An Anglo Norwegian commando party raided the Glomfjord power plant in Norway. The raid was a success, although seven commandos were ultimately captured and then executed under Hitler's Commando Order issued in October, which illegally called for the murder of captured commandos.
Ernest Hemingway, Gary Cooper and guide Taylor Williams went on a duck hunting trip to Sun Valley, Idaho,
Idaho's law banning abortions in most instances made it already to their Supreme Court, which refused to block it.
This in marked contrast to Wyoming, where the issue is down at the District Court level and has been blocked by an injunction issued by the District Court judge. The issue will make its way up to the Supreme Court, so the question is why it simply hasn't been certified.
A really radical idea that won't happen, but maybe should.
There have been really horrific floods, as we all know, in Yellowstone National Park. Roads in the northern part of the park may be closed for the rest of the summer. Here's a National Park Service item on it:
Updates
- Aerial assessments conducted Monday, June 13, by Yellowstone National Park show major damage to multiple sections of road between the North Entrance (Gardiner, Montana), Mammoth Hot Springs, Lamar Valley and Cooke City, Montana, near the Northeast Entrance.
- Many sections of road in these areas are completely gone and will require substantial time and effort to reconstruct.
- The National Park Service will make every effort to repair these roads as soon as possible; however, it is probable that road sections in northern Yellowstone will not reopen this season due to the time required for repairs.
- To prevent visitors from being stranded in the park if conditions worsen, the park in coordination with Yellowstone National Park Lodges made the decision to have all visitors move out of overnight accommodations (lodging and campgrounds) and exit the park.
- All entrances to Yellowstone National Park remain temporarily CLOSED while the park waits for flood waters to recede and can conduct evaluations on roads, bridges and wastewater treatment facilities to ensure visitor and employee safety.
- There will be no inbound visitor traffic at any of the five entrances into the park, including visitors with lodging and camping reservations, until conditions improve and park infrastructure is evaluated.
- The park’s southern loop appears to be less impacted than the northern roads and teams will assess damage to determine when opening of the southern loop is feasible. This closure will extend minimally through next weekend (June 19).
- Due to the northern loop being unavailable for visitors, the park is analyzing how many visitors can safely visit the southern loop once it’s safe to reopen. This will likely mean implementation of some type of temporary reservation system to prevent gridlock and reduce impacts on park infrastructure.
- At this time, there are no known injuries nor deaths to have occurred in the park as a result of the unprecedented flooding.
- Effective immediately, Yellowstone’s backcountry is temporarily closed while crews assist campers (five known groups in the northern range) and assess damage to backcountry campsites, trails and bridges.
- The National Park Service, surrounding counties and states of Montana and Wyoming are working with the park’s gateway communities to evaluate flooding impacts and provide immediate support to residents and visitors.
- Water levels are expected to recede today in the afternoon; however, additional flood events are possible through this weekend.
Here's an idea.
Don't rebuild the roads.
For years, there have been complaints about how overcrowded Yellowstone National Park has become. A combination of a tourist economy and high mobility, and frankly the American inability to grasp that the country has become overpopulated, had contributed to that. For years there have been suggestions that something needed to be done about that.
Maybe what is needed is. .. nothing.
Well, nothing now, so to speak.
Yellowstone was the nation's first National Park. It was created at a time when park concepts, quite frankly, were different from they are now. Created in 1872, its establishment was in fact visionary, and it did grasp in part that the nation's frontier was closing, even though the creation of the park came a fully four years prior to the Battle of Little Big Horn. There was, at the time of its creation, a sort of lamentation that the end of the Frontier was in sight, and the nation was going to become one of farms and cities.
Nobody saw cities like they exist now, however, and nobody grasped that the day would come when agricultural land would be the province of the rich, and that homesteading would go from a sort of desperate act to something that people would cite to, in the case of their ancestors, as some sort of basis for moral superiority. Things are much different today than they were then.
Indeed, in some ways, the way the park is viewed is a bit bipolar. To some, particularly those willing to really rough it, Yellowstone is a sort of giant wilderness area. To others, it's a sort of theme park.
The appreciation of the need to preserve wilderness existed then, but what that meant wasn't really understood. The park was very much wilderness at first, and some things associated with wilderness went on within it, and of course still do. Early camping parties travelled there. People fished there, and still do. Hunting was prohibited early on, which had more to do with the 19th Century decline in wildlife due to market hunting than it did anything else. This has preserved a sort of bipolarism in and of itself, as fishing is fish-hunting, just as bird hunting is fowling. There's no reason in fact that Yellowstone should have not been opened back up to hunting some time during the last quarter-century, but it is not as just as the park is wilderness to young adventurers from the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander, and hearty back country folks of all ages, it's also a big public zoo for people from Newark or Taipei.
Since 1872, all sorts of additional parks have been created. Some are on the Yellowstone model, such as Yosemite. Others are historical sites such as Gettysburg or Ft. Laramie. All, or certainly all that I've seen, are of value.
But they don't all have the same value.
Much of Yellowstone's value is in its rugged wilderness. Some cite to the geothermal features of the park, but that's only a small portion of it. And for that reason, much of Yellowstone today would make more sense existing as a Wilderness Area under the Wilderness Act of 1964, the act that helps preserve the west in a very real way, and which western politicians, who often live lives much different than actual westerners, love to hate.
A chance exists here to bring back Yellowstone into that mold, which it was intended in part to be fro the very onset, and which many wish it was, or imagine it to be, today.
Don't rebuilt the roads.
That would in fact mean the northern part of the park would revert to wilderness, truly. And it means that many fewer people would go to the park in general. And it would hurt the tourist communities in the northern areas, and even in the southern areas, as the diminished access to the park would mean that the motorized brigade of American and International tourists wouldn't go there, as they wouldn't want to be too far from their air-conditioned vehicles.
But that's exactly what should be done.
I don't know that this needed to gone to Part VIII, but the last version was long enough that it was hard to edit. So here we are.
April 25, 2022.
Okay, who the heck is running anyway?
All the press is on this race, and it's all concentrated on the Cheney v. Hageman race. Having said that, it's been quiet for a while.
This is no doubt in part because as time moves on, and more and more is known about the January 6, insurrection, the more quiet rank and file Republicans and independents are likely moving towards Cheney. This might be best summed up by op eds from last Sunday's Trib, which we noted here:
April 24, 2022
Fremont County's Sen. Cale Case, a long time Republican conservative, wrote an Op Ed published in the Tribune today going after the State's Central Committee. He urges Republicans who have left the party to get back in and run for office and precinct positions to reclaim the party.
My prediction is that by the end of the day Case will be branded a "Rino".
Harriet Hageman also has an op ed asserting that her role as an attorney with the New Civil Liberties Alliance in a suit opposing Federally mandated cattle ear tags shows she's advocating for Wyoming, as she has this role while, she asserts, Congressman Cheney has been spending time on the January 6 Committee rather than being on the Resources Committee.
Her point that one represents Wyoming more than the other can fairly obviously be debated on an existensial sense.
Put another way, if a long term Republican is asking Republican traditionalist and moderates to "come back", and the primary contender for Cheney's seat is asserting her role with an organization fighting cattle ear tags vs Cheney's role in the January 6 committee as proof of her better concern for Wyoming, it's sort of telling where things are going.
Republicans for the House:
Liz Cheney. The embattled incumbent.
Harrient Hageman. Hageman, former Cheney supporter and Trump opponent who has switched on both in what Cheney has proclaimed as "tragic opportunism".
Robin Belinsky: Belinsky is a businesswoman from Sheridan who is billing herself as Wyoming's Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Anthony Bouchard: Bouchard is a member of the legislature from Goshen County who has been in a lot of local political spats and who is a far right firebrand in the legislature and who is still running in spite of having no hope of getting past the primary.
Bryan Eugene Keller: He's a resident of Laramie County who has registered, but I don't know anything else about him.
Denton Knapp: Knapp is a retired U.S. Army Colonel and a current Brig. Gen. in the California National Guard who is still, surprisingly, running.
Democrats for the House:
Nobody, yet.
Somebody will show up. . . probably.
Independent
Casey Hardison. This is a gadfly campaign as it is based on drug legalization. Indeed, he has a case on appeal to the Wyoming Supreme Court right now for felony marijuana delivery.
It seems like we get these campaigns every election now.
This race was heavily contested in 2018 and was the first Wyoming race to really feature the outright split in the GOP. It's where Hageman first emerged as a candidate, although at that time she wasn't anti-Cheney, but then nobody was. Gordon won, of course, but that somehow left those on the far right embittered.
Nonetheless, this seat is now safe for Gordon.
Republicans for the Governor's Office.
Mark Gordon: Gordon is the incumbent. He's going to get the nomination, and he's going to win the General Election.
Harold Bjork. Who Bjork isn't really clear, but he's started a Facebook and internet campaign for Governor.
Aaron Nab: Nab is a truck driver from Southeastern Wyoming who views Gordon the same way that Hageman supporters view Cheney.
Rex Rammell: Rammell is a perennial and unelectable candidate who ran last time and will again. His views can be characterized as being on the fringe right/libertarian side.
Democrats for the Governor's Office.
Nobody. Democrats really have to find somebody, sacrificial running though it will be, or they'll look completely irrelevant in the state.
Ed Buchanan. He's the incumbent.
Kriti Racines. She's the incumbent.
This race featured very recently the problem that Cale Case just noted.
Rather than submit the really qualified candidates for this office, the state's GOP chose to submit three names for the vacant office that fit into a sort of red meat narrative. Of the three, Schroeder was the best pick, which doesn't mean that he's a name that would have gone anywhere in an open race or that would have been submitted in normal times.
This office is likely up for the picking.
Brian Schroeder. Schroeder is the presumptive nominee.
Megan Degenfelder. She has an education background but who has been working in the petroleum industry, announced for Superintendent of Public Education.
She was once employed as the department's Chief Policy Officer.
April 25, 2022, cont.
Brian Kemp of Georgia has received the NRA's endorsement. That might not be that surprising, but when it's considered that Trump, who the NRA has been a big back of, has endorsed Kemp opponent David Perdue, it is.
Trump has really been gunning for Kemp. The NRA obviously isn't, and it may very well have figured that Perdue is going to lose.
There's been a lot of speculation this election on how much Trump's endorsements will really mean. Here we now have a contest between an NRA endorsement and a Trump one.
April 28, 2022
An anticipated action by the Republican Central Committee to strip Laramie County, the state's most populous county, and one which is opposed to the far right direction of the Central Committee, for rules violations at their county convention has led that country to request that a rules' violation by Sublette, Albany and Crook also be addressed.
This highlights the ongoing civil war inside the state's GOP. A better indicator, although one that is little noted, is that far right GOP legislators now caucus in something called "The Freedom Caucus" rather than with the Republicans, meaning it's actually now operating as two parties in the legislature.
April 29, 2022
Wyoming's voter ID law has been challenged by a lawsuit filed by former Democratic legislature Charles Pelkey.
May 10, 2022
Incumbent State Treasurer Curt Meir has announced for a bid for a second term.
The State GOP reduced Laramie County's delegation to a handful due to a minor rules violation. A counterproposal to sanction other counties for minor rules violations, filed in retaliation, failed. As a result of the strike against Laramie County, its delegation walked out of the ongoing state convention.
Natrona County's delegation has already been reduced for failure to pay dues.
The net result is that the far right wing of the GOP has decapitated its opposition by depriving the most populous counties with the largest delegations from participating in the party.
Long serving Republican Senator Cale Case, who recently wrote an article in the Tribune asking for departing members of the GOP to come back and reclaim their position in the party, faces a censure complaint in his county organization for acting "contrary to the will of the party and the Wyoming Republican Party platform".
These last two items are serious indications that the party is seeking to eliminate all dissent within it, including dissent which, ironically, comes from someone like the highly conservative Case.
May 11, 2022
Fremont County's GOP censured long serving and highly conservative Republican Senator Cale Case.
There is a move to unseat the head of the Laramie County GOP following the loss of most of its delegates.
May 16, 2022
The new legislative district maps are out. Here they are:
Some have changed, so it's best to check. FWIW, in Eastern Natrona County, including areas of Casper, and western Converse County, it's particularly important to check.
May 27 is the final date for candidates to register to run.
May 17, 2022
It seems that getting attacked by the Republican Party has freed Liz Cheney to say things that we normally wouldn't have expected, to wit:
The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.
Only those in bold are actually registered right now. All are Republicans. Gordon will win the primary so all of the other candidats are quixotic to some degree.
Mark Gordon: Gordon is the incumbent. He's going to get the nomination, and he's going to win the General Election.
Brent Bien. Yet another retired career military officer returned and running for office, something we've been seeing a lot of in recent years.
Harold Bjork. Who Bjork isn't really clear, but he's started a Facebook and internet campaign for Governor.
Aaron Nab: Nab is a truck driver from Southeastern Wyoming who views Gordon the same way that Hageman supporters view Cheney.
James Scott Quick: Owner of an oilfield service company in Douglas, which is about all that is obvious about him so far.
Rex Rammell: Rammell is a perennial and unelectable candidate who ran last time and will again. His views can be characterized as being on the fringe right/libertarian side.
Treasurer's Race
Again, only Republicans so far.
Curt Meier. He's the incumbent.
Bill Gallup: I don't know who he is, but he's running.
This race is heating up.
Republican candidates.
Brian Schroeder. Appointed incumbent.
Megan Degenfelder. She has an education background but who has been working in the petroleum industry, announced for Superintendent of Public Education. She was once employed as the department's Chief Policy Officer.
Thomas Kelly: One of the three finalist for this position, and hence one of the controversial ones. He's from the far right and won't go anywhere.
Democratic Candidates
Sergio A. Maldonado, Sr. Long time Fremont County political figure and, I believe, an enrolled member of one of the Wind River tribes.
Something ought to be said about primary races coming in elsewhere, which in my view have been badly analyzed by the press. Frankly, at least up until yesterday, Trump's picks have not done that well. Yes, J. D. Vance one in his primary, but the author with populist roots may have anyway. Up until yesterday Trump endorsements have not, in fact, been the deciding factor in races.
Yesterday they weren't really either, maybe. Trump endorsed the winning candidate in the GOP Governor's race, but last week, when it was obvious he was going to win.
Having said that, the PA Senate race is too close to call, with Mehmet Oz neck and neck with David McCormick. There was some thought that a third candidate would pull ahead.
Why on earth anyone would vote for Dr. Oz simply defies description.
Well, maybe it is explicable. Oz is described as MAGA, McCormick as More MAGA, and the third candidate was Ultra MAGA.
Still, the thought the race would develop with Oz as the least MAGA candidate and a credible contender is a scary thought, as Oz is . . .well OZ.
Idaho's Governor Brad Little easily beat far right Janice McGeachin, who is is lt. governor. McGeachen was Trump endorsed, but you'll probalby see little press about her going down in flames.
CPAC starts its convention this week in Hungary.
May 19, 2022
Yesterday controversial right wing House member Chuck Gray, who had filed to be reelected to his Casper seat, announced for Secretary of State, leaving his Natrona County Republican spot open and, unusually anymore, only a Democratic contender presently running for that office.
Gray is a far right politician who had announced early that he was running against Cheney. That campaign never took off. He obviously aspired to higher office, so now he's taking a run at Secretary of State, but he almost certainly has in the back of his mind, or maybe the forefront, running for higher office yet once the opportunity presents itself, which it likely will after Governor Gordon serves out his next term.
Gray has not been universally popular in the legislature and was the center of a story in which he was insulted in an open mike moment last session. He became involved in the erroneous Arizona ballot problem episode after the last Presidential election.
Donald Trump urged Mehmet Oz to declare victory before the votes were done being counted in the PA Senatorial primary race.
May 20, 2022
WyoFile, the online newspaper, has just published a long article on the head of the Wyoming GOP. It's intersting reading, which will be guaranteed to offend at least some of his followers. The article is here:
After numerous attempts to speak with her to help her understand the grave evil she is perpetrating, the scandal she is causing, and the danger to her own soul she is risking, I have determined that the point has come in which I must make a public declaration that she is not to be admitted to Holy Communion unless and until she publicly repudiate her support for abortion “rights” and confess and receive absolution for her cooperation in this evil in the sacrament of Penance. I have accordingly sent her a Notification to this effect, which I have now made public.
We bring that up as it now seems relatively clear that Trump's endorsement of Hageman may have been due to Lummis.
In an interview with KTWO Radio, the former President stated:
I had some good people. I really did have some good people, but I just felt that [Hageman] was very good and your wonderful senator up there ... who’s a tremendous person by the way, was very strong on her, wanted her very badly
Barasso's office denied that they had any role in picking a contender for the seat. Lummis' office did not, but they darned nearly confirmed obliquely. Lummis has called Hageman "an inspired choice".
Lummis was inspired in the 2020 race to switch her tune on Trump, going from somebody who had stated she was going to hold her nose and vote from Trump to backing the Ted Cruz effort to question the election. Here it appears that whatever occurred in 2020 between her and Cheney may not have been forgotten.
Or at least it could be interpreted that way. Given as the only notable difference between Cheney and Hageman on at least domestic issues (foreign policy issues haven't entered the race in any fashion yet) is support for Trump, Lummis may have well felt that Hageman was an establishment Republican who was willing to go along with Trump for political reasons, which might very well be said of Lummis too, rather than a real radical like Bouchard or Gray, who were contenders at the time.
A Democrat has now filed for the Governor's race, the same being Theresa Livingston. She's apparently from Worland, has run for the State Senate from there, and has no chance whatsoever.
May 26, cont.
Liz Cheney officially filed for reelection, releasing this video at the same time.
Also, the Trump rally released information that a collection of Trump suppoerters and accolytes will appear at the Hageman rally in Casper this Saturday, including Florida Congressman Gaetz and Colorado Congressman Boebert. Frank Eathorne, head of the Wyoming GOP will also speak, although a party head is not really an appropriate speaker in a contest between two Republicans. Reps. Kevin McCarthy of California, Elise Stefanik of New York and Ohio's Jim Jordan will appear in a special video address, making it plain where they stand in regard to the Republican internicene dispute.
Interestingly, Trump's star has been waning as some of his primary choices in other states have been losing.
Last Prior edition:
Well, it's pretty clearly now the case that absolutely everyone who hopes to be in politics or has dreamed of it, and who is to the right of Liz Cheney, is now set to run against her.
I last reported on this on May 2014. Since then, there's been new entrants. Here's the current list, with new additions, and slight changes:
Of note this is just the Republican field. No Democrats have filed yet. Some will.
Liz Cheney. You know who she is, of course. She's the incumbent and probable nominee, in spite of the heavy rightward leaning slate of candidates against her.
Robin Belinsky: Belinsky is a business woman from Sheridan who is billing herself as Wyoming's Marjorie Taylor Greene and therefore predictably endorses the Trump's narrative that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen.
Greene is among the most disturbing of the Congressional Trump backers, so not only does Belinsky make a strong contrast to Cheney, it's one that isn't likely to get very far.
Anthony Bouchard: Bouchard is a member of the legislature from Goshen County who has been in a lot of local political spats and who is a far right firebrand in the legislature. He originally came into the public eye through a firearms organization he's central to. He was also the first well known candidate to announce against Cheney.
Bouchard is firmly in the Trump camp and appeared, with Chuck Gray, at the Matt Gaetz rally against Cheney. Bouchard is well known due to his prior political activities and therefore is likely to make it to at least the primary, which many in this crowded field will not.
Chuck Gray: Gray is a hard right member of the legislature whose first appearance in the Wyoming political scene was an unsuccessful run at the seat he now occupies in the House. He was appointed to that seat upon his predecessor's death and is a Natrona County radio personality.
Gray and Bouchard will be competing for essentially the same demographic and in some ways have analogous political careers after having obtained office. When this occurs, it tends to result in a regional contest, with supporters from various regions supporting their local candidate. That disfavors Gray as candidates from Casper are rarely supported by the rest of the state, although a lot of the state isn't that keen on Cheyenne either. In any event, if Gray and Bouchard stay in through the end of the primary, which they are likely to, they'll soak up a lot of the support base for each other.
Bryan Eugene Keller: He's a resident of Laramie County who has registered but I don't know anything else about him. A Google search didn't turn up much either. It's likely safe to say that Keller, absent something really surprising, will draw very few votes in the race.
Denton Knapp: Knapp is a retired U.S. Army Colonel and a current Brig. Gen. in the California National Guard. He's from Gillette originally and claims to be generally fond of the Cheney and to respect her past role in Congress.
Knapp received a lot of press for his announcement yesterday, but almost all of it boils down to "Retired Army Colonel. . . " which won't get him far. In the last Senate Race one candidate was prominently noted to be a retired Air Force officer and that didn't take him anywhere. Truth be known, while the country remains in a post war hagiographic era regarding veterans, a lot of that has become shallow acknowledgement and his long career in the service isn't likely to get him very far and may even hurt him in nativist Wyoming. Gone for thirty years? Brig Gen of the California National Guard? He'll have to come up with a lot more than that.
Knapp is presently a Californian, living in Orange County, and will have to reestablish residency in Wyoming. This will also hurt him. After a thirty year absence and then a relocation to Wyoming, coming back just to run for Congress won't be well received. In fact, it wasn't well received when Liz Cheney did that, which is why in her first race she took fewer votes than her two combined opponents in the primary.
Bryan Miller: Miller is a retired USAF lieutenant colonel who has twice run for Senate and lost. Now he's trying the House against a candidate who is presumed to be embattled.
Miller is a strong Trump supporter and supports Trump's false claims that the election was stolen.
Miller's association with Trump's false claims makes him somewhat distinct from the other retired military officer running this election, Knapp. There's something disturbing, beyond what is otherwise disturbing, about a military man supporting Trump's attempts to subvert the election. My prediction is that Miller's campaign won't go far although he'll stay in until the end of the primary as he seems to have a very strong desire to be elected to office and there has become a perennial candidate.
Marissa Selvig: Mayor of Pavilion. Selvig announced early and has a website, but has received very little attention thereafter. She's disadvantaged to a degree as Bouchard and Gray have a bigger audience by default.
Selvig interestingly focuses on her dedication to the constitution, which she holds is the "second" most important document in the American system, the first being the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence is a single purpose document with no post declaration legal import, so that's an unusual position. Otherwise, her stated positions are conventional typical local Republican.
Selvig's campaign is unlikely to gain steam anywhere. Her stated positions don't really serve to distinguish her from Cheney, and if she was to distinguish herself by going in the now trendy rightward direction, she'd be indistinguishable from Bouchard and Gray.
Darin Smith: Smith is a businessman and lawyer in Cheyenne, according to the information he's put out. He was the campaign manager for the failed Foster Freiss Gubernatorial run and his views reflect that. Freiss is a backer of his. That fact probably gives Smith a spending advantage over other candidates trying to unseat Cheney. He stands out in that he's less fanatic in his endorsement of the Trump election stolen myth while still endorsing it in a lukewarm fashion.
Smith's stated positions on his campaign site by and large are typical for the Wyoming GOP including the insistence that "we" need to get coal back on the market. The problem with some of those positions is that they fail to acknowledge trends that have now passed a certain jump the shark level. Coal was declining, for example, under Trump. Regarding Trump, Smith's campaign site has the "Take America Back" phrase on the first page, which is really slang for "I believe the election was stolen" to some ears, whether Smith means that or not.
Smith joins Cheney in being a lawyer, which none of the other candidates are, which means that he knows that a lot of the pro Trump rhetoric that's grounded in the Constitution and what not is legally baseless and he should know its factually baseless as well. It'll be interesting to see if he, like Knapp, attempts to nuance his position on the 2020 election.
The thing that uniformly distinguishes all of these candidates from Cheney, except perhaps for Selvig and Keller, the latter of whom is a mystery, is that they're all backing Trump to some degree, with Knapp the less enthusiastic about it. Indeed the irony of this race is that Cheney's stance has brought her a fair amount of support from rank and file Wyomingites while also bringing her the ire of the county parties. Her original weakness was that she wasn't from here, which was a strike against her the first time she ran. In that race, the two main opponents split the vote and she took office. Since then she's risen in Congress and as a result of her stance, has risen in admiration in the eyes of a lot of people who were lukewarm about her before. She's almost certain to win this race.
Other races? Well, there is one that has a competition, sort of, right now, and that's the Governor's Race.
Mark Gordon: Gordon is the incumbent, he'll run again. He hasn't registered yet.
Gordon defeated a slate of hard right candidates in the 2018 election. Some of those candidates were pretty unhappy about the results with Foster Freiss being the most unhappy. Given this we can expect some hard right Republicans to surface and challenge him, although he'll win reelection.
In fact, one such candidate has announced he'll run, but hasn't registered.
Rex Rammell: Rammell is a perennial and unelectable candidate who ran last time and will again. His views can be characterized as being on the fringe right/libertarian side.
May 20, 2021
The State Republican Party reelected its leadership.
The leadership in the past few years has been solidly populist. Frank Eathorne, who was elected to the top position in the party, specifically stated that Trump is the leader of the GOP, even though he occupies no such position formally. He went on to state that the Wyoming Republicans don't "worship" Trump, but he speaks to the state GOP like no leaders since Reagan, a statement that is more than a little ironic as the philosophical connections between Reagan and Trump would be mostly nonexistent. Indeed, the remaining Buckeyite conservatives in the GOP, which Reagan represented, largely detest Trump.
The election of Trump backers to the state's leadership is very significant, but it doesn't actually necessary reflect party registration, which thinly participates in the party itself. Indeed, the Wyoming GOP has been so successful at dominating the state's politics that its become, effectively, the only party, which means that it contains a large majority of people who barely participate in politics other than voting, and who tend to pay attention to the candidates therefore on an individual rather than party basis. As nearly any candidate can claim to be a Republican in Wyoming, most who run, run as Republicans.
May 21, 2021
The much anticipated letter by over 100 Republicans has been issued as A Call for American Renewal. It did not call for a new party, as some speculated, but for reform of the GOP. It issued a manifesto that vague at best.
What's mostly clear is that its the formation of an organization dedicated to taking the GOP back from the Trumpites, which is something, but which right now is a long haul. The organization is holding a national town hall on June 16.
May 21, cont:
In the form of the release of a video, in an effort to get ahead of the story, Anthony Bouchard has gone public with the revelation that when he was 18 he got a 14 year old girl pregnant, and that he married her the following year. The marriage later ended in divorce and apparently the relationship with the child, a boy, is somewhat strained and the boy's life somewhat problematic. The woman's must have been, as she committed suicide some time after their divorce (which I'm not saying is Bouchard's fault in any fashion, I don't know anything about it).
Also of note, Bouchard was living in Florida at the time and therefore is, at least it would seem, not a Wyoming native. This is of interest as Wyomingites tend to be nativist and at least two of the notable hard right Cheney opponents are imports.
FWIW, at least in Wyoming, a sexual relationship between an 18 year old and a 14 year old would be, I believe, felonious. This might not have been the case in Florida, I have no idea.
Whatever the nature of this stuff is, this will be a hurdle for Bouchard to overcome.
Note, this is in the spirit of noting political developments, not casting stones. I'm only commenting on the political race.
May 22, 2021
And the plot thickens, as the phrase goes, on the Anthony Bouchard story.
It's now been revealed that Bouchard, in breaking the story himself, was getting ahead of a news story that was getting ready to run in the British newspaper, The Daily Mail. Bouchard became aware of this when he was called by the Mail for an interview. Bouchard claims this was done by a "company", and as of yesterday it was vaguely sort of hinted Cheney was to blame, but the Cheney campaign completely denies this, and frankly the best evidence is that this is attributable to one of the campaigns running against Bouchard for a short at taking on Cheney, not Cheney.
The Daily Mail is a notoriously trashy British newspaper, something that defines a lot of British newspapers, but that doesn't mean its article is inaccurate. By all appearances, it's spot on the money. And the Mail's interview with a "Republican operative" makes it plain that the operative it interviewed is in the "Trump wing of the party". The "operative" was quoted, and said that details regarding Bouchard have been well known behind the scenes in the GOP and then stated something that's undeniably true and which Bouchard should have been aware of, that being ". . . the higher you climb on the flagpole, the more people see your ass", further indicating that Bouchard's blemishes are going to come out.
Something true of all the candidates.
So what the story now is that Bouchard, age 18, impregnated Frances Lynn Webb, age 14, in Florida, around 1983. This is interesting in part because knowing the actual background of the hard right Bouchard has been hard to do. I usually try to put something about a candidates background in if it can be determined, but for such a well known candidate, anything about Bouchard has been hard to find. In contrast, his nearest rival, Chuck Gray, is easy to find information out about (from South Dakota, went to the Wharton School of Business, once aspired to be a lawyer, moved to Wyoming to work at Gray media which owns media outlets, is a practicing Catholic but doesn't note that in his campaign). Bouchard is mostly known for being the head of Wyoming Gun Owners, a gun owners organization that's more radical, if you will, than the NRA and in which Bouchard has been in very vocal public spats. Otherwise, the only thing easily known about his non political life is that he attended, but apparently didn't graduate, from a Florida university.
In Wyoming at any point in recent decades an 18 year old having sex with a 14 year old would be a felony. According to the Tribune, its impossible to know if that's the case or not in regard to Florida in 1983. The Mail also had trouble determining that but it seemed to lean towards it being a crime. According to the Mail, under a Florida "Romeo and Juliet" law, it was possible for a person convicted of what is commonly called "statutory rape" in circumstances in which the couple were in their teens and within a certain age to have his requirement to register as a sex offender removed, but that still doesn't otherwise remove the conviction itself.
Bouchard was never charged with a crime. In Wyoming there is no statute of limitations on crimes, so if this was a Wyoming event, he could still be charged and in fact Wyoming does levy charges against sexual crimes that occurred decades prior. I don'[t know the situation in Florida.
Bouchard married Webb in 1984 and claims that this was, basically, to do the right thing. He further claims that he resisted pressure to urge Webb to abort the child, and that she resisted it too. That may all be 100% true. It's worth noting that in the early 1980s, and indeed well into the 1990s, it was still the case in the larger American culture that having a child out of wedlock was a scandal and many couples that found themselves in this situation, removing for a moment the statutory rape element of it, married to mitigate the scandal Having said that, it was also fairly common at the time for a girl in this situation to have the baby and give it up for adoption.
Which gets to the next thing. In this region of the country a marriage between a 15 year old, which is what Webb was at the time, and an adult was extremely unusual. Given the years involved, this makes me only slightly older than Bouchard and I can't recall anything of this type happening here of which I'm personally aware. I do recall a married high school student in my graduating class, but the marriage would likely have been when she was 17 or maybe 18. Indeed, in my graduating class there wasn't any of the "getting married right after high school" stories that you hear about now, and have classically heard about. But I don't live in Florida.
Florida is part of the South and I don't know where in Florida this all occurred. I'll note that as even as late as the 1980s it was still the case that in some parts of the South really young girls got married, even without scandal. As I've noted here before, I once knew a man from Louisiana who married his wife when she was 13 and he was 19, without the scandal element attaching at all. They just got married, and were when I knew him some twenty years later.
Having said that, there's something deeply odd, putting it mildly, between these relationships. People change at a blistering pace at that age and generally 18 year old men are not interested in 14 year old girls. Again, back when I was that age we tended to have girlfriends, if we had them, who were just about the same age as we were, or perhaps one year younger. I was 17 when I graduated from high school and looking back the only girl I dated in that period was probably 17 when I briefly dated her, 16 at the absolute youngest, but I don't think so. The only one of my friends who had a steady girlfriend at the time dated one of my cousins who was slightly older than he was, so 18 nd 17.
Having said all of that, right out of high school a friend of mine who must have been 18 at the time dates a really young girl who was 14 or 15. I recall that for two reasons, one of which was that we regarded it as deeply creepy, and the other being that he was a member of a religion where there's pressure to marry really young and she was too. He soon dumped her and soon thereafter was dating a second girl who was also a member of that religion and who was within about a year of his age.
The latter point illustrates something, however. The changes in people in this age range are so swift that normally, in most of American society, 18 year olds don't have much interest in 14 year olds, and 14 year olds are children. As people age, the gap between their years widens, and later on its not unusual at all to see a decade between the ages of a married couple, with the man usually being the older. Once girls hit 18 years old, its not unusual for them to date men several years older. By the time they're 20, that age gap widens. Right about then, a decade's difference isn't unusual and that gap tends to remain for the rest of a person's years. I.e., a 50 year old marrying a 40 year old doesn't' raise eyebrows.
The difference between age 14 and 18 is four years. So is the difference between age 14 and age 10.
To complete the story, the couple's son was born. The marriage lasted only three years. Webb's father was dead from suicide prior to their relationship commencing. She took the same path at age 20. Not much more than that can be said about that, other than that she was troubled in some regard. The son is as well, as he's being held in California on some extremely serious sexual assault charges. Bouchard claims to be "nearly estranged" from the son he raised, and which he always had custody of after the divorce, and that may well be true.
Turning to the overall event, Bouchard should have realized from the onset, as the GOP operative stated, that this was going to come out. But what impact will it have?
Well, it probably ought to have some. It's getting a lot of press and the reaction has been interesting.
Bouchard termed the tragic story a Romeo and Juliet story, and that quote has gotten a lot of press. Bouchard's probable reference here is to the fact that the story is a tragedy and that the couple in the story were teenagers. I don't know the ages, however, of the couple in Shakespeare's play as I've never seen it performed and its one of his works that frankly doesn't interest me. Looking it up, apparently Shakespeare never says the protagonist ages, but there's scholarly speculation that she's 13 and he's somewhat older, which gives me even less incentive to read this than before.
Bouchard's use of the play has, interestingly, received a lot of criticism for improper citation to Shakespeare. I don't want to defend Bouchard, but here he's actually using the play correctly in my view. It's a tragedy, and the story related by Bouchard, no matter what you think of him, is overall really tragic.
Some of the commentary in this area tries to defend the play by noting that, in context, the central characters would be older now. Well. . . I get that, but probably not It probably reflects something else in those cultures and that time. For what its worth, the central characters in War and Peace are introduced at a party in which the female protagonists are also that age, and the male ones in their 20s, which is creepier still. But before we take that too far, its worth noting, as we have before, that marriage ages in earlier times actually aren't higher than they are now, and that child brides were really unusual then as well. Young marriage ages may have been legal, and girls, who weren't in school at the time, perhaps introduced as future marriage candidates fairly young, but actual really young couples and marriage wasn't a thing, for the most part, in western society. Exceptions of course exist.
Beyond that, what's really interesting is that Bouchard's die hard supporters, and he had them before he announced, aren't phased a bit but are actually fired up. They see him as the victim of a conspiracy and his confession as proof of his nobleness. It's the last part that's really baffling.
Donald Trump's supporters have frequently talked of "Trump Derangement Syndrome", a phenomenon they claim features a person having a violent reaction to all things Trump. There's something to that, but it could also be claimed that there's a Derangement Syndrome that operates the other way. I've repeatedly seen populist who have fallen in love with Trump excuse things he did, when they were revealed, even if it meant doubling over backwards on their beliefs. Now we're seeing that with Bouchard.
There's no way to defend an 18 year old screwing a 14 year old. None. Granting the classic "people make mistakes", with this being a particularly icky mistake, this is a really icky story. There's now way to sweep it under the rug, but there are ways to handle it, I guess. Bouchard has tried to do that, apparently (I haven't watched his video), but something he should do is to damp down the "see what a hero he is" reaction. Granted further, if the story is true that he resisted calls for an abortion, and she did too, they really did act heroically in that fashion, but this story is gross any way you look at it. Bouchard probably owes it to the facts to call on people to stop praising him in this area.
He might owe it to everyone to call of his race, but he doesn't seem inclined to. A mistake can disqualify a person for later office, even if they've repented. Sex with a 14 year old and a following tragedy that keeps on may be one of those.
Certainly the same political camp that's praising Bouchard now offered no such mercy to Joe Biden over the story of his son Hunter. Will they apologize now?
Resigning from campaigns doesn't seem to be a Republican thing anymore. So he may very well keep on. But what we now know about this candidate is that he had a real skeleton in his closet that produced an ongoing tragedy, and that he's not a Wyomingite in the way that a lot of Wyomingites qualify that category. Liz Cheney is the daughter of a Nebraskan who is associated with Wyoming, and who has taken a lot of heat, including from me, for think associations with the state. Bouchard moved here at some point and has lived here for some time, but for how long?
Bouchard's campaign claims that Wyoming needs a Congressman as conservative as he is. One more conservative than Cheney is almost impossible to imagine. Wyoming also needs an effective one, which Cheney has been. Bouchard has been loud, for sure, and is in the Legislature, but we're only now getting to know much about him. The Republican operative is right. The higher you climb on the flagpole, the more your ass shows.
May 25, 2021
The Wyoming Senate is considering censuring Anthony Bouchard over the 18/14 pregnancy matter.
Bouchard indicated that he's not dropping out of the race and his campaign coordinator indicates that he's campaign donations have gone up since the story broke.
That's frankly a bit disturbing.
The Tribune article on this matter interviews another member of the legislature that Bouchard has claimed is a supporter of the "deep state". That individual noted that Bouchard's video breaking the news, as we've noted above, isn't really an apology for what occurred. The Tribune article also makes it plain that the Republican "operative" acted to "clean" the field for Cheney opponents, so the suspicion that some have that its people associated with Cheney, as noted above is unwarranted.
Frankly, digging up dirt to discredit an opponent is reprehensible, for the most part. But there's something really unsettling here overall about the Bouchard reaction and that of his supporters. Democratic candidates over the last decade have apologized and resigned for much less than this. Bouchard isn't resigning (that's definitely his call) but dismissing this as merely a mistake, and some of his supporters really rallying to him, basically excuses what most people would regard as an extremely reprehensible act. And when such acts are excused, at some point, they become fully excusable.
This is probably an overall symptom of where the nation's politics are right now. If things like this really mean nothing, particularly in regard to Republicans, we're in a pretty bad place in terms of our overall culture right now, not that this is really a surprise, and our politics are in a really distressing place, not that this is a surprise.
May 25, 2021, cont:
The fight over and with Bouchard has actually grown much worse than the Trib has let on. Indeed, Bouchard ought to be praising the Tribune for its restraint.
One of the conservative Internet Wyoming news organs isn't showing such restraint however, and Bouchard is now in a real public spat with Ogden Driscoll, the majority floor leader in the Senate. For example:
Calling Bouchard a “predator”, Driskill said there is a “huge difference” between a high school student dating a younger peer and a high school dropout who had a job and was “hanging out with 13 and 14-year-olds”.
“That was not acceptable back then,” he said. “In fact, where I’m from you took your life in your own hands if you went out to date junior high girls.”
Yikes.
All this would suggest that the members of the GOP do more details than have hit the press. Somebody has now asked Bouchard if he was in high school when this happened, and at least as of press time, he hadn't responded.
Bouchard has, in turn, accused Driscoll of "lining his pockets", without details, and in a new video calls him "scum".
May 26, 2021
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the gadfly freshman Congressman who is pretty clearly a type of troll, has entered the Wyoming political scene in a bizarre way because of Anthony Bouchard.
Bouchard turns out to be a Greene supporter and he recently returned to his home state of Florida to participate in her "America First" rally . Matt Gaetz, facing potential charges for alleged sex with an underaged women, was also there giving a certain extra added element of irony to the Bouchard story.
A story was circulating the past couple of days that suggested that the Senate was looking a censuring Bouchard over his involvement with a 14 year old when he was 18. This lead to a very public spat with Senator Driskill whom he apparently doesn't get along with, which we noted above, which in turn led to Bouchard comparing himself to Greene and posting:
“The RINO establishment led by Sen. Ogden Driskill wants to strip me of committees. Just like Pelosi did to #MTG BRING IT,”
Cheney supported the Republicans in the House who condemned Greene's recent statements comparing mask wearing to the holocaust. Condemnation, we'd note, on this was very wide. Robin Belinsky, the doomed Wyoming candidate who calls herself Wyoming's Greene, distanced herself from the comments, a pretty good sign of how extreme they are, while still stating that Greene had a right to say them. Bouchard didn't comment on them, but this gave the Tribune the opportunity to note Bouchard's support for Greene, which given his participation in her populist rally in Florida, is obviously pretty extensive.
It turns out that the Senate isn't really considering stripping Bouchard of his committee assignments, but what is the case is just what one of his anti Cheney GOP critics noted, the higher he climbs on the flagpole the more his ass is showing. Driskill was brutal in his criticism of Bouchard, and if what he's hinting is correct it does put another element into this. Bouchard, moreover, who has some real populist support in the GOP but who no doubt wasn't widely followed in wider circles, let alone by the general (Republican) public is shown to really be in the extreme end of things thanks to the press he's now getting, as for example that he's a supporter of Greene. Greene seems to be focused on being a troll and has no committee assignments at all in Congress, meaning that she's reduced to nothing but making outrageous statements for attention.
Rather than taking a repentant tone over things, Bouchard is asserting that the "deep state" is coming after him.
The primary, it should be noted, isn't until next year. All the inside predictions favor Cheney, but obviously that's been no deterrent to a flood of primary candidates. This field will narrow enormously as time goes on but Bouchard, who some populists favored, is being subject to a spotlight that's sufficiently bright that at lease one member of the state Senate doesn't mind openly criticizing him and, moreover, much more is coming to light about him. While its very early, my predictions are that he'll stay in through the primary, but his Wyoming political career has basically ended.
May 28, 2021
Foster Friess, Republican "megadonor" who had relocated to Wyoming and involved himself in the state's politics in recent years, albeit not successfully, died at age 81. While is death of bone marrow cancer takes him from the political scene directly, it will none the less have an impact on the race as he was the campaign manager for Darin Smith, who had been Friess' campaign manager when he ran for Governor.
Friess was not a Wyomingite, but had grown up in Wisconsin and then later lived in Texas, but in very recent years was eligible to run as he'd claimed Jackson Hole as his residence, making him part of the super wealthy set from there. He ran in the 2018 Governor's race unsuccessfully and was somewhat bitter about his defeat in the primary election, coming in second, but a not too distant second. In 2019 he had an exploratory committee working on his chances for another run but terminated it soon thereafter. His 2018 campaign had a real southern feel to it, featuring for example scantily clad young women. Smith's present campaign, absent the young women, somewhat has a feel reflective of Friess. He definitely had an impact on the state's politics, although it can be debated whether it was good or bad, with that probably being reflective of your political views.
While potentially in bad form to note it, Friess' death points out, to some degree, the lack of wisdom in continually electing ancient candidates to office. He did not win, of course, but had he, the Secretary of State in Wyoming would now be the Governor.
Looking back on the 2018 election, Friess competition with Harriet Hageman perhaps was indicative of disturbing trends to come. Both candidates were hard right candidates, but Friess always came across as affable and even jovial, which perhaps won him some votes. It's difficult to know, of course, but the split in the vote in 2018 might mean nothing at all, or it might have been a sign of how far to the right the GOP was drifting. Friess, it should be noted, can't really be regarded as having been a populist.
June 6, 2021
Harold Bjork has started a campaign for the GOP nomination for Governor, although he hasn't yet registered as running.
Who is he? I don't know, but from what little you can tell, this "conservative" candidate is running pretty far to the right of Gordon and seems to be strongly opposed to the now expired mask mandate.
FWIW, all the candidates who run for this position, including the Democratic top contender, are conservative by conventional, or at least pre Trump, definitions. As the current trends have made these terms a bit obsolete, realistically candidates to the far right likely really fit into some other category.
June 14, 2021
Some sort of debate was held for the Congressional election on June 12, which was we might note an exceedingly busy day in Casper where this event was held. On the same day, Mills, the neighboring city, celebrated its 100th anniversary with concerts and a summer festival, the College National Finals Rodeo started, and the LGBQT community held a Pride event at Casper's Durbin Street Station. Suffice it to say, getting any attention in a day that had so many varied things going on would be difficult to say the least.
It appears to have been sponsored by an entity using the American First moniker, now associated with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Liz Cheney was not in attendance and there is no reason that she would be, as this event was specifically a remove Cheney event. Interestingly Anthony Bouchard, the standard bearer for the this line of thought in Wyoming, up until perhaps recently, wasn't there either. A supporter notes that he was elsewhere in the comments, but he's also been somewhat quiet since the events of his early years described above came to press. His nearest rivals were there, however.
A note, I haven't watched this video.
June 19, 2021
Candidate Gray visited the Arizona partisan audit, something some other far right populist have recently done. Liz Cheney has termed the audit an attempt to "subvert" democracy.
Gray, in his campaign materials, has a poster showing the diminutive Wharton School of Business educated Gray in suit and tie wearing boxing gloves taking on "never Trumpers" Cheney and Mitt Romney. Clearly he's angling for the populist vote. At some point, however, serious questions probably ought to be asked if some of these candidates are pitching softballs to what's being hit, or if they truly believe what they're stating, and if so, why.
June 21, 2021
Ammon Bundy, a member of the Bundy family that occupied a Federal wildlife refuge under a claim that they had the right to graze it, which ended up in a standoff with Federal authorities, is running for the Governor of Idaho. Given convictions due to that event its not clear to us how he can actually run.
June 24, 2021
It turns out that the individual who sponsored the America First debate mentioned above is a resident of Florida.
And, in an odd turn of events, both Liz Cheney and Anthony Bouchard have criticized the individual, K. W. Miller, who acted as the forum moderator. The spat with Cheney is an obvious one, but with Bouchard less so. None the less, an entity supporting Miller has attacked Bouchard and accused him of being in league with "George Soros affiliated" leftwing groups and have accused "Bouchard sycophants" of trying to disrupt the debate.
Miller has endorsed Chuck Gray.
Whatever the merits or demerits of Bouchard, it seems fairly clear that he and George Sorors are unlikely to share any connections.
June 26, 2021
The New York Times is reporting that Wyoming's Democratic Party, combined with some Republicans, were part of a targeted effort at, for lack of a better word, infiltration that had ties to the founder of Blackwater and funding from the Wyoming Liberty Group.
The effort appears to have been unsuccessful, and even inept, but it's a shocking example of just how weird politics have become recently.
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