Pollice Verso. The 2026 Political Negative Endorsement. The Don't Vote For List.

I've run items on elections here for a long time, and made my views on various candidates more or less known, but this year is really a critical year.

So, we aren't telling you who to vote for, but for the first time ever, we're publishing something on whom we think you should vote against, although it frankly takes a lot of hubris to even assume anyone at all cares what I think on this topic.

#very election season people say something about the election being the most critical one ever but 2026 really is.  2026 may be the last gasp of American democracy, or the beginning of the restoration of it.  Right now, the American electorate basically stabbed democracy accidentally in the back by electing a mentally declining spoiled rich boy caudillo, and the whole world is paying the price.

The US is being run on a near dictatorial basis by the madman.  The Republican Party, save for a few of its notable members, has become nothing but a collection of worshippers, many of whom are steeped in ignorance.  The childlike ignoramus who is running the country is going to try to steal the 2026 elections.  About this there can be no doubt.

Part of the duty of the voters is to be informed.  It's pretty clear a lot of American voters, no matter what their party affiliation, aren't.  Indeed, I dare say the most informed voters are Independents who have informed themselves on both parties and marched out of the parties absolutely disgusted.

In Wyoming you almost have to be a member of the Republican Party or you have no vote at all.  But in Wyoming a collection of Dixiecrats who think they are Republicans and think they are for "freedom" is now the most powerful voice in the legislature and due to Cynthia Lummis retiring the entire mix of candidates is in flux.

This trailing thread is a list of people to vote against.  That's a terrible way to vote, but given the times and the slate of candidates, its something people need to consider.

This list, we'll note, is limited to current candidates.  Not every Wyoming politician.  If experience is any guide we would note that not getting voted for tends to refocus a politicians attention like nothing else.  If there's a big shift in 2026 and some traction on that in Wyoming, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if Chuck Gray wrote daily proposals of marriage to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

There are plenty of candidates running for office in Wyoming who'd end the public's right to do this, or anything, on public land.

Enemies of Public Lands, Hunters and Fishermen

Wyoming public lands users were shocked in 2025 with Deseret Mike Lee lead a full blown charge at public lands and Wyoming's Lummis, Barrasso, and Hageman joined right in.   Given their histories respectively of 1) being a Cheshire Cat, 2) Being a sycophantic toady and 3) being a member of a family that very distinctly doesn't care much for anyone who isn't an agricultural landowner, we shouldn't have been surprised, and yet we were.

Our guards still need to be up in a major way.  This issue hasn't gone away and if 2025/26s Trump babbling about Greenland, Gaza and Venezuela has shown anything, its that Donald Trump's GOP doesn't give a rats ass about anything that can't be reduced to a sale and the future just doesn't matter.  He's a shallow golf course developer and see the entire world that way, to his everlasting discredit.

And the GOP is right behind him.

People public lands users, and that includes ranchers who will get completely screwed if Deseret Mike Lee and his ilk have his way, follow.¹

These people have no Land Ethic.

Bill Allemand:  Allemand is from a large ranching family in the state but has claimed not to be part of the ranching operations himself.  Nonetheless he showed his hand by sponsoring a really punitive hunting trespass bill that failed last session.

That should preclude him from being reelected.  He's an enemy of sportsmen.

He's also a Dixiecrat.

And he's extremely rude.  His first run for office was characterized by outrageous comments about his opponent and he's shown a real temper since being elected.  Most recently, he stated outrageous things against a Deputy Sheriff who arrested him for drunk driving in Johnson County.²   A cutting editorial by Susan Stubson on his drunk driving escapade is well worth reading.

Harriet Hageman:  Hageman is from a large ranching/farming family in southeast Wyoming.  Her father was the sponsor of an effort to privatize wildlife when he was in the legislature.  Hageman aggressively backed an effort to transfer Wyoming's Federal lands to the state and responded to criticism of those who opposed her by basically calling them dumb.

This past term her family homestead burned to the ground in a year that's been extremely warm and devoid of moisture. There were poignant comments about it, including from her, which tend to demonstrate the agricultural community's absolute refusal to read what is really in front of their face, climate wise.  It's ironic, in that even university educated agriculturalist like Hageman, who depend on animal science daily, refuse to believe that any other science is valid.

Original post:  January 20, 2026.

Allies of Ignorance.  Trump Fellow Travelers and Dixiecrats.

I suspect that some of these people probably really love Trump, while others are just opportunistic and  pitching to ignorant Wyoming voters, telling them what they know they want to hear.  Either way, they shouldn't be voted for, either because they believe the nonsense they're spouting, or because they're willing to lie to obtain office.

Some of these folks are members of the largely carpetbagging Wyoming Freedom Caucus as well, which definitely should disqualify them.  They're not running for office in 2026 Wyoming but 1966 Alabama.  It's estimated that 42 members of the House, which has only 62 seats, in the Wyoming legislature are occupied by Freedom Caucus members, but it is an estimate as some of them will not openly declare their membership showing that they have some reservations about it.

Megen Degenfelder:  Degenfelder is the current Superintendent of Public Instruction who has announced for Governor.. She's clearly very far right wing, but she doesn't appear to be a full blown MAGA adherent.  Still, she received King Donny's endorsement and wrapped herself in it, and for that reason alone should be rejected.

I do have a question, however, based on her time in office, as to how much of the MAGA nonsense she really believes.  As one of the Board of State Land Commissioners she hasn't been a fellow traveler with Gray, and the evidence suggests that absolutely nobody on that Board can stand Gray. The Governor clearly does not, but it doesn't really look like anyone else does either.  And Degenfelder hasn't come out with any of the really extreme crap that Gray has, or even that Cindy Hill had.  Given that, she might be on the Trump Train in a boxcar ready to jump off when and if things begin to derail.  So I'll cut her a little slack, albeit very, very, little.

In this race, so far, it looks to me that Barlow is the best candidate.

Chuck Gray:  Gray's a carpetbagging opportunist who took advantage of lies to obtain the position of Secretary of State where he's been a general pain in the ass.  He's not from here, he's not of here, and he should be sent packing as a disagreeable asshole.  He literally obtained his office mounted on a steed of lies.

Gray, I'll note, was one of the founders of the Freedom Caucus and perhaps because of that hasn't been asked the questions or subject to sideways glances that some in his situation might have been, which is interesting.

Ken Pendergraft:  A member of the Freedom Caucus who voted to slash U.W.'s budget.

The Freedom Caucus is pretty much the Freakishly Dumb Caucus and basically opposes education.  Educated people, it turns out, tend to be moderate and don't believe that global warming is a fib, or that the Earth is 4,000 years old, or that Christianity somehow started in the US with an Evangelical Free Church.  So education is bad, in their view.

Jeremy Haroldson:  A member of the Freedom Caucus who voted to slash U.W. budget

The Freedom Caucus thinks that they are Republicans, but they are not. They're Jeffersonian Democrats, i.e., Dixiecrats.

Original post:  January

Carpetbaggers

This may seem like an odd thing to post in this category, but this film, which I hate, really frames the Wyoming mindset in some ways, even though the novel from which its taken was set in Appalachia.  Clayboy's father and eight uncles may have fallen in love here, but Clayboy is going to abandon one of the most beautiful spots on earth and the two hot chicks pursuing him so he can go to university, learn to write, and sit in an office smoking cigarettes behind a typewriter because he's convinced that must be superior to what he already has.

Wyoming has always had a transient population and, additionally, a pretty pronounced history of self doubt and even self loathing. For that reason, we're pretty willing as a rule to elect imports who claim to be like us, even though we know that they aren't.  We really think they're better than us.

Right now, for example, we have Dr. John Barrasso who isn't a Wyomingite but sort of pretends to be one, or at least was up until becoming the Senate Majority Whip.  He's a Pennsylvanian.  He's a Boomer so chances are that this is his last hurrah before he retires and gets the heck out of here.  

Chuck Gray:  Gray is a Californian who shares nothing in common with anyone whatsoever in the state.   He should be sent back to California.

Indeed, one of the most pathetic things about Gray campaigns is when they dress the diminutive little guy up and try to film him in Wyoming.  There he is, looking at an oil rig, and looking mighty uncomfortable, and so on.

Bottle Babies and Stahlhelm

In recent years Wyoming has seen people run for office touting their experience as a veteran. They basically fall into two groups.

One group were career servicemen who sucked on the government tit their entire working lives and now have moved into Wyoming or have come back to Wyoming after decades of being gone and, uniformly, declare they hate the government and know how to fix it. Their hatred didn't keep them from competing in the free job economy with the rest of us, however.

They didn't run their military careers like they claim they'll run the state.  I.e, they didn't come in and say "I hate the military with the red hot passion of a thousand burning suns and I'm going to destroy it!".

The other group are men who run simply on having been a veteran.  Eh?  Lee Harvey Oswald was a veteran.   This group has nothing much more to say other than "I'm a veteran".  So what?  Lots of people are veterans.  This is the Stahlhelm group.

Brent Bien is a bottle baby.  He was a career Marin Corps officer and had a really distinguished career.  Now he's back in the state and seeks to apply that experience, which is wholly irrelevant to running the state, to wrecking government.

Footnotes

1.  While I know that it will happen no time soon, it really needs to become the case that lands that went into private hands through a Homestead Act can't go into corporate or absentee hands.

2.  According to news reports Allemand admitted to the sheriff's deputy that he drank and drive, in order to address "stress".  In the papers he came out just like he did in the campaign, which is to say as a boisterous asshole.  That alone should put an end to his political career.

Most of his business career, we'd note, was spent in Kansas.  He ought to just go back to Kansas.