The 2024 Election in Wyoming. Will anyone rise to the challenge, and is there even a point?

Lex Anteinternet: The 2024 Election, Part XI. The Winter of Disconte...: January 4, 2023

Harriet Hageman announced her bid to be reelected with the release of a video:

Harriet Hageman is running for reelection.  This is not a surprise.

John Barrasso is as well. This is also not a surprise.

The difference between the two races, so far, is that Barrasso has drawn a challenger. . . from his own party, in the primary.

Hageman is unlikely to.

Neither candidate, so far, faces a Democrat.

Just the other day, December 28, I had an entry that mentioned Wyoming's Congressman, Teno Roncalio.  On that day, he was one of the overwhelming majority of House of Representatives members who voted for the Endangered Species Act, one of the greatest pieces of legislation in recent history and one of the real achievements of the forever tainted Nixon Administration.

Roncalio, a lawyer from Rock Springs, and a veteran of D-Day, was a Democrat.  

Nearly everyone in Rock Springs was.

At that time, one of our two Senators, Gale McGee, a former University of Wyoming professor, was also a Democrat.

Now, to use the term "Democrat", even in street speech, is slanderous in the state.  It's like calling somebody a wife beater or something.  Republicans vying to be as extreme as possible accuse their fellow Republicans of being Democrats (even though many of those who do that routinely are imports from the South or elsewhere and are really, even if they don't know it, Dixiecrats or Rust Belt Democrats).

Gale McGee was our Senator until 1977, when he was replaced by Malcolm Wallop, a very conservative Wyomingite of English peerage, in a race in which it appeared that McGee didn't really have any interest in running.  McGee was our last Democratic Senator, and he simply gave the race to Wallop.  

Roncalio served in the House in 1978.  He didn't run for reelection.  He was replaced by Dick Cheney in a race that pitted Cheney, fresh out of the Ford Administration, against Cheyenne attorney Bill Bagley.  Cheney won with about 60% of the vote against a lawyer who is now forgotten, but who held on in practice too long.  Interestingly, showing part of how we got to where we are now, one of his county chairs was a then Democrat who would later be in the legislature as a very conservative Republican.  

That's telling, as a whole herd of Democrats who were later conservative Republicans share that history in the state.

No Democrat has gone to Washington from Wyoming since 1978, but the party remained significant and a power well after that.  It twice took the Governor's office and twice reelected Democratic Governors, with the last Democrat leaving Cheyenne in that role as recently as 2011. Either one of the Democratic Governor's could have had a House, and maybe a Senate, seat if they had wanted one.  The Democrats routinely took the Secretary of State's office for much of the 20th Century, with the last Democratic Secretary of State, Kathy Karpan, leaving office in 1995.  Karpan went on to become the director of the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement in 1997, being the first woman to hold that position, and being unanimously confirmed back when Congress still did its job.  Like Governors Sullivan and Freudenthal, Karpan could have stepped into the House or perhaps the Senate if she had wanted to.  

Freudenthal remains a significant figure in Wyoming politics.

The last really significant Wyomingite to make a serious run for office with a serious chance of success was Mary Thorne, a lawyer who ran against Governor Gordon in 2018.  There have been other real Democrats who have run for office, with Sergio Maldonado for State Superintendent of Education coming to mind, but since the mid 1990s It's become increasingly difficult and many of the Sullivan/Freudenthal Democrats have dropped out of the party, in part because of the Democratic leftward (and anti-democratic) drift, and in part because at some point being a Democrat was pointless and the Republican primary race became the real election.

2022 really demonstrated the direction that the cancer of Donald Trump had brought about.  

In 2022 the Republican Primary became a referendum on Donald Trump, with the Wyoming electorate, influenced by the import of Rust Belt and Dixie immigrants into the state, basically giving the insurrectionist a big wet kiss on the mouth by tossing out Liz Cheney.  The whole thing was more than a little ironic, as Cheney, who had risen to her office late in her occupation of it, really was never a Wyomingite in the first place, but the party dearly loved her, in no small part because it had embraced Dick Cheney, after having elected him cynically originally.  The Cheney's aren't Wyomingites and Dick Cheney had only won as the voters in 1978 were given a choice between somebody who seemed to have influence in Washington, Cheney had been Ford's Chief of Staff, and a Cheyenne lawyer who had, if I recall correctly, held off a challenge from a younger Casper lawyer who later became a Federal judge.  Wyomingites of that era were pretty practical and cynical, and they never developed a love for their politicians like occured later. Cheney seemed to do a good job, so he held office.  Liz Cheney won as the primary split the vote three ways.  Chance are high had that not occured, Tim Stubson would have been our Congressman, and have gone on to suffer the same fate as Cheney by not searing allegiance to the Dear Leader for life.

Hageman was a Cheney acolyte but was good at reading the wind and beat out her former friend.  Her competition was Lynette Grey Bull, a really interesting Democrat who had run twice and who drew 24.4% of the vote in spite of the times, in spite of being a Democrat, and in spite of being a Native American.

Who will run now.

Since 2020 the State's GOP has gone into a civil war, with the old party at war with the "Freedom Caucus", one of whose (California migrant) members wrote an op ed in the Tribune which clearly indicates their intent to wage a second Stalingrad in the 2022 Legislature.  Two county organizations, Natrona and Laramie Counties, are in revolt against the GOP Central Committee who has fully adopted the Meine Ehre heißt Treue ethos.  Hageman hasn't been as noisy as might be expected, in part because she probably correctly read the tea leaves over the trouble that Trump ass-kisser Kevin McCarthy was in for not kissing even more private parts before he fell to a quiet and scary Johnson.  The House of Representatives had done nothing this term, and is on the edge of losing power due to attrition.  Pundits claim that the GOP will gain House seats in 2022, but they claimed that about 2020 as well.  The stench of Trump kept that from happening.

And so we have a non-functioning democracy, locally.

No Democrat can win any office in 2022.  The House and one Senate seat will be up, and both of the Republicans contending for those positions will pledge their true honor to the Leader without question.  Some in the race to come this year will go further with a full-blown Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer appeal.  The Senate primary will see a GOP opportunistic upstart attempting to claim that John Barrasso is a "RINO", which really means that he's not a Dixiecrat or Rust Belt Democrat.  While I've discounted that campaign, I don't really put it past it that it has a chance of success.

Will any Democrats run?

I sure hope so.  And I mean a real Democrat, not the Left Wing Flavor Of  The Month Democrats that the party has been fielding in some races locally.  Putting up somebody who self declares to be a homosexual polyamorus trangendered drag queen Pacific Islander is not going to win any hearts at all, and really isn't believeable (the same people would decarel themselves to be cocker spaniels if that was edgy, or Orthodox starets if that was edgy).  Soembody like Sullivan, Fruendenthal, Karpen, Thorne, or, once again, Grey Bull.

But who can be asked to be a sacrificial lamb.

Well, somebody had to be. 

The state's honor, and the preservation of democracy, require it.  With no choices now, we get further down the road to there being no choices, ever.  

The Democrats are faced with that burden.  What little there is the way of third parties here do as well.  

Fiday, October 22, 1943 Kurt.

Today in World War II History—October 22, 1943: Maj.-Gen. Robert Laycock becomes British Chief of Combined Operations. A German meteorological team lands in Labrador, to establish weather station “Kurt."

From Sarah Sundin's blog. 

The automated weather station would operate for only a month before failing due to unknown causes.  It was discovered in 1977.

Royal Navy HMS Charybdis which was lost in action on this day.

The Battle of Sept-Îles was fought near the French coast between the Royal Navy and the Kreigsmarine when British ships were ambushed in the Channel Islands area. The Royal Navy lost a cruiser and a destroyer to no German losses as a result of the action.

Rennovating the University of Wyoming law school?

And, we might note, to the tune of $30,000,000, at least if what reports from a recent event I went to indicate.  The public, i.e., State of Wyoming money, portion of that is $10,000,000, which is important to keep in mind, although that's wroth pondering in and of itself. That means anyway you look at it that 2/3s of that come from donations, which is amazing, if accurate.  

UW's summation of the project is as follows:

A 19,300sf, two-story addition will wrap the northwest end of the existing building. 25,000sf of the existing facility will be renovated creating spaces for clinics, accessible restrooms and improved vertical circulation. The facility expansion and improvements will bring the College of Law into compliance with American Bar Association standards, centralize College of Law clinics with the broader legal education program and allow students, professors, and the community better access to resources. The project will greatly enhance the recruitment of potential students and faculty to the College of Law and support the public legal service the University of Wyoming provides to the citizens of Wyoming.

Super nifty, eh?

Hmmm. . . maybe not so fast.

First, as is so often the case, a little history.

1926 University of Wyoming debate team.  I wanted to put up a photo of the 1923 College of Law graduating class, which I think would be the first one, but I couldn't find one.

A big renovation that occurred some years after I went there also was to "bring the College of Law into compliance with American Bar Association standards. . . "

At least if this goes forward, and it seems like it certainly shall, the 1970s styling of the current law school will be abandoned for a more traditional look.  That's good, as the current law school is really ugly.

Apparently, the new structure will look like this:

And apparently it will include something called the Alan K. Simpson Center for Clinical and Experiential Learning.¹ 

And as a graduate of the institution, I'm thrilled. . . . well, like a lot of lawyers if you talk to them quietly. . . I'm not.

Why are we doing this?  And don't give me the "ABA says. . . ".  If it's the case that the school falls out of ABA compliance on a fairly regular basis, there's either something systemically wrong with the school, or the ABA standards.

The law school was founded in 1920 and was the first professional degree program offered by the University of Wyoming, if "profession" is constrained to its original meaning, that being an occupation that professes by its nature, it would include only law, divinity and medicine.  That definition is probably too narrow by contemporary terms, but it would still be limited, in spite of the American social trend to define everything as a profession, to the law, divinity, broadly defined medical occupations (human medicine, veterinary medicine dentistry) and accounting.  Looked at this way, FWIW, the medical fields have expanded their knowledge and reach, taking over two areas that were formerly practiced by tradesmen (dentistry and veterinary medicine) and accounting has become so complicated that it's a subspecialty of the law in reality. 

I'd be tempted, I'd note, to add engineering, which is now a licensed profession.  It isn't the only one, however, by any means.  Teaching is subject to licensure as well, and so now is being a geologist, which it was not when I graduated back in the dawn of time with a Bachelor's of Science in Geology (the earth was still cooling back then).

So my definition may, I'll confess, be too narrow.

The law school originally held classes on a floor in the old UW library building, meaning that two of the lawyers I once practiced with had gone to the school there.  It was moved to a separate building in 1953, and I practiced with some lawyers who went there at that time.  The current building was opened in 1977, with additional library space added in 1993, after I went there.

Somewhere I have some photos of the pre 93 building, but I've never uploaded them.

The move in 1953 makes sense, and the move in 1977, even if the latter's 1970s architecture leaves a person less than inspired.

But this?

I don't really know why the University added a law school in 1920, but I can guess. UW is a land grant university and was seen as a big step towards statehood when it was formed in 1886.  As that 86 date indicates, it predates statehood.  Land grant universities tended to focus on what was deemed necessary for the state.  I don't know what classes were offered in the early days, but they probably were ones that focused on agricultural and industrial areas that were vital to the state.

Law is vital to the state.  

Indeed, it's vital to a civil society.  It's indeed remarkable that lawyers were the only institution in the entire state that bucked the "election stolen" myth when 41 of them, followed by 52, dared to take on Trumps anointed Harriet Hageman, herself a graduate of the University of Wyoming College of Law, on her backing the stolen election lie.

Law isn't the only thing vital to the state, however, and this is frankly a bit much.

For that matter, I thought the post 93 renovations, while nice, were a bit much.  You can see a little bit of them here:

University of Wyoming College of Law Large Moot Court, Laramie Wyoming

This is the large Moot Court Room for the University of Wyoming.  Having been in most of the courtrooms in the state I can safely say that its one of the nicest in the entire state.

The back half, or gallery half, of the courtroom has a moveable wall that can open up to allow greater space, or perhaps just more conventional space in the courtroom and also allow the courtroom to function as a lecture hall.  Viewed as a courtroom, what we see here in front of us is the bar of the court.

When I went to UW's College of Law it didn't have a moot courtroom at all, now it has two, a large one and a small one (I have yet to see the small one).  This particular room was the large classroom at the time.  It is quite a facility and I guess it demonstrates how much the physical assets of the College of Law have improved in the past three decades.

According to the University, the College of Law will allow the courtroom to be used by the state courts upon request, if it is not already in use.

Indeed, the degree to which a law school is necessary is pretty open to question now.  When I got out of the College of Law in 1990, it was still the case that the state had a state specific section of the bar exam. Since that time, the Supreme Court caused the State Bar to go to the Uniform Bar Exam.  This was controversial at the time, as it should have been.  The net impact of it was to allow out of state lawyers to easily transfer their licenses to Wyoming, which was pretty easy to do beforehand.  Now the floodgates are open. The current exam has no state section whatsoever, and therefore it's just as easy to get a degree from the University of Ohio, or whatever, and hang out a shingle as a "Wyoming lawyer".  Indeed, lawyers who are members of any of the state legal organizations will inevitably find out of state, usually Colorado, lawyers in positions in those organizations.

Indeed, it should be noted that part of the propaganda for the law school renovations is 

The project will greatly enhance the recruitment of potential students and faculty to the College of Law and support the public legal service the University of Wyoming provides to the citizens of Wyoming.

That really should be read as:

The project will greatly enhance the recruitment of potential out of state students and faculty to the College of Law and support the public legal service the University of Wyoming provides to the citizens of Wyoming in the form of aid to the those on the lower rung of society.

Now, let me note, helping those on the lower run of society is a good thing, but that's what law school clinics do.  That's fine.

But recruitment of out of state students?  That's a byproduct of a collapsing enrollment base.  

Indeed, there have been persistent rumors ever since the Supreme Court mandated the UBE that this was done to try to aid UW and that UW's College of Law wanted it.  The thought, the rumor maintains, was that the UBE would help UW graduates go to Colorado or elsewhere, and thereby boost the school by divorcing it from the practice inside the state.  If that was the thought, it achieved the polar opposite and didn't really help the school.

It also didn't help the school when a former Dean of the Law and a former, then new, UW President got into an enormous spat over the focus of the school. The students sided with the Dean, but they had little knowledge on what they were really achiving. The Dean, at that time, was really focusing on small time law, seemingly haveing given up on the long history of big time law inside the state. The President wanted to link the law school's focus to the energy industry. The Dean resigned and the President failed.

What all this gets to is this.  When the state had a state focused bar exam almost all the students know that they were going right into practice with Wyoming firms and the like.  Now, many leave, sometimes nearly half.  Going to UW still provides a direct link to Wyoming firms, but not the hard and fast way that it used to.  It's signficant, but reduced.

Given all that, the point of having a law school is now somewhat debatable.

Alaska doesn't have one.

Now, this is not to say that most Wyoming lawyers aren't from UW, they still are, which speaks for its survival. And it should also be noted that while law is a profession, it's also sort of a trade, and a law school in Laramie serves as sort of a trade school.  Graduaing from there means you are respected by Wyoming firms.

Indeed, the law has long been an occupation for polymaths to a degree, and even more than that, an occupation for lost polymaths.  The law is full of people who liked lots of stuff but not one thing in particular, or who couldn't make a living in that one thing they really liked.  But to be brutally frank, it's also a haven for people who'd reached career dead ends early in life and found the back alley of the law an easy one, or maybe the only one, to duck into.  Sure, there are those who "always wanted to be a lawyer", but right now, of the state's entire population, that's five people.

And the law school also serves as a place that people end up in as they're Wyomingites, have a degree, and have nowhere else to turn to.

Now, that's not intended as a slight to lawyers. Lots of lawyers who really would have preferred to be something else in their young lives are great lawyers.  Some of these, indeed many, so take to the law that, as noted in our recent threads on retirement, can't leave it or won't.  

But we have a law school and $30,000,000 is a lot of money.

It should be used for something else.

A veterinary school would be my choice.  We don't have one, but we sure have a lot of animals in this state, and a lot of those animals are agricultural animals  Wyoming veterinary students have to go somewhere else for their studies.  That speaks of their dedication, but it also speaks to the state's neglect.

A dental college also strikes me as a good idea. Not every resident in Wyoming has legal problems, but they all have teeth.

Massively expanded law school?  Don't need it.

We'll get one anyway.

Footnotes.

1. This would suggest that perhaps the Simpson family or his firm had some role in the donations.  That's just a guess.  He's a 1958 graduate of the UW College of Law.  His father Milward was a 1925 graduate of the Harvard College of Law.  His father, William, was also a prominent Wyoming lawyer, having read the law, rather than going to law school, under two other lawyers.  Alan Simpson's sons are also lawyers, one of whom is a currently sitting judge.

This is remarkable in that this means that the currently actively practicing members of the family are fourth generation lawyers.

Saturday, September 2, 1972. The Federation of Arab Republics.

The federation's flag.

Egypt, Syria and Libya ratified a plebiscite taken the day prior to unite their nations in the Federation of Arab Republics.

This was the second such attempt at unification of the Arab states, and notably it did not include all of them.  With the prior attempt having failed, the suggestion from Egypt was to attempt a looser political federation.  Radicalization in Libya quickly caused Egyptian distrust of that entity and the 1973 October War, featuring Egypt and Syria, was undertaken without informing Libya.  As it was, Libya was upset by the resulting peace which led towards the collapse of the effort.  It officially dissolved, having never really existed in November, 1977.

June 30, 2021. An odd day.

 An odd day, historically.

Rumsfeld the second time he served as Secretary of Defense.

Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford from 1975 to 1977, and again under George W. Bush, died at age 88.

Rumsfeld had a long career in government, including a stint in Congress.  His association with the military began in 1954 when he was a Naval aviator.  Under President Gerald Ford he would oversea the dramatic destruction of the Cambodian navy due to the Mayaguez Incident, demonstrating that the Untied States was not as weak communist forces in Southeast Asia might imagine.  And yet, in spite of serving in the Navy, and that example, and as Secretary of Defense twice, it was his gross overestimation of the effectiveness of modern technology that lead to the under deployment of US forces early in Afghanistan, a result which lead to a protracted guerilla war, and perhaps to the situation in that country which exists today.

And on the same day the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned Bill Cosby's conviction.

Cosby in 1969.

Cosby went from the heights of fame to the height of infamy when a series of allegations against him lead to convictions for sex crimes.  He's being released not because he was found to be innocent, so to speak, but because his prosecutor failed to honor an agreement with a prior prosecutor.

As for the allegations, we can leave them as they are, but we will note that Cosby had the odd status of having been viewed nearly universally as a conservative family man while simultaneously being one of the individuals frequently found at parties at uber creep Hugh Hefner's mansion. That should have raised some red flags, although he certainly wasn't the only one who shared this status.

Perhaps that should in some ways be his legacy.  What he was accused of was gross creepy sexual behavior, in a nation that has come to celebrate creepy sexual behavior.  If that didn't match his image of being the ideal patriarch, perhaps that signifies that in our modern society we've come to tolerate conduct in the patriarchs and matriarchs that's creepy.  We may be holding him to a higher standard than we hold ourselves, none of which argues for a restoration of his reputation, but a condemnation of our own.

Suffice it to say, both men have obtained reputations that will remain defined by events surrounding them late in life, and which stand in contrast, to some degree, with reputations obtained earlier in life.