Wyoming's broken politics.

Former Wyoming Governor Francis E. Warren, and sitting Senator at the time of the Johnson County War, F. E. Warren was a Republican Senator who knew how to cover his ass, whic his why he was able to survive the scandal of Republican support for the invasion of Johnson and Natrona Counties.  That scandal took down the GOP in the state for a period of time.

Back at least a decade ago I had a conversation with a high ranking member of the Wyoming Republican Party about some really odd going ons down at Cheyenne.  He stated, broken hearted, that Wyoming politicians had been "bought".

That's a pretty broad accusation. What he likely really meant is that right about that time the state started to be flooded by out of state political money, and it often went right into the most radical right wing politicians.  Wealthy people moving into the state brought their politics with them, and in a few cases if was radically far right.  That gave us, for example, the absurd example of Foster Friess and his goofball Dukes of Hazzard campaign for governor.

It also gave us, however, some people who moved in specifically for political reason. Chuck Gray, the family money backed son of a wealthy Republican, who was born in California and went to school at Wharton, like Trump, moved into the state and ran for office nearly immediately.  Living in a district in which the long time occupant of a legislative seat died, he managed to leverage a position at his father's radio station into a  legislative seat, and then captured the office of the Secretary of State in spite of having very little connection with the state in which he sits.  He's been a constant stream of Trump like invective.  His seat was taken over by Jeanette Ward, who was if anything even further to the far right. Ward, from Illinois, came to Wyoming as a "political refugee" and had been here so briefly that she barely qualified for her seat when she ran.  Her politics were too far to the right for even that district, which booted her after one embarrassing term in Cheyenne where she espoused far right populist, far right Evangelical, positions.

The state GOP was likewise taken over by far right populists, about whom we hear less now, but who went to war with the traditional GOP. They were largely successful, duping, although I expect only temporarily, a large number of Wyoming voters into believing the sh** sandwiches which Trump and his allies serve up as alleged filet mignon.

That they can be duped is because the state is in economic distress, and regular people don't know what to do about it.  Global Warming is real, not some sort of fib, and long term coal and oil are doomed.  A large number of workers who relocated form Texas and Oklahoma, and the like, are fairly poorly educated on top of it and are relatively easy to lead by being told that what they want to be true, is true.  The agricultural sector, which has deeply ingrained conservative tendencies, is rolling over from a generation that basically stopped its education at high school to one which is now college educated, but in the meantime the older agriculturalist who control the operations deeply want to believe that operations can be run the way they were in the 1970s, and that threats they need to deal with, which include Global Warming and the buying power of the Super Rich, really don't.

Basically, Wyoming's current politics can be explained by people voting for what they want to believe, over reality.  Coal and oil are never going way.  You'll always be able to get a job in the extractive industries, or as a truck driver, with a high school diploma, or even without one.  There are no deep existential problems with the economy here that aren't the result of a conspiracy against us.

It can't be us.

But it can be.

And right now, it is.

A further part of the problem, however, is that the Democratic Party in the state has displayed a level of intellectual denseness that would suck light out of a black hole  It's stunning.

It wasn't all that time that Wyoming had a viable Democratic Party that could serious contend for statewide and national seats.  That started to change, however, during the Clinton Administration for reasons that are now hard to discern, although the decline of unionized mining jobs in Wyoming are likely part of that problem.  Even after that, however, we had a Democratic Governor.

As the Democratic Party in the state declined it took on a lot of the same trend lines that the national Democratic Party did, which has helped explain the rise of Trump.  In a state that was both sort of conservative and sort of libertarian, they became goofball left wing as an organization, although not all of their candidates reflected that.  Over time, the Democrats never saw a fetus in the womb that they didn't' want to kill, or a brand new perversion that they didn't want to celebrate.  A party which at one time was lead by burly miners or grumpy rural lawyers is now lead by a guy who has the appearance of a bow tie wearing nerd.

Recent promo photograph of the Democratic Party.  This is a far cry from a party that once put a World War Two Marine Corps Raider in the Governor's office, a World War Two infantryman in Congress and a gruff prosecutor into office.  Marine Corps Raider gets votes, and inspires confidence.  Bow Tie Wearing Doofus does not.  And is that buffalo smiling?

Hypocritical or not, Wyomingites aren't going to vote for a party that they associate with men in tutus and that it's all okay.  Men might go into the voting booth with their third wife at home, before they go to see their mistress, but they're going to regard that as contrary to the moral law.  Interestingly, if politics returned to the "I don't care what you do, just leave me alone" ethos it once had, they'd be fine with that.  Indeed, that's how their living their private lives already.

In fairness, however, the last two chairmen of the Wyoming GOP don't win high marks either.  The current one, Bryan Miller, is another of the "I spent my life in the military and hate the government" Republicans.  After decades of drawing on the government tit, they claim to know what's wrong in a state where most people don't, or at least not openly.

We may, just might, be at a turning point, however.

We are certainly at a point where Republican office holders ignoring the real views of the state can be exploited.

Dr. John Barrasso.  He went from orthopedic surgeon to the Senate, having been appointed by the Legislature.  At age 72, he's now the Senate Whip and doesn't appear to have any desire to retire any time soon.

Wyomingites are overwhelmingly opposed to public lands being transferred out of government control.  In spite of that, Dr. John Barrasso supported Federal lands being transferred to the states in the 2016 GOP platform. That didn't happen in part because Eric Trump is a hunter.  Barrasso darned well knew that Wyomingites didn't support that, but somebody he was listening to did, as he supported it against the wishes of his constituents.

72 year old Barrasso is in that class of politicians who desperately seem to want to hang on to their jobs in spite of their advancing old age.  At 72 he ought to be retired, but he hung on and is how the Senate Whip.  Once a Republican moderate, he became a Trumpite by necessity.  That means he could become a moderate again, and if the political winds shifted, he would.  

This issue is one in which he's hearing from hundreds of Wyomingites per day.  He's heard from me twice.  

He hasn't responded, but he hasn't said what his position is.

If the proposals to transfer public lands advance, he ought to be sent packing.

Cynthia Lummis.  Once the State Treasurer, she entered the U.S. House in 2009, but stepped down in 2017 to take care of her dying husband, a very admirable thing to do.

70 year old Cynthia Lummis is likewise in the age group that ought to be out of politics.  She actually returned to it, however, to take her current Senate seat.  Lummis condescendingly stated that all Federal lands didn't need to remain in Federal lands forever, which is intellectually the same as maintaining that all privately held lands don't either, something she'd be in horror about as she comes from a ranching family.  She's also shown an ability to tack into the wind, however, as she was once a Trump opponent and now is a Trump backer.

Lummis is making sort of a big deal right now about her cryptocurrency bill which just passed the Senate, and nickname Crypto Queen she's been tagged with. The truth is, however, that the overwhelming majority of  Wyomingites don't give a rusty rats ass about this topic and aren't going to remember diddly squat about this bill.  It'll soon be a "what?" sort of topic.

The public lands vote, however won't be.

Harriet Hageman. She ran an unsuccessful campaign for Governor against Mark Gordon and then, when Liz Cheney ran into trouble, ran against he rand obtained her seat.

Harriet Hageman is on her first time as Congresswoman, having been able to take advantage of her former friend Liz Cheney's downfall.  Hageman is the only one of Wyoming's Washington delegation who probably comes by her public land vote, which was in favor of the Federal sales bill, honestly.  Daughter of Jim Hageman, who spent 23 years in the Wyoming House of Representatives, Hageman is from a farming family from Southeastern Wyoming where there is very little public land.  Jim Hageman was one of the backers of a proposal to allow for the privatization of wildlife in Wyoming, which almost destroyed the GOP during its go around.

This issue could be a similar one.

Wyomingites should make it.

At the top of this page is a portrait of Francis E. Warren.  Warren had been territorial governor, and then the first governor, of the State of Wyoming.

I don't admire him.

But his ability to read the political winds is admirable.

The state Republican Party was complicit in the invasion as so many of those in it were connected with Republican politics.  Planned at the Cheyenne Club, people kne what was going on.  Republican Governor Amos Barber did and had arranged to activate the National Guard in order to keep it from being deployed to Central Wyoming to stop the invasion.

Barber lost his seat following the event.

The Republicans lost the legislature.

Warren kept his.

There's a lesson there for those currently in office. . . and those who wish to be.

Amos W. Barber.  A dentist by profession, like Barrasso is a surgeon by profession, he disgraced himself with his support of the invaders in the Johnson County War and then thereafter by attempting to retain his office after he was defeated for reelection.  He became Wyoming Secretary of State immediately after that, as that was his prior office at the time of Warren's elevation to the Senate, and then returned to his dental practice.  Oddly, like the current occupant of the Secretary of State's chair, he was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.

Carpetbaggers and Becoming Native To This Place.

 

His life will grow out of the ground like the other lives of the place, and take its place among them. He will be with them - neither ignorant of them, nor indifferent to them, nor against them - and so at last he will grow to be native-born. That is, he must reenter the silence and the darkness, and be born again.

Wendell Berry, A Native Hill.

From the Cowboy State Daily:

Now Other People Are “Pissed” At The “We The People Are Pissed” Billboard On I-80 in Wyoming

Probably the most revealing thing in the article:

The Kahlers moved to Wyoming from Colorado about three years ago. Jeanette Kahler said they moved to Wyoming for the state’s “conservative values.”

In other words, they're carpetbaggers.

Wyoming has always had a very high transient population.  Right from the onset, a lot of the people we associate with the state, actually weren't from here, and more significantly weren't from the region.  Francis E. Warren, for example, the famous early Senator, wasn't.  Joseph M. Carey wasn't.  A person might note that they arrived sufficiently early that they hardly could have been, but this carries on to this very day.  Sen. John Barrasso is a Pennsylvanian.  Secretary of State Chuck Gray is a Californian.

This does matter, as you can't really ever be a native of the Northern Plains or the Plains if you weren't born and raised here.  You might be able to convince yourself, and buy a big hat like Foster Freiss, but you aren't from here and more importantly aren't of here.  If you came from Montana, or Nebraska, or rural Colorado, that's different.  Or if you came in your early years, before you were out of school.  

But earlier arrivals did try.  They appreciated what they found, took the effort to grasp what it was, and sought to become native to this place.

The recent arrivals don't.  They brought their homes and their attitudes with them.

They were fooling themselves that they were "Wyoming" anything.

Or were.

Recently, however, something else has been going on.  Just as the Plains were invaded by European Americans in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Wyoming is enduring it again with an invasion of Southerners, Rust Belt denizens, and Californians, who image they have Wyoming's values while destroying them.  One prominent Freedom Caucuser is really an Illinoisan with values so different from the native ones it's amazing she was elected, but then her district elected Chuck Gray as well, whose only connection with Wyoming is thin.  They do represent, however, the values of recent immigrants.

Whether you like it or not, Wyomingites have not traditionally been hostile to the Federal Government, and we knew we depended upon it.  Indeed, while one Wyoming politician may emphasize a narrative of being a fourth generation Wyomingite, and is, whose agricultural family pulled themselves up from the mule ears on their cowboy boots, and they did work hard, we can't get around the fact that the state was founded by the Federal Government which sent the Army in to kill or corral the original inhabitants and then gave a lot of the land away on a government assistance program.  

Wyoming was formed, in part, by welfare.

The government helped bring in the railroads, helped support agriculture, built the roads, kept soldiers and later airmen and their paychecks at various places, funded the airports, and helped make leasing oil rights cheap so that they could be exploited.

No real Wyomingite hates the government, no matter how much they may pretend they do.

Populist do, as they're ignorant.

Wyoming's cultural ethos was, traditionally, "I don't care what the @#$#$ you do, as long as you leave me alone".  The fables about Matthew Shepherd aside, people didn't really care much about what you did behind closed doors, but expected that you wouldn't try to force acceptance of it at a societal level.  Wyoming was, and remains, for good or ill the least religious state in the United States.  You could always find some devout members of various Protestant faiths, and devout and observant Catholics and Mormons have always been here. But the rise of the Protestant Evangelical churches is wholly new, and come in with Southerners.  When I was growing up, a good friend of mine was a Baptist, the only one I knew, as the church was close to his house (now he's a Lutheran).  I knew one of my friends was Lutheran, and there were some Mormon kids in school.  There was one Jehovah's Witness.  In junior high, one of my friends was sort of kind of Episcopalian, and I knew the son of the Orthodox Priest.  By high school I knew the daughter of the Methodist minister.  But outside of Mormon kids and Catholic kids, the religion of my colleagues was often a mystery.

I'm not saying the unchurched nature of the state was a good thing, but I am saying that by and large there was a dedicated effort to educate children and tolerance was a widely held value.  It was a tolerance, as noted, that required people to keep their deviations from a societal norm to themselves.  People who cheated on spouses, who were homosexuals, or any other number of things could carry on doing it, but not if they were going to demand you accepted it.

And frankly, that was a better way to approach things.

Now, that's being fought over.

The Freedom Caucus group might as well have Sweet Home Alabama as their theme song, and that's not a good thing.

Thursday, April 17, 1924. Japanese reaction.

Political cartoonists were making fun of it, but the Japanese were both measured and enraged by the passage of the Japanese Exclusion Act.  On this day, Japanese businesses in Japan began cancelling orders from the US in reaction.

Regarding the Chicago Tribune cartoon from above, one of the most remarkable things about it is that the cartoonist included five political parties.  One wouldn't do that today.

Wyoming's Senator F. E. Warrren was already urging reconsideration of the act, and urging meetings to consider its impact.

The All-India Yadav Mahasabha was formed to promote equal treatment of and rights for Yadav people, the poorest people in India's caste system.

Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer Pictures were merged by Marcus Loew to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

In baseball:

April 17, 1924: Baby Doll Jacobson hits for the cycle, but Browns lose to White Sox

Last prior edition:

Wednesday, April 16, 1924. Flyer forced down.

1920s, 1924, Aircraft, Alaska, Dawes Plan, First Around The World Flight, Francis Warren, German Weimar Republic, Music, Pop Music

Wednesday, April 16, 1924. Flyer forced down.

Germany accepted the Dawes Plan.

Romania announced that it had settled its debts with Italy.

Senator Warren was reported as having voted against the Japanese Exclusion Act.

And an aircraft went down in the Around the World flight.

Henry (Enrico) Mancini was born.  He enlisted in the Army upon turning age 18 in 1943 and interestingly served in the 28th Air Force Band before being reassigned overseas to the 1306th Engineers Brigade in France.  He was the writer of many famous movie scores.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, April 15, 1924. Opening day.

1920s, 1924, Army, baseball, Calvin Coolidge, cavalry, Equine Transportation, Sports

The Mustachioed Era

It can no longer be ignored.

 

 Wyoming Territorial Governor John A. Campbell.

Something was going on with facial hair in the late 19th and early 20th Century.  And on a massive scale.

In addition to this blog, and my others, I try to catalog Wyoming's history on a daily basis with my Today In Wyoming's History blog.  This being November, I've been running a lot of items on various politicians being elected or appointed, including a lot of them in the 1865 to 1920 time frame. And the evidence is overwhelming.  In order to be anything in that time frame, business wise or politically, you had to have some serious mustache action going on.

 

George A. Baxter.  It probably took him longer to grow that mustache and cookie duster than he served as Territorial Governor.  Note also the starched upright collar, a type of dress style thankfully now more or less gone.

Francis E. Warren, Congressional Medal of Honor recipient from the Civil War and and one of the longest serving Senators in Senate history.  And also father in law to General John J. Pershing.  The Wyoming politician had this serious mustache his entire political career, including the point in time when this photo was taken, after the passing of the Great Mustache Era.

Clarence Clark, long serving but forgotten mustachioed Wyoming Congressman.

James Weaver, a surprisingly successful candidate for President on the Populist ticket, who went right from the Huge Beard Era to the Giant Mustache Era.

Now, it so happens that I happen to have a mustache myself, but nothing like the gigantic mustaches so popular in the this era.  These mustaches are practically their own species of mustache, bearing a faint resemblance to current mustaches the way that giant animals of the Pleistocene bear a relationship to their smaller cousins today.

How did this occur?  It's hard to say. We can tell, of course, that just prior to the Giant Mustache Era there was a Giant Beard Era.

 

Territorial Governor Moonlight, who'd been a Civil War era general before being appointed Territorial Governor of Wyoming.

Enormous beards seem to have come in during the Civil War.  Perhaps everyone was too busy fighting to shave.  

 

 Rutherford B. Hayes, whose mouth has completely disappeared from view due to his beard.

Mustaches, however, started to dominate in the late 19th Century.  No idea why.  And not only mustaches, but the super sized mustache, such as that sported by Theodore Roosevelt.

Zachery Taylor.  Apparently razors were in use when he was President, but combs clear were not.

Theodore Roosevelt, who went to the big mustache when was a rancher.

Roosevelt cultivated a thin, very well groomed mustache, until he went to the Dakotas to ranch. At that time, the busy stache was already in vogue in the West.  I've heard it claimed that the reason for this is that it keeps the lip from sunburning.  Perhaps.  At any rate, bug mustaches remain pretty common amongst ranchers and cowboys today, so perhaps there's something to it.  And perhaps Roosevelt's adoption of the style helped popularize what was already a growing trend at the time.

 Goatee pioneer Governor Carey.  Was Carey a proto-hipster?

And it wasn't just in the United States.  It was a global trend.  South of the border, Mexican revolutionaries Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa both sported some serious mustaches.  Lord Kitchener, the legendary British Field Marshall did as well.

 Even now, Lord Kitchener's command is compelling.  The mustache the reason?

Frankly, based upon the photographic evidence, I doubt a man prior to 1914 or so could expect to be a success without a serious mustache.  Just look at William Jennings Bryan, for example.  Universally regarded as brilliant, he just couldn't get himself elected President. And he didn't amount to a great Secretary of State when appointed by the equally clean shaven Woodrow Wilson, a President who couldn't persuade Congress to approve the Versailles Treaty.  Perhaps it was the lack of a mustache that left the Senate lukewarm about the entire deal.

 Writer Owen Wister.  He didn't go into law like his father had hoped, but the sensitive writer had to be taken seriously in print, with a mustache like that.

Well, this leads us to an obvious conclusion.  In this season of seemingly ongoing political confusion and strife we're left wanting for character in our leaders.  Gen. Petraeaus engages in activity that brings him down.  Even many Republicans and Democrats are less than enthusiastic about their recent candidates, Mitt Romney and Barrack Obama.  Clearly something is missing.  And that something must be the serious mustache that obviously instilled moral fiber and character in an earlier stalwart generation. 

All photographs from our Flickr site.