Wyoming doesn't need a coward. Wyoming needs a leader, Wyoming needs a voice, Wyoming needs people who are able to stand up to anybody and anyone.
Lynette Gray Bull.
The candidates for Wyoming's lone seat to the Congress, less Harriet Hageman, debated last night.
October 14, 2022
A debate of candidates for the U.S. House, save for Harriet Hageman, occurred last night.
Hageman was castigated by the other candidates for her failure to appear, which is either rude, arrogant, or cowardly. At least one candidate called her actions cowardly.
Hageman needs to be heard from on her failure to debate, and not with the excuse that she has other more effective means of communicating with Wyomingites. So far, more or less, her campaign has been limited to the fact that she supports now subpoenaed Donald J. Trump no matter what, whereas Liz Cheney has the courage of her convictions. Other than having united herself to Trump no matter what, there's nothing really known to distinguish her from Cheney, but the voters really haven't heard much from her otherwise in a widespread way. Public forum's she's attended to date have been principally populated with Hageman Fans/Cheney Haters, so that does not suffice.
How do we answer the question posed in the title of this post?
Well, the short answer is because Harriet Hageman has said "no" to a debate, but that obviously doesn't suffice.
Lawyers, which Hageman is, generally are regarded as liking to debate, or at least being comfortable with it. Indeed, a common unthinking reply to "why should I become a lawyer" or "why did you become a lawyer" is 1) well I like to debate, and to get paid for debating, or the related 2) well I like to argue, and to get paid for arguing. . . In truth, lots of lawyers like to do neither, but Hageman has boosted herself in her campaign by portraying herself as a wild vigilante jurist gunning down the horrible agents of Federal repression.
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Hageman hasn't campaigned on any issues at all.
Her campaign was based solely on attacking Liz Cheney for voting to impeach Donald Trump and then going on to be his opponent in Congress. Cheney stood on principles and on that, Hageman used the opportunity to advance herself, and successfully, so far.
In the process, for months she was actually very reluctant, unlike her opponents in the House race, to say that Trump won the election, which he didn't. When pressed, she took refuge in having "questions".
Missed in that response is that it's a lawyer witness answer. It's the classic Clintonesque "It depends on what the meaning of is, is." It's a hair-splitting dodge. Literally every single person on Earth can claim to have questions about the election as life is uncertain, and a person can harbor doubts about literally anything human's do, which doesn't mean they're reasonable. A person can have questions if the sun will explode today, if you will die of a heart attack tonight, if your Welsh Corgi will suddenly remember he descends from wolves and rip your throat out, or whatever.
Unfortunately, in this day and age, there isn't the Fifth Estate muscle to really run that to ground. The Tribune in the days of Phil McCauley would have harassed her on that to the point of tears, but that didn't of course occur. She had "questions".
Well, anyhow, only at the bitter end, after being endorsed by Trump, and pressed at a Casper Politics In The Park did she relent to fully selling her soul and saying the election had been stolen. She handily beat Cheney on that topic alone, with her enthusiastic supporters believing that she believes what they believe, thereby feeding into their beliefs for her personal advantage.
One is reminded of the classic line from A Man For All Seasons when Richard perjures himself:
Sir Thomas More: Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales?
She's been really quiet since the Primary.
This assumes, of course, that she knows the truth, which frankly is my assumption.
Since that time, and after the primary election, she received a letter from forty-one Wyoming lawyers asking her to stop lying about the election being stolen. Quixotically branded the "Wyoming 41" by the Democratic primary candidate Steve Helling, who ran as a pro Trump Democrat (his campaign made next to no sense and received next to no support), they asked her, in a private letter, to quit lying. Her reply was practically unhinged, accusing them of being part of a nationwide plot to discredit Trumpite candidates by holding them to their oaths. The Wyoming 41 denied that, and frankly the accusation was absurd, and in turn wrote her back, this time with 52 signators on the letter.1 She didn't reply to that one.
And she's not replying much to anyone else in any really visible fashion.
Her current quietness may simply because she knows she's almost certain to be elected, and she just doesn't want to bother. But if that's the case, what would it hurt. Sure, she may very well have no need to debate, but if that's the case, debating can't possibly hurt her.
Or maybe it can.
Lynette Gray Bull is a very effective speaker and preformed very well against Cheney two years ago. At that time, she received 25% of the vote, and she'll receive more this time. It's difficult to imagine her adding another 25% to defeat Hageman, but maybe Hageman is worried that in a debate that will bring the difference between the two into sharp focus, she might.2 3
Since the primary, the January 6 committee has resumed and Trump is going to receive a subpoena to go to the Committee. That will appear on prime-time television, and he'll look like a strange liar. He's going to resist going, of course. Maybe being Trump's anointed will have just as much cache a month from now as it now does, but it's not guaranteed.
But beyond that, maybe Hageman's real career history and the issues that raises would also come up. She's been an enemy by her own statements of the things most Wyomingites love. An ally only of development and use, she's unlikely to be seen as a friend of hunters, fishermen and people who just love the outdoors. A product of southeastern Wyoming, which has generally been a hard core "it's my property stay off" portion of the state, she may well fear what that would mean.
She has the social issues of course, with Gray Bull being much to the left of her, and presumably outside the main from where most Wyomingites are, but she might also recall, given her age, a Wyoming which really wasn't very conservative on those issues. Maybe being pro gun doesn't mean much in a state where the Democrats are also pro gun. Maybe the remaining social issues like abortion and gender issues don't have as much cache with rank and file voters as presumed. Maybe just raising those issues, in a public forum, on a stage in which the one candidate has children and the other doesn't, where one candidate is young, and the other isn't, and where both affect Native items in their dress, but one is indigenous, and the other isn't, creates problems she doesn't care to have come up.
And maybe she's not confident in her in own debating skills in front of an audience that isn't canned against a debater who has no choice but to debate, and who is good at it.
Anyway it's looked at, it's inexcusable. Hageman should debate.
Footnotes:
1. The fifty-two signatures actually reflects more than 52 lawyers actually supporting the overall effort, as some of the original "Wyoming 41" didn't sign the second time as their noted public roles with various institutions was causing those institutions to receive complaints.
2. If Grey Bull doesn't pull in 33% this time, I'd be surprised. That would really be only a modest increase in her toll. Imagining 35%, or even 40%, isn't unreasonable.
3. Hageman has given Grey Bull a gift in that Grey Bull can now accuse Hageman of being an outright coward and Hageman can do little about it. Calling somebody out for a verbal duel can't really be adequately responded to except by engaging in a verbal duel, at which point your prior decline amounts to an admission of sorts.
