Lex Anteinternet: Enough Already? Wyoming Republicans begin to take back county organizations from the Populist far right.

Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Enough Already? Wyoming Republicans begin to take back county organizations from the Populist far right.

Natrona County's GOP went with an all traditional, "big tent" leadership in county elections held on March 16. Indeed, as chairman it elected a conservative businessman to be its head, a former member of the legislature who lost his seat in the last election during Casper's east side slide towards the far right. Other committee members voted in, or retained, were uniformly traditional Republicans, rather than the populist insurgents that have been so much in the news.

Earlier this week, moderate traditional conservatives completely unseated Uinta County's far right populists in their county's organization. The Cowboy State Daily reported it as thus:

During the reportedly contentious meeting, party chairperson Elisabeth “Biffy” Jackson was replaced by former Evanston Mayor Joy Bell in a close 33-31 vote.

A complete takeover of the Uinta County Republican Party’s leadership Tuesday night may be a sign of a new trajectory for the Wyoming Republican Party.
Every member of the Uinta County GOP’s executive committee was ousted during a Tuesday party meeting.
The Results
Also, former state lawmaker, gubernatorial candidate and former Wyoming Secretary of Agriculture Ron Micheli and his wife Patty Micheli replaced the county party’s State Committeeman Karl Allred and Committeewoman Jana Williams by similarly close margins.
The group’s new Secretary-Treasurer is Stacy Wallace, and the West/East vice chairs are Randy Barker and Jay Anderson.
“We’re obviously pleased,” Ron Micheli told Cowboy State Daily about the outcome of Tuesday’s vote. “We appreciate the effort the past officers made. We hope they continue to be involved. Hopefully, this will patch up some of the tension in the county and state.”

Every single member, including pistol packing Karl Allred, fresh from his being interim Secretary of State, went out the door. That's particularly remarkable. Allred had been a failed candidate in prior elections, but was boosted as a far right member of the party by the state organization, propelling him to high office, briefly, in spite of a lack of apparent qualifications.

Whatever those qualifications were, now boosted, didn't serve to keep him on the committee

Something is going on.

Part of the something is the state organization is suddenly suggesting to Natrona County that if it bring its bill current, which the county intentionally withheld, it might have its full voting rights restored. So far, NatCo has indicated that it will bite, on a "might", but there to, there's some sort of shift in the wind.

March 22, 2023

The Freedom Caucus formally admitted new members this week who were already assumed to be new members. Apparently, freshman legislators have to prove their mettle in a legislative session before being admitted to the group, which means that such figures as Jeanette Ward were only recently allowed in.l

While some quarters of the Press continue to portray the last legislature as taking a sharp right turn, when in fact the populist were fairly ineffectual, the post legislative bloodletting of the populists continues. Not only has Uinta County booted its far right populists, but now Lincoln County has as well, with another casualty being another East Coast expat, Marti Halverson.

Halverson was an early far right import who had served in the legislature and who continued to make far right news after her departure from it. Now that county has told her thanks, but no thanks.

Halverson didn't comment to the press, noting that she couldn't get into the mind of voters, but Allred did, blaming his defeat on "frontier Republicans and Liz Cheney supporters", a remarkable comment for a figure who lost more than one election and was only appointed as Interim Secretary of State due to his far right reputation with the Central Committee. Allred stated he didn't know if he'd run for a leadership position again.

The entire executive committees for both counties changed, removing the populists from their positions. As noted above, Natrona County rebuffed the populist in its recent election.

All the County organizations must chose their leadership in March.

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