Gray and Hageman play political checkers.
Credible rumors have it that Harriet Hageman is going to run for Governor in 2026 and Chuck Gray for Congress. A deal, it's rumored, has been worked out between them and their minions.
Hmmm. . .
Well, it makes some sense. Hageman ran for Governor before and lost, in part because the far right split between Hageman and Carpetbagger Mega Donor Foster Friese, who introduced the Dukes of Hazard style politics into the state, complete with freezing Daisy Dukes, unsuccessfully. Now with the far right ascendant, Hageman can figure, with good reason, that she can achieve the Governor's office and eclipse her late father in Wyoming politics.
And Gray, for his part, has no real connection with Wyoming whatsoever. It'd make lots of sense that he'd prefer to relocate to Washington D.C. and plot his next move. That move probably was a run at the Governor's mansion but there's enough uncertainty in that for him to hesitate if something else was available, and if this is correct, there is. That's place him at the eye of the populist hurricane, where he'd probably rather be, over being in the office he's currently in, which deals with a lot of very important, but fairly boring, stuff.
Of course, politics is fickle. By 2026, if Trump is still in office, the public may be really mad over a major tariff caused recession, or perhaps whatever Putin has on Trump, if anything, is finally revealed as Putin and his bodyguard of dispossessed North Korean flunkies go down in flames in the Kremlin. Or maybe age or dementia will have caught up with Trump and J. D. Vance will be in office such that real bonafide major social changes will have come into play such that comfortable right wing and pseudo right wing Wyomingites in Wyoming now a-bed shall come to hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks for a variety of reasons, including that certain conduct they hold themselves blameless for shall be anathematized.
More probably, a growing current rumble that out of state populists now running the show in Wyoming politics are out of touch with real Wyomingite's views on public land may spark a sagebrush level revolt and a legislature shift. This has happened twice before in Wyoming's politics, once in the 1890s and once in the 1990s, in the first instance due to an attempt by the out of state megawealthy to drive out local small ranching and in the second time due to an effort, following the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1980s, to turn ownership of wildlife over to agricultural interests. In the first instance the Democrats actually took control of the legislature and Governor's office, albeit only briefly, and Republicans who survived that change their tunes. In the second instance there was a huge backlash against the GOP which very much hurt it, including arguably the career of Congressman Hageman's father. Similar actions and impacts have been going on for the past several years in Utah.
What will occur, of course, is yet to be seen. The ability of human beings to predict the future is notoriously bad, in politics as in everything else. Just a few years ago the Republican Party was regarded as headed into inevitable oblivion and nobody could have seen the developments that rescued, and changed it. Two years is a long time.
Nickel and Diming
The Wyoming Freedom Caucus puts its cards on the table in the form of its "five and dime" plan for the 2025 legislature, and unfortunate plan name as around here, an expense related slur is to "nickel and dime (something) to death.
Indeed, the agenda, which is frankly more modest than I would have expected for a group that's spent years calling everyone the "uniparty" and which has threatened to ride in like cossacks, burn villages, and save everyone's cats, doesn't seek to do all that much in context.
It's almost like now that they have to govern, they're reticent to try to much.
Thier agenda for the 2025 legislature is below:
ELECTION INTEGRITY: Require Proof of WY Residency & US Citizenship When Registering to Vote
Not too surprisingly, this is sort of horseshit. You have to verify your address, already, every time you vote. We've been doing it for years. Now we have to present a photo ID as well.
Oh, I'll do it. I'll present piles of stuff showing that I'm an actual Wyomingites and didn't move in from somewhere as a Freedom Caucuser.
The real threat here is that the rules our Secretary of State (from California) comes up with are so onerous that it discourages voting. The irony is that the "Wyoming" Freedom Caucus has, at least up until this year, pretty much been "I moved here form somewhere else and now nothing about Wyoming but I watched Gunsmoke on Me TV Caucus". Some of them might have a little bit of trouble proving residence.
IMMIGRATION ACCOUNTABILITY: Invalidate Driver Licenses Issued to Illegals by Other Jurisdictions
- WHAT: Invalidate driver licenses issued to illegal aliens present in WY.
Wyoming has no legal authority to invalidate another state's driver's licenses, and the full faith and credit clause of the U.S. Constitution makes that illegal.
People who have taken an oath to the Constitution, by the way, like the legislators, can't back this without violating their oath.
STOPPING THE WOKE AGENDA AT UW: Prohibiting D.E.I. in Higher Education
There isn't a "woke" agenda at UW. That's insulting, and its not true.
For some reason, Freedom Caucusers really like to take shots at education. The rise of home schooling in this same period is notable. Wyoming has excellent public schools that another one of these agenda items would wreck, but there's an obvious flat out distrust of education.
Indeed, the "woke" college thing has become a real populist whipping boy. Most UW students are there as they're local or taking advantage of a good school that has a reasonable tuition. The school is hardly "woke".
At some point, quite frankly, it will be worth asking members of the WFC what their education actually is. I'd be interested in hearing it. Anyone who is highly educated will encounter somebody at some point who just doesn't trust education. If you become educated you'll learn, for example, that the Earth is billions of years old, that we evolved from other prior primates, and that none of this is a threat to a rational faith. For some, that's threatening in the extreme.
Investing in the "highest rate of return" means you will invest in things that aren't necessary in line with our core industries, some of which are a bad economic bet right now.
The "environmental" aspect of this relates to something set out immediately above. Lots of industries, with staffs of educated men and women, are concerned about environmental matters including global warming. The WFC tends to believe that Wyoming's economy is and always will be based on coal, and therefore climate change is a big fib.
CUTTING TAXES: Real Property Tax Relief
- WHY: The people of WY have been crushed by years of skyrocketing property taxes.
Populism in Wyoming is heavily populated by out of staters who moved in here, causing property taxes to rise. Now they're going to cut what they caused, with no way to pay for anything.
Property taxes fund schools and local government. There's real reason to believe that WFC members don't care that much about schools, which teach nasty stuff like evolution, and given that there are so many members of the WFC that moved in from somewhere else, some have a "I got mine" view.
This bill, if it passes, would gut schools and demolish local improvements and services.
A better strategy would be to impose a tax on the value of the last house you sold, no matter where you sold it, and leave the current property taxes alone. So if you sold your house in California for $1M and moved here, perhaps we ought to get $250,000 of that here, in part just for putting up with your presence.
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