The 2026 Election, 5th Edition: The Saddle Up Edition.

The last edition of this was already sufficiently confusing that a new one is in order.

In this one, when we list the candidates to start with, we're not going to try to comment on each for the most part, as we've already done that in the prior edition.  Having said that, we've made some exceptions.

February 1, 2026.

U.S. Senate

GOP

Harriet Hageman. On our don't vote for list.

Jimmy Skovgard.

U.S. House of Representatives

GOP

Jillian Balow

Chuck Gray.  On our don't vote for list.

Reid Ransner. On our don't vote for list.

David Giralt

Independant

Daniel Workman.

Governor

GOP

Eric Barlow:  At least so far, Barlow seems to be by far the best choice for this office.  I'm seeing some of his signs around.

Brent Bien. On our don't vote for list.

Meggan Degenfelder. On our don't vote for list.  Degenfelder is from the relatively hard right and has been tarred with the brush of a Trump endorsement, which she really doesn't seem fully comfortable with.  She may be aware that it's problematic.

Democratic Party

Gabriel Green:  Green is listed here for the first time.  He's associated with the DINO movement, so while he's running as a Democrat, it's "in name only". Indeed, he founded the state's DINO movement, and he might be the only person to run under that banner.  He's aggressive in this strategy, and is nearly as hard on the Democrats as he is the Republicans.

This is an interesting approach, and I've wondered why somebody hasn't tried it before.  It'll be interesting to see how he uses it.  Many of the state's past Democratic Governors were as conservative as any Republican, in actual terms, so there is something to be exploited here.

Independant

Joseph Kibler.  On our don't vote for list.

Kibler announced as a Republican, but now is running as an independant.

Kibler is a carpetbagger and has the typical carpetbagger "I just moved here from California for all your freedom and now I'm going to run things". 

Go back to California.

*******************

On this race, WyoFile has asked the candidates, asd seems to have caught all of them, on what they think about the Freedom Caucus budgetary  nonsense.

Where Wyoming’s gubernatorial candidates stand on budget cuts: WyoFile asked the five candidates whether they supported some of the more drastic proposals lawmakers will consider in the upcoming legislative session.

Treasurer

GOP

Curt Meier

*******************

In election related news, Chuck Gray turned over the entire state's voter rolls to the Federal Government.

UPDATE: Gray defends voter roll compliance after Wyoming’s League of Women Voters slams transfer

Secretary of State refutes League’s claims, says group has ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’

I'd really question the legality of this, but if the Trump Administration ordered states to run over kittens with bulldozers Gray would gleefully comply.  His actions provoked the criticism of the League of Women Voters which Gray accused of being liberal fanatics, his standard retort to everything.

We're stuck with Gray until the end of his term, assuming that he doesn't get elected to the US House, which we should dearly hope he does not.  If he fails to get the House, we can be assured that he will not run for Secretary of State again, as his only point in running for the office in the first place was to try to position himself for higher office.  He'll wonder off to some other state at that point.

In another developments, Texas continued a nationwide trend of Democrats advancing at the state level in advance of the November election.  In a district that voted heavily from Trump in the last general election, a Democratic candidate defeated a Trump endorsed Republican candidate whom Gov. Abbot had attempted to assist.  This means that the GOP holds the Texas Senate by a mere five seats.  They hold the House by 22 seats.  Some of these state legislatures are going to flip in the next election.

More locally, Harriet Hageman has been taking flak at town halls, with the one in Casper directly confronting here on her claims to be a "Constitutional lawyer", a status itself which I've never really figured out what it was supposed to mean.

February 3, 2026

Donald Trump has called for nationalizing the elections.

Chuck Gray turned Wyoming's voters rolls over to the Federal Government, which is seeking them.  Wyoming apparently was the first to comply with this outrageous request which not all states intend to honor.

This should disqualify Gray from being considered for anything further in Wyoming, right down to Walmart greeter.

Ranser is running piles of images of himself with rifles on his social media, apparently seeking to boost the view that  he's an outdoorsman.  Perhaps he is, but brings up the necessity of asking certain questions.  He's also come out with a statement that public lands should always remain in public hands, which I fully agree with but which is surprising given Ranser's generally slavish loyalty to the extreme far right.  This may be his genuine view, or he may realize that this is what the overwhelming majority of Wyomingites' hold.

There's clearly a current effort to take on the Wyoming Freedom Caucus that's developing.  It's late to the game, but it's definitely on.  A lot of focus has been given to it's funding which is overwhelmingly from out of state organizations with a far right political view.

February 5, 2026

Bo Biteman is considering running for the House.

Wyoming Senate President Bo Biteman 'Looking Seriously' At U.S. House Run

And a candidate has entered the race for Superintendent of Public Instruction:

Tom Kelly Announces Run For Superintendent Of Public Instruction

And in addition to Kelly, a Chad Auer is considering running.

Bar Nunn Mayor Peter Boyer has announced a run against Freedom Caucus member Bill Allemand. Allemand, who is currently facing charges for DUI in Johnson County is a member of the Freedom Caucus who is very much on our Don't Vote For List.  We hope Boyer handily defeat Allemand.

February 7, 2026

The Tribune has an interview of Skovgaard in today's edition.

It's better than most local candidate interviews, but again frustratingly light on background. I don't know why local reporters ask such lightweight questions.

Cowboy State Daily took a look at the race against Bill Allemand.

'No-Nuclear’ State Rep. Bill Allemand Has Challenger For House Seat

February 8, 2026

And it's happened again.  

Democrat Chastity Verret Martinez has won the special election for Louisiana House District 60, defeating Republican challenger Brad Daigle by a wide margin in a district that supported President Donald Trump in 2024.  The district is traditionally Democratic, but like a lot of the traditionally Democratic blue collar or socially conservative regions of the country, it had been going to the GOP recently.

That's over.

February 11, 2026

Trump stated in an interview that the GOP should win in "a landslide" this November.

It's clear the opposite is true, which makes this clear.

Trump intends to steal the 2026 election.

February 18, 2026

And now a Democrat has entered the race for the Senate.

Former Wyoming Rep. James Byrd announces bid for U.S. Senate: Byrd is the first Democrat to enter what's now a three-person race to fill the seat being vacated by Sen. Cynthia Lummis.

James Byrd is a well known Democrat from Cheyenne. And what he's saying in the Wyofile article ought to make him an extremely strong candidate if people are able to get over the fact that he's a Democrat.

So far, we have, in the Senate race, as of now:

U.S. Senate

GOP

Harriet Hageman. On our don't vote for list.

Jimmy Skovgard.

Democratic Party

James Byrd

On the Republican side, I've been following Jimmy Skovgard's blog to try to figure out what he's about and its massively underwhelming.  He posts nearly daily, and his blog reads like; "Bananas, average people, oatmeal, I like pie".

I know that he's trying to be erudite and come across as a third option, but it sound the writing of somebody who really can't write.

In the race for Governor, we have this:

A Degenfelder fundraiser in Denver. . . gee, that's real Wyomingite. . 

Related posts:

Blog Mirror: WYOMING: IT’S TIME TO TAKE OUR GOVERNMENT BACK

Pollice Verso. The 2026 Political Negative Endorsement. The Don't Vote For List.

Addressing politicians in desperate times. A series.

Questions hunters, fishermen, and public lands users need to ask political candidates. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 2.

Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 3.

Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Don't support liars and don't lie. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 4.

Last edition:

The 2026 Election, 4th Edition: The Wasting No Time Edition*

The 2026 Wyoming Legislature, Part 3. The Confederate Legislature Edition.

 

February 9, 2026.

The 2026 Wyoming legislature commences today. 

It'll be the first one controlled by the Confederate Carpetbagger Caucus and therefore the first Wyoming legislature ever that doesn't have a strong element of moderation built into it.  The carpetbaggers of the WFC captured it, backed in no small part by riding the Trump wave, the collapse of the stability of the oil and gas industry (which was never all that stable) and oddly enough a series of warm winters that would have sent a lot of these people back to where they were from.  Instead, they stayed and brought their Dixiecrat disgruntlement into the state.

It seems that people are actually starting to wake up to them in numbers for the first time. They're gutting UW, education, and local governments, as people living in 1930s Alabama don't need none o' that stuff.  They've brought in with them a certain American sort of far right Evangelical view as well, something extremely foreign to the state.  And they're backed by money from out of state, one of which sends around Instagram messages as "Honor Wyoming" but which does anything but.  

Wyomingites who thought the WFC were just conservative have been shocked to find that ain't so.

The thing is, it might be too late.  Or it might not be.  They have the numbers not to do a lot of things, but they don't have the numbers to override vetoes.

This is a budget session, so it should only have 20 working days.  That hasn't stopped legislators from trying to introduce all sorts of things in the past, and it won't this year.  Here' are the prefiled bills:

2026 Wyoming Legislation.*

There are a lot of weird laws in this pack, but I'm just going to start off with this WFC one.  HB 01119 would ban the use of "foreign law" in Wyoming, and under its own terms, accidentally wipe out the complete body of civil law in the state, which specifically was adopted as being English Common Law.

This is an example of the sort of ignorant paranoia on the far right that preserved abortion in Wyoming.

Cont:  

The Governor and Chief Justice spoke.

Senate File 51, allowing for transferable landowner tags, a terrible wildlife privatization concept, died on introduction.

The Confederate Caucus revealed its agenda.

Wyoming Freedom Caucus Unveils 2026 Agenda Outside Wyoming Capitol

Prohibiting infanticide, I'd note, is something I agree with, but it's the far right's fault that it was preserved in Wyoming, which they need to wake up to.

Footnotes:

*In past years I ran the table of bills and much of the text of various bills on the trailing thread for that  year's legislature.  It made for lots of threads that grew really long.

That's hard to slog through, so this year I'm trying something different and putting that stuff on a seperate page.  It's up as a link now, but it'll likely go down as a link, although still be possible to bring up from the threads, when the 2026 Legislature is thankfully over.

February 10, 2025

The Confederate Caucus isn't starting off with much success. Wyoming voters apparently have awakened about them and their representation is taking note.

Six Of Seven Election Reform Bills Killed On Monday, Freedom Caucus Not Happy

School funding bill dies in Wyoming House: The Legislature is constitutionally required to undergo so-called ‘recalibration.’ The bill, drafted in the legislative off season, was unpopular among educators.

Wyoming House Kills Bill To Change How Schools Get Money, Senate Could Save It

The Confederates went to their playbook and blamed "liberal Republicans", which really don't exist in Wyoming's legislature.

Some other stupid bills died as well, including the paranoid geoengineering bill and a constitutional amendment on property tax valuation.

The Business Council seems to have survived.

It's a budget session, we need to keep in mind, so 2/3s of a body is needed to introduce a bill. 

Lawmakers kill dozens of bills on budget session’s first day

More data here:

2026 Wyoming Legislation.*

February 11, 2026

Gordon: It's Refreshing To See So Many Bills Die Because It's A Budget Session, After All

It is, although it does point out the need to end the WFC's chapter in Wyoming politics, as next year may well be different.

Wyoming Freedom Caucus calls foul on committee bill decimation: In a blow to the Republican group’s majority bloc, 21 committee bills failed introduction on Monday in the House— more than twice the number the caucus killed in the last budget session, when it was in the minority.

Funny, the Confederate Caucus was just beginning to make a stumbling effort to counter the growing "you're batshit crazy" movement countering them with "it's democracy", dragging out Cassie Cravens to with some potted meat, when now they're crying foul about how democracy works. 

Amongst the WFC's members, a fellow in the news a lot recently had a bad result.

Allemand-sponsored nuclear waste bill fails Wyoming House introduction

And this:

Wyoming House Kills Bill To Make Counties Pay Costs For Self-Defense Acquittals

And this is interesting:

Guest Column: The Hidden Price of Tax Relief — What Every Wyoming Citizen Should Know

It's interesting in part as Steinmetz, the author, is an "ally" of the WFC, and she's breaking ranks.

I will say the "hidden" aspect of this is complete crap.  Anyone who paid attention, including anyone in the WFC who was following, knew that this would gut local entities like a fish. For the most part, they simply didn't care.

Indeed, the carpetbagger element of this is really strong here.  WFC supporters include a fair amount of carpetbaggers who moved in here from other state, bought property at inflated values, and don't want to be taxed. They really don't care if towns and cities don't have services or if kids aren't educated. They raised their kids elsewhere and, American style, abandoned them somewhere else.  They're happy to sit i in their McMansions in a town with no local services as they're old and they aren't going to use them.

But now legislators are hearing from people who are from here, and who want a police department, a fire department, decent towns, and to educate their kids.  

February 13, 2026

Wyoming lawmakers will investigate checks activist gave to legislators on House floor: The incident in question occurred Monday night when Rebecca Bextel of Jackson handed out campaign donation checks. The House voted unanimously in support of the investigation.

 Change to Wyoming law to recognize legality of corner crossing clears early hurdles: Although it’s been smooth sailing so far, the measure still has “98 yards to go” in the legislative process and faces opposition from influential parties.

 Bill to put abortion-related question to voters fails Senate introduction: The measure would have asked voters to amend the Wyoming Constitution so the Legislature can define health care. It comes on the heels of a Wyoming Supreme Court decision striking down state abortion bans.

On the last item, the ghost of the constitutional amendment regarding "health care" now appears in the legislature, which provided the reason that some Republicans voted against the bill. 

February 14, 2026, Valentine's Day.

Wyoming Freedom Caucus in Cheyenne.

Well, the first week of the legislature is over and it proved to be an interesting, and surprising, one.

The Confederate Carpetbagger Caucus went into the session with its orders from out of state interests and extreme right wing agenda and ran right into, well, Wyomingites.

It also ran into its own ignorance.

Full of piss and vinegar, the collection of carpetbaggers and carpetbagger drones simply figured it had the numbers and it was going to return the state to November 11, 1620.  It forgot, apparently, that in a budget session it needs a supermajority to introduce legislation, and while it may have the majority, it doesn't have that.

It was also taken off guard by a sudden rise in attention to it by regular people from the state, which now that they are more informed, are starting to organize against it.  They haven't been able to get back on their feet from that, with perhaps the most pathetic response being Cassie Craven's "but don't you still love us?".

We never did.

All this is bad news for the WFC as it may have shot its bolt.  Candidates are starting to come out to take them on, as evidenced by the Mayor of Bar Nunn coming out against Freedom Caucuser Bill Allemand.

And the exposing of their money supply hasn't been a good thing for any of them, even though those who were watching them carefully knew about it all along.  Likewise, that they were fed canned legislation was well known, but it was not known that they were basically fed instructions on what to do.

Amongst those whom its not good news for is Chuck Gray, who turned the state's voters roles over to his beloved, Donald Trump, because Donny asked for them.  Gray adores Trump like a teenage bride adores her husband and is making that the gist of his campaign, Trump Love, but he's responsible for a bunch of WFC voting bills that went down in flames.  He's running for the House against Jillian Balow, Reid Ransner and David Giralt.  I suspect that this sort of thing really starts to boost Balow.  Gray is really detested by a lot of people to start with, and Giralt to unknown.  Rasner is a gadfly.  Gray's term as Secretary of State end in January, 2027 and if he doesn't secure the House his political career in the state is at an end.

Amongst the bill casualties so far has been the bill on abortion.  This also signifies, fwie, a return of Wyoming politics to the middle.  I'm opposed to abortion so I would like to have seen that bill advance, but it's the case that for eons Wyoming Republicans opposed abortion more or less, but wouldn't act to make it illegal. The first time that the legislature ever passed anything doing that was right after Dodds, and that's the statute, or statutes, that died in court.  It was killed there by an amendment to the constitution that was designed to protect individual health care decisions from the fantasy of AHCA death panes, and it became a death panel itself.  So effectively the state returns to the status quo ante on abortion, thanks to the GOP in the first place.

So we'll see what next week brings.

February 15, 2026

And, finishing up this past week:

Laramie County sheriff launches criminal investigation into Wyoming Legislature check controversy: The inquiry will examine whether campaign donation checks distributed to lawmakers amount to bribery.

Sheriff Investigating Check Passing Scandal In Wyoming Legislature

I suppose it shouldn't surprise anyone too much to learn that Bextel, the check giver, is from Alabama, although she lived in Guatemala as a Protestant missionary, that part of the world having Protestant missions that seek to convert people who are already Christians.  She's been in Wyoming about twenty years.

It'll probably turn out not to be criminal, but the act of giving out checks on the floor was monumentally dumb, as was the act of receiving them that way.

Cheyenne Roundup 2026: Episode 2 | Checkgate, dead bills and the start of the session: Bills are flying and dying in the Wyoming Legislature’s budget session. And lawmakers haven’t even touched the budget itself yet.

Related threads:

In Full Debate On University of Wyoming Budget Cuts, Lawmakers Ask If It's Retaliation The Wyoming House and Senate debated a $40 million cut to the University of Wyoming on Thursday, with the budget committee co-chair John Bear confirming the number was meant to "get their attention." He said legislative directives on DEI were ignored.

Guest Column: Proud Of Wyoming And UW – And If You Take Time To Learn, I Bet You Will Be Too Guest columnist Marilyn Kite writes, "Most Wyoming citizens are proud of our state. But today, we hear attacks. Where all these attacks are coming from is a puzzle, but they are likely driven by out of state forces that know little about our history and public assets."

Tom Lubnau: Puppets, Phones, and Power — Inside Wyoming’s Shadow Legislature Columnist Tom Lubnau writes, "We know money changed hands – on the house floor. And during floor debate, you can routinely watch legislators read directly from their phones. We do not know who is scripting the debate."

Donor: Two checks given to Bextel were intended for pair of Wyoming Legislature’s most powerful lawmakers

Last edition:

The 2026 Wyoming Legislature, Part 2. Pre Legislative Committee Edition.

Labels: 2020s, 2025, 2026 Wyoming Legislature, Economics, Education, Ignorance, Mark Gordon, National Public Radio, Radio, Sports, Taxes, Tom Lubnau, Wyoming Freedom Caucus

Painted Bricks: Dissing the ConRoy Building, and being inaccurate about it.

Painted Bricks: Dissing the ConRoy Building, and being inaccurate ...: What the crap? The original intent of this blog was simply to record the ghost signs of Casper, Wyoming.  It did that pretty rapidly, and th...

Dissing the ConRoy Building, and being inaccurate about it.

What the crap?

The original intent of this blog was simply to record the ghost signs of Casper, Wyoming.  It did that pretty rapidly, and then it went on to catch them elsewhere and expand out a bit from there. Basically, we like historic buildings here.

One of the things we've noted, however, in doing this is that fables grow up around buildings.  Sometimes it's really hard to figure out their origin.

I've been familiar with this building for over fifty years.  It's one of three sister buildings in Casper that all were designed by the Casper architectural firm of Casper firm of Garbutt and Weidner, who at least based on these three buildings, were heavily into the same appearance for their "skyscrapers" at the time. This is the "ConRoy Building", the Consolidated Royalty Building.  We noted its centennial several years, well nearly a decade, ago, elsewhere:

Happy Centenary! Things or rather places, that are 100 years old.

I've been meaning to post this forever but just wasn't in any big hurry to do it. Then it suddenly dawned on me that if I didn't do it soon, these places would be 101 years old, not 100. So here goes.

A thread dedicated to a few local places and establishments that made it to year 100 in 2017.

The ConRoy Building

 

 The ConRoy (Consolidated Royalty Building).  The building's appearance has changed somewhat, but you have to really observe it to notice the changes.  The windows were replaced from the original style about fifteen years ago, giving it more modern and more efficient windows.  The elevator shaft, not visible here, is an enlarged one to accommodate a larger elevator than the one put in when it was built in 1917.  The awning restores the building to an original appearance in those regards which it lacked for awhile, but at street level the building has a glass or rock masonry treatment which clearly departs from the original.

One that I've mentioned here before is the ConRoy, or Consolidated Royalty Building.  Built in 1917 as the Oil Exchange Building, the building was one of Casper's first "sky scrapers",  if in fact not the absolute first.  Ground was broken in the summer of 1917 and the building was completed some time in August 1917. The Consolidated Royalty Oil Company, a company in which former Governor B. B. Brooks had a major interest, occupied the fifth floor of the structure.

 

The ConRoy Building occasionally gets some interesting avian visitors.

Unlike its two sister buildings, the Wyoming National Bank Building (now apartments) and  the Townsend Hotel (now the Townsend Justice Center) designed by the same architect, the building has never been vacant and remains in use today.  At least one of the current tenants descends from a firm that was a very early tenant, and perhaps a 1917 tenant.

 

The building has been updated over time, and its appearance is slightly changed due to the addition of an odd decorative rock face in the 1950s, but it by and large looks much like it did in 1917 from the outside.  It's one of the few old downtown Casper buildings that hasn't undergone major appearance changes over the years.

May 2, 1917 edition of the Casper Daily Tribune announcing vacancies in the yet to be built Oil Exchange Building.  The remainder of this issue was full of war news, and indeed it was partially the oil boom caused by the war that brought the building about.

More recently it figured here, as the owners of the building commissioned some murals on the fire escape doors:

Backdoor art.

So how on earth does it end up in a political campaign?

Frankly, I have no idea, but the entire idea of it being built by "a Democrat" is a real wild one.  The principal figure in the building being built was B. B. Brooks, who served as a Republican Governor for Wyoming, as we noted above.  Brooks had his offices on the fifth floor of the building.

B. B. Brooks, Republican.  He would not be amused.

This building has been continually occupied since 1917, and some of the businesses currently in it have been in the building since the 1940s although as earlier noted, one of them might have been in the building as early as 1917. Of the other two sisters, one is now the Townsend Justice Center which houses Natrona County's courts, and Wyo. Bank Bldg is an apartment building with a cafe on the street level.

All three buildings originally had, fwiw, massive period style lobbies which are sadly now all gone although you can catch glimpses of them, particularly in the Wyo. National Bank Bldg. The ConRoy once had a cigar store and magazine stand on the street level, after the lobby was taken out, and into the 50s, which explains the current appearance of its very small lobby today.  Basically, the ConRoy and the Wyoming National Bank building were victims of "modernization" concepts in architecture from the 1950s and 1960s, at which time those buildings were forty years old and less, and nobody thought of them being particularly historic.  The Townsend probably retained its architecture the longest, as it was a hotel originally, and up into the 70s when it closed. By that time it was pretty much a flop house with a popular cafe.  I recall it as my father had lunch there until the cafe closed, which many other downtown businessmen and professionals did as well.  It made for an odd place to go as a kid, which I sometimes did with my father, as the cafe was really popular, as was the adjoined Petroleum Club, but in the lobby the working girls were recovering from their prior night.

The ConRoy, on the other hand, has hummed on much like it has since 1917, although some of the notable early tenants, like the Casper Star Tribune, have moved on.  The building was recently featured in the Oil City News when some of the equipment for a new elevator, replacing the one from the 1950s that replaced the one from 1917, was lifted by crane into the structure.

Anyhow, this is baffling.  Of course, I only know of this as somebody else whose familiar with the building pointed it out to me and was horribly amused by it.  I don't know that I am, as I like things to be accurate.

But why would a person do this, and how would such a wild rumor get started?

The Agrarian's Lament: What have you done for me lately? Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 5.

The Agrarian's Lament: What have you done for me lately? Addressing polit...: An agricultural country which consumes its own food is a finer thing than an industrial country, which at best can only consume its own smok...

What have you done for me lately? Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 5.

An agricultural country which consumes its own food is a finer thing than an industrial country, which at best can only consume its own smoke.

Chesterton.

A long time ago I started a post on one of our companion blogs about agriculturalist and the Republican Party.  I can't find it now, maybe I published it, or maybe I didn't.

As I"m in both worlds, the urban and the agricultural, I get exposed to the political views of both camps.  The Trump administration has made this a really interesting, and horrifying, experience.  By and large professionals detest Donald Trump and regard him as a charleton  Farmers and ranchers are, however, amongst his most loyal base, even though there's no real reason for them to be such.  Indeed, with the damage that Trump is doing to agriculture this will be a real test of whether farmers and ranchers simply reflexively vote Republican or stop doing son and wake up.

The Democratic Party, not the GOP, saved family farmers and ranchers in this country when the forces of the unabated Homestead ACt and the Great Depression were going to destroy them.  They've seemingly resented being saved from those forces, however, as an impingement on their freedoms, and they've bristled at every government act since that time.  Farmers and ranchers would rather sink in a cesspool of their own making than be told how to properly build one, basically.

We here, of course, aren't a pure agricultural blog.  This is an Agrarian blog, and that's different.  We are, quite frankly, much more radical.

"The land belongs to those who work it." 

Zapata.

Agrarianism is an ethical perspective that privileges an agriculturally oriented political economy. At its most concise, agrarianism is “the idea that agriculture and those whose occupation involves agriculture are especially important and valuable elements of society

Bradley M. Jones, American Agrarianism.

Still, we can't help but notice that American agriculturalist, more than any other class of businessmen, have voted to screw themselves by voting for Donald Trump. They voted for tariff wars that leave their products marooned here in the US while foreign competitors take advantage of that fact.  They've voted for a guy who thinks global warming is a fib (which many of them do as well) in spite of the plain evidence before their eyes, and the fact that this will destroy the livelihoods of the younger ones.  They've voted to force economic conditions that will force them off the lands and their lands into the hands of the wealthy.

Indeed, on that last item, they've voted for people who share nothing in common with them whatsoever and would just as soon see them out of business, or simply don't care what happens to them.

They've voted, frankly, stupidly.

Well, nothing cures stupidly more than a giant dope slap from life, and they're getting one right now.  The question is whether they'll vote in 2026 and 2028 to be bent over, or start to ask some questions.

We're going to post those questions here.

1.  What connection does the candidate have with agriculture?

They might not have any and still be a good candidate, but if they're running around in a plaid shirt pretending to be a 19th Century man of the soil, they should be dropped.

They should also be dropped if they're like Scott Bessent, who pretends to be a soybean farmer when he's actually a major league investor.  Indeed, big money is the enemy of agriculture and always has been.  

I'd also note that refugees from agriculture should be suspect.  The law is full of them, people who were sent off to law school by their farmer and rancher parents who believed, and in their heart of hearts still believe, that lawyers, doctors and dentist, indeed everyone in town, don't really work.  All of these refugees live sad lives, but some of them spend time in their sad lives on political crusades that are sort of a cry out to their parents "please love me".

I know that sounds radical, but it's true.

2. What will they do to keep agricultural lands in family hands, and out of absentee landlord hands?

And the answer better not be a "well I'm concerned about that". The answer needs to be real.

From an agrarian prospective, no solution that isn't a massive trend reversing one makes for a satisfactory answer to this question. Ranches being bought up by the extremely wealthy are destroying the ability of regular people to even dare to hope to be in agriculture.  This can be reversed, and it should be, but simply being "concerned" won't do it.

3.  What is your view on public lands?

If the answer involves transferring them out of public hand, it indicates a love of money that's ultimately always destructive to agriculture in the end.

Indeed, in agricultural camps there remains an unabated lust for the public lands even though transferring them into private hands, whether directly or as a brief stop over in state hands, would utterly destroy nearly ever farm and ranch in local and family ownership . The change in value of the operations would be unsustainable, and things would be sold rapidly.

Public lands need to stay in public hands.

4. How do you make your money?

People think nothing of asking farmers "how many acres do you have" or ranchers "how many cattle do you have", both of which is the same as asking "how much money do you have".  

Knowing how politicians make their money is a critical thing to know.  No farmer or rancher, for example, has anything in common with how the Trump family makes money, and there's no reason to suppose that they view land as anything other than to be forced into developers hands and sold.

5. What is your position on global warming?

If its any variety of "global warming is a fib", they don't deserve a vote.

6.  What is your position on a land ethnic?

If they don't know what that means, they don't deserve a vote.

7.  What's on your dinner table, and who prepares it?

That may sound really odd, and we don't mean for it to be a judgment on what people eat. . . sort of.  But all agriculturalist are producing food for the table. . . for the most part, if we ignore crops like cotton, or other agricultural derived textiles, of which there are a bunch, and if we ignore products like ethanol.

Anyhow, I'll be frank.  If a guy is touring cattle country and gives an uneasy chuckle and says, "well, I don't eat much meat anymore" do you suppose he really cares about ranching?  If you do, you need your head checked.

You probably really need it checked if the candidate doesn't every grill their own steak but has some sort of professional prepare their dinner every night.  That would mean that they really have very little chance of grasping 

8.  What's your understanding of local agriculture?

That's a pretty broad question, but I'm defining agriculture very broadly here.  Indeed, what I mean is the candidates understanding of the local use of nature, to include farming and ranching, but to also include hunting, fishing and commercial fishing.

Indeed, on the latter, only the commercial fishing industry seems to have politicians that really truly care what happens to them. How that happened isn't clear, but it does seem to be the case.

Otherwise, what most politicians seem to think is that farmers wear plaid flannel shirts.  I see lots of them wondering around in photographs looking at corrals, or oil platforms, but I never see one actually do any work. . . of pretty much any kind.  That is, I don't expect to see Chuck Gray flaking a calf, for example.

Last and prior editions:

Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Don't support liars and don't lie. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 4.

Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 3.

Questions hunters, fishermen, and public lands users need to ask political candidates. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 2.

Labels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Commentary, Democratic Party, Politics, Questions for politicians, Republican Party, Trailing threadLabels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Camping, Climate Change, fishing, hunting, Politics, Public Lands, Questions for politicians, Right Wing Politics and Politicians, The Land Ethic, This is why we can't have nice things

Addressing politicians in desperate times. A series.

Labels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Commentary, Democratic Party, Politics, Questions for politicians, Republican Party, Trailing thread