to be generally fond of the Cheney and to respect her past role in Congress.  It's really difficult to see where Knapp things his support is.

Democrats for the House:

Nobody, yet.

Chirp, chirp. . . 

The Democrats, as we know, have very little chance of winning this election, but they cannot be completely discounted.  Their silence might be an example of party discipline.  If they pick one of the few remaining Democratic leaders in the state or. . . . less likely but still possible. . . if they get an old time centrist Republican to cross over (more possible than might be imagined), and if that person registers late after Hageman and Cheney have spent months ripping each other apart, there's a chance.

That chance grows considerably if Hageman is the nominee, as she'll be associated with populist extremism by default.

Who fits in this category?  Mary Throne?  A cross-over Matt Mead (or his wife)?  We don't know yet, but if this occurs, it'll be interesting.

Constitution Party for the House.

Marissa Selvig: Mayor of Pavilion.  She recently announced she was switching to the Constitution Party.

That party no longer pulls enough votes to be on the primary ballot automatically, so while she will have its nomination, she's effectively a doomed write in candidate at this point.

Governor's Race.

Republicans for the Governor's Office.

Mark Gordon:  Gordon is the incumbent.  He's going to get the nomination, and he's going to win the General Election.

Harold Bjork.  Who Bjork isn't really clear, but he's started a Facebook and internet campaign for Governor.  From what little you can tell about him, he's a self-declared "conservative" who is running pretty far to the right of Gordon and who is strongly opposed to the now expired mask mandate.

Aaron Nab:  Nab is a truck driver from Southeastern Wyoming.  It's wroth noting that this is Hageman's base, and he seems to be riffing off of her campaign, but with none of the political background she has, and out of an assumption that Wyomingites remained enraged about the early 2020 mask mandates.

Politically, those events are as far removed as the Punic Wars and this campaign will go nowhere.  Indeed, it never would have.

Rex Rammell:  Rammell is a perennial and unelectable candidate who ran last time and will again.  His views can be characterized as being on the fringe right/libertarian side.

Democrats for the Governor's Office.

The Democrats have to run somebody, but so far nobody has shown up.  That person is a sacrificial lamb no matter what, but they have to nominate somebody decent for that role, so whomever they otherwise nominate won't taint their House candidate.

Secretary of State

Nobody has filed.

State Auditor

Nobody has filed.

Superintendent of Public Instruction

Nobody has filed.

January 23, 2021

A straw poll of the Republican Central Committee went to Harriet Hageman. She took 59 of 71 votes, including those cast by her own family.  Cheney took 6, Bouchard 2 and Knapp 1.

The poll, however, only means something to the extent it reflecst the Republicans at large, which is at least somewhat doubtful.  Right wing candidat Bryan Miller, for example, beat out Cythnia Lummis in the poll in the last Senate race.

In perhaps somewhat related news, Natrona County was cut from 33 delgates to 6, on the basis that it had not paid its dues.  The Natrona County party is in litigation against the state organization over representation.

January 25, 2022

On a totally different topic, and not really related to the election directly, the Wyoming Superintendant of Education recently resigned, which means a new one has to be picked.

That entails forwarding three names chosen by the populist controlled far right Republican Central Committee to the Governor.  The Committee has now chosen their three picks. They are:

1.  Thomas Kelly, who occupies a position with the American Military University, and who indicated in his application that he relocated to Wyoming, which he did only very recently, from Colorado as Colorado's schools, he asserted, were teaching climate change, mulitple genders and white supremacy.

2.  Brian Schroeder, who is an educator by profession and head of Veritas University, a Christian K through 7 school in Cody.

3.  Marti Halverson, a far right wing Republican East Coast/Chicago ex pat who arrived in Wyoming in 1996 and who has been in the legislature.

The choices were obviously very political and fit in with the Central Committee's current populist hard right wing view.  The last superintendant to fit that bill, who was elected to the position, proved to be highly unpopular with Wyomingites.  Nonetheless, the Central Committee's candidates leave the Governor with little choice but to pick somebody far to the right.

Chances are, I'd guess, it will be Schroeder, who appears to be the most qualified and least politicized.

One committee member, Tom Lubnau of Gillette, raised concerns that the process used to pick the candidates was unconstitutional, as the committee is not longer proportionally representative. Given the current atmosphere everywhere, that should be a clear warning that whomever is chosen is likely to end up with their qualifications to hold office challenged in court.

Governor Gordon has five days to pick from amongst the three.  Whether he has a choice to send back for a redo I don't know.  He does with judicial nominees, but that process is likely different.

Whoever occupies this position will only be doing so until November, or upon their reelection in November.

This entire development sort of nicely tees up the current conflict in the GOP and the state's poltic's in general.  Traditionally the WEA, the teachers union, has been one of the very few strong unions in the state and used to have a very strong influence over who occupied this position.  None of the candidates in question will have that relationship with the WEA.  Jilian Balow had been careful to monitor the spirt of the times, while not diving too deeply into it, but chances are that two out of the three here would not be so restrained.

January 25, 2022 cont.

Tom Lubnau's prediction of a lawsuit was correct.  It was filed today, and he's one of the plaitniff's.

This is an extremely interesting development as it would suggest the mainstream part of the GOP is attempting to stage a comeback, and throught he court.  With the GOP having just sidelined the Natrona County delegation, and this suit now coming on, the party may be facing a litigation backlash that will be essentially taking on the current leadership.

Anyway a person looks at this, this is going to amount to airing some dirty laundry, and the nominees to the Governor aren't going to get up there quickly. Chances are the court will order a stay on the nominees and this will carry on for at least a little while.

At the same time, a Carbon County Legislature raised the eligibility of a Laramie County Legislature who has been very active as a respected establishment Republican to continue to serve in the Legislature, asserting that redisctricting may have zoned him out of his district. This was raised as an asserted question, but it can't help be noted that the challenge comes from the populsit righ against a legislature who openly spated with Anthony Bouchard of the populsit right.  The matter has been referred to the Secretary of State.

January 26, 2022

Federal Judge Skavdahl enjoined the Governor from slecting a Superintendant of Public Education until he could consider the issues in the new suit.

January 27, 2022

The Trib is reporting that the Court ordered the Governor not to make a choice until he "makes a decision" today.

Wrong.

What he did, is to enter a termporary order holding:

ORDERED that Governor Gordon shall not fill the vacant position of Superintendent of Public Instruction with any candidate forwarded to him by the Case 0:22-cv-00016-SWS Document 11 Filed 01/26/22 Page 1 of 2 Defendants prior to issuance of this Court's Order on the Motion for Temporary Restraining Order, which shall be issued no later than 12:00 p.m. MSI on January 27, 2022.

That doesn't mean that the Court will have made a decision on the case.  Far from it.  The Court, today, will make a decision on the Temporary Restraining Order.

January 28, 2022

Yesterday, the Court lifted its TRO on the basis that the plaintiffs' suit was unlikely to prevail on the merits.  Accordingly, Governor Gordon selected Brian Schroeder as the new Superintendent of Public Instruction.  Schroeder was fairly clearly the only realistic pick out of the three who were nominated.

Indeed, with the injunction lifted, the Governor was statutorily obligated to make his choice yesterday.

It has to be presumed that Schroeder will announce for this position and run for it, rather than simply choose to occupy it for a few months.

January 29, 2022

The legislature is set to add two new House districts and one new Senate district.

A proposed Natrona County House district would run basically from eastern Natrona County outside of downtown Casper to the Converse County line, and is supposed to be more of an "energy district".  A Senate district is proposed to include the "central eastern" parts of the state and would include parts of Natrona County and Converse County, again seperating out parts of the same region.

The legislatures redistricting map can be found here.

January 31, 2022

The Tribune ran an op-ed by Tim Stubson yesterday on the topic of the Superintendant of Education.

Stubson is a former Wyoming legislator and one of the three candidates that split the vote when Cheney first ran for the U.S. House.  If Jorgenson had not run, he'd be our Congressman right now.  For that matter, if he hadn't run, Jorgenson would be.

Stubson is no longer in politics and he must not have any plans to return, as he's been vocal recently and his article was blistering.  He declared all three candidates to be unqualified and noted that his son's backpack had more experience in Wyoming schools than two out of the three finalist, one of which was the one chosen.  On that one, he noted that up until recently he'd been a pastor.

He even stated:

The whole sorry process shows that the majority of the Central Committee are not primarily concerned with improving public education. Instead, their priority is what every political hack’s priority is; feed the outrage machine, stoke fear and generate donations.

Stubson deserves a lot of credit for his article.

The statute that governed this process states the following:

22-18-111. Vacancies in other offices; temporary appointments.

 

(a) Any vacancy in any other elective office in the state except representative in congress or the board of trustees of a school or community college district, shall be filled by the governing body, or as otherwise provided in this section, by appointment of a temporary successor to serve until a successor for the remainder of the unexpired term is elected at the next general election and takes office on the first Monday of the following January. If a vacancy in a four (4) year term of office occurs after the first day for filing an application for nomination pursuant to W.S. 22-5-209, the temporary successor appointed shall serve until the first Monday in January following the second general election thereafter. The following apply:

 

(i) If a vacancy occurs in the office of United States senator or in any state office other than the office of justice of the supreme court and the office of district court judge, the governor shall immediately notify in writing the chairman of the state central committee of the political party which the last incumbent represented at the time of his election under W.S. 22-6-120(a)(vii), or at the time of his appointment if not elected to office. The chairman shall call a meeting of the state central committee to be held not later than fifteen (15) days after he receives notice of the vacancy. At the meeting the state central committee shall select and transmit to the governor the names of three (3) persons qualified to fill the vacancy. Within five (5) days after receiving these three (3) names, the governor shall fill the vacancy by temporary appointment of one (1) of the three (3) to hold the office. If the incumbent who has vacated office did not represent a political party at the time of his election, or at the time of his appointment if not elected to office, the governor shall notify in writing the chairman of all state central committees of parties registered with the secretary of state. The state central committees shall submit to the governor, within fifteen (15) days after notice of the vacancy, the name of one (1) person qualified to fill the vacancy. The governor shall also cause to be published in a newspaper of general circulation in the state notice of the vacancy in office. Qualified persons who do not belong to a party may, within fifteen (15) days after publication of the vacancy in office, submit a petition signed by one hundred (100) registered voters, seeking consideration for appointment to the office. Within five (5) days after receiving the names of qualified persons, the governor shall fill the vacancy by temporary appointment to the office, from the names submitted or from those petitioning for appointment;

The pending lawsuit, which the Federal Court stated did not have a high liklihood of success, challeged the constitutionality of this statute on the basis that it violated the one man, one vote, principal.  It pretty clearly does.  That might not explain the court's action, however, as court's are generally loath to get involved in politics.  So the statute could be struck down which would recreate the vacancy again, but it's unlikley.  If it does get stricken down, it'll likley be at the appellate level and come after the next election.

Frankly, while I understand the Governor's actions, given this situation it's interesting to ponder what a Governor less under the gun and a bit more stalwart would have done.  The Governor is required by law to appoint one of the three within five days, so he complied with the statute as written, but he's also to appoint individuals who are "qualified" of which there are supposed to be three.  Under the interpretation of the statute that seems to have applied, that would mean apparently that they were qualified to hold the office as they were residents of the state over 18 years of age and weren't felons.  In terms of actual qualifications, its clear that three truly qualified applicants were not submitted.  A pretty decent argument can be made that the Governor, given as this is likely unchallenged, could have refused the applicants on the basis that he had not received three qualified applicants.

Should he have done so?

At any rate, he didn't.  So Schroeder it is, and he'll be the incumbant in November.  He'll almos surely run for reelection.  But given the process, this might turn into an interesting race.

February 1, 2022

Liz Cheney has raised $2.05M in the fourth quarter of her campaign and has over $4M in her campaign war chest.  Harriet Hageman has raised about $1M total and has $381,000 in her war chest.  Bouchard has raised over $600,000 but is down to five digits presently.

February 4, 2022

In a really outrageous example of interfering in a state election, Republican leaders meeting in Salt Lake City reached an agreement to potentially fund Harriet Hageman against sitting Republican House member Liz Cheney.

That's correct. This would be an example of the national party taking on and trying to unseat one of their own members.

This came in the wake of the state party leadership making this request.  While Hageman has raised more money from individual Wyoming donors than Cheney, although it's still not a vast amount, she is far behind in overall donations and the state party is attempting to intervene on her behalf, and against at least two of its other primary candidates in effect, and have the national party fund Hageman.

This comes in the form of a censure resolution that holds that she and Adam Kinzinger are no longer members of the GOP.

Wyomingites generally don't like outsiders telling them what to do, and it'll be interesting to see what the voters do with outsiders telling them who to vote for.

As noted here previously, while they'd still face long odds, if ever there was an opportunity for Democrats to reemerge in the state, this is it.  If Hageman is nominated in this process, a solid Democrat really has the opportunity to paint her as beholden to anti-democratic forces.  No Democrat has yet emerged, of course, but there's still plenty of time for one to do so while the Republicans rip each other apart.

Footnotes:

1.  Yes, this is blue.  I'm not going to adopt the "Red=Republican" theme here, as international red equals the left.  The red/blue color scheme in American politics is historically inept.

Last Prior Edition and Related Threads:

The 2022 Election Part V. Waiting for the party of Jefferson, Jackson, Herschler, Sullivan and Roncalio.

School Daze. Does Wyoming's Superintendent of Education Selection System Make Sense?