The 2024 Election in Wyoming. Will anyone rise to the challenge, and is there even a point?

Lex Anteinternet: The 2024 Election, Part XI. The Winter of Disconte...: January 4, 2023

Harriet Hageman announced her bid to be reelected with the release of a video:

Harriet Hageman is running for reelection.  This is not a surprise.

John Barrasso is as well. This is also not a surprise.

The difference between the two races, so far, is that Barrasso has drawn a challenger. . . from his own party, in the primary.

Hageman is unlikely to.

Neither candidate, so far, faces a Democrat.

Just the other day, December 28, I had an entry that mentioned Wyoming's Congressman, Teno Roncalio.  On that day, he was one of the overwhelming majority of House of Representatives members who voted for the Endangered Species Act, one of the greatest pieces of legislation in recent history and one of the real achievements of the forever tainted Nixon Administration.

Roncalio, a lawyer from Rock Springs, and a veteran of D-Day, was a Democrat.  

Nearly everyone in Rock Springs was.

At that time, one of our two Senators, Gale McGee, a former University of Wyoming professor, was also a Democrat.

Now, to use the term "Democrat", even in street speech, is slanderous in the state.  It's like calling somebody a wife beater or something.  Republicans vying to be as extreme as possible accuse their fellow Republicans of being Democrats (even though many of those who do that routinely are imports from the South or elsewhere and are really, even if they don't know it, Dixiecrats or Rust Belt Democrats).

Gale McGee was our Senator until 1977, when he was replaced by Malcolm Wallop, a very conservative Wyomingite of English peerage, in a race in which it appeared that McGee didn't really have any interest in running.  McGee was our last Democratic Senator, and he simply gave the race to Wallop.  

Roncalio served in the House in 1978.  He didn't run for reelection.  He was replaced by Dick Cheney in a race that pitted Cheney, fresh out of the Ford Administration, against Cheyenne attorney Bill Bagley.  Cheney won with about 60% of the vote against a lawyer who is now forgotten, but who held on in practice too long.  Interestingly, showing part of how we got to where we are now, one of his county chairs was a then Democrat who would later be in the legislature as a very conservative Republican.  

That's telling, as a whole herd of Democrats who were later conservative Republicans share that history in the state.

No Democrat has gone to Washington from Wyoming since 1978, but the party remained significant and a power well after that.  It twice took the Governor's office and twice reelected Democratic Governors, with the last Democrat leaving Cheyenne in that role as recently as 2011. Either one of the Democratic Governor's could have had a House, and maybe a Senate, seat if they had wanted one.  The Democrats routinely took the Secretary of State's office for much of the 20th Century, with the last Democratic Secretary of State, Kathy Karpan, leaving office in 1995.  Karpan went on to become the director of the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement in 1997, being the first woman to hold that position, and being unanimously confirmed back when Congress still did its job.  Like Governors Sullivan and Freudenthal, Karpan could have stepped into the House or perhaps the Senate if she had wanted to.  

Freudenthal remains a significant figure in Wyoming politics.

The last really significant Wyomingite to make a serious run for office with a serious chance of success was Mary Thorne, a lawyer who ran against Governor Gordon in 2018.  There have been other real Democrats who have run for office, with Sergio Maldonado for State Superintendent of Education coming to mind, but since the mid 1990s It's become increasingly difficult and many of the Sullivan/Freudenthal Democrats have dropped out of the party, in part because of the Democratic leftward (and anti-democratic) drift, and in part because at some point being a Democrat was pointless and the Republican primary race became the real election.

2022 really demonstrated the direction that the cancer of Donald Trump had brought about.  

In 2022 the Republican Primary became a referendum on Donald Trump, with the Wyoming electorate, influenced by the import of Rust Belt and Dixie immigrants into the state, basically giving the insurrectionist a big wet kiss on the mouth by tossing out Liz Cheney.  The whole thing was more than a little ironic, as Cheney, who had risen to her office late in her occupation of it, really was never a Wyomingite in the first place, but the party dearly loved her, in no small part because it had embraced Dick Cheney, after having elected him cynically originally.  The Cheney's aren't Wyomingites and Dick Cheney had only won as the voters in 1978 were given a choice between somebody who seemed to have influence in Washington, Cheney had been Ford's Chief of Staff, and a Cheyenne lawyer who had, if I recall correctly, held off a challenge from a younger Casper lawyer who later became a Federal judge.  Wyomingites of that era were pretty practical and cynical, and they never developed a love for their politicians like occured later. Cheney seemed to do a good job, so he held office.  Liz Cheney won as the primary split the vote three ways.  Chance are high had that not occured, Tim Stubson would have been our Congressman, and have gone on to suffer the same fate as Cheney by not searing allegiance to the Dear Leader for life.

Hageman was a Cheney acolyte but was good at reading the wind and beat out her former friend.  Her competition was Lynette Grey Bull, a really interesting Democrat who had run twice and who drew 24.4% of the vote in spite of the times, in spite of being a Democrat, and in spite of being a Native American.

Who will run now.

Since 2020 the State's GOP has gone into a civil war, with the old party at war with the "Freedom Caucus", one of whose (California migrant) members wrote an op ed in the Tribune which clearly indicates their intent to wage a second Stalingrad in the 2022 Legislature.  Two county organizations, Natrona and Laramie Counties, are in revolt against the GOP Central Committee who has fully adopted the Meine Ehre heißt Treue ethos.  Hageman hasn't been as noisy as might be expected, in part because she probably correctly read the tea leaves over the trouble that Trump ass-kisser Kevin McCarthy was in for not kissing even more private parts before he fell to a quiet and scary Johnson.  The House of Representatives had done nothing this term, and is on the edge of losing power due to attrition.  Pundits claim that the GOP will gain House seats in 2022, but they claimed that about 2020 as well.  The stench of Trump kept that from happening.

And so we have a non-functioning democracy, locally.

No Democrat can win any office in 2022.  The House and one Senate seat will be up, and both of the Republicans contending for those positions will pledge their true honor to the Leader without question.  Some in the race to come this year will go further with a full-blown Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer appeal.  The Senate primary will see a GOP opportunistic upstart attempting to claim that John Barrasso is a "RINO", which really means that he's not a Dixiecrat or Rust Belt Democrat.  While I've discounted that campaign, I don't really put it past it that it has a chance of success.

Will any Democrats run?

I sure hope so.  And I mean a real Democrat, not the Left Wing Flavor Of  The Month Democrats that the party has been fielding in some races locally.  Putting up somebody who self declares to be a homosexual polyamorus trangendered drag queen Pacific Islander is not going to win any hearts at all, and really isn't believeable (the same people would decarel themselves to be cocker spaniels if that was edgy, or Orthodox starets if that was edgy).  Soembody like Sullivan, Fruendenthal, Karpen, Thorne, or, once again, Grey Bull.

But who can be asked to be a sacrificial lamb.

Well, somebody had to be. 

The state's honor, and the preservation of democracy, require it.  With no choices now, we get further down the road to there being no choices, ever.  

The Democrats are faced with that burden.  What little there is the way of third parties here do as well.  

A Mid Week At Work Conversation. Why you became what you became, and where you became it.

I had a conversation just yesterday with a Middle American.  One of those people, that is, who is from the Midwest and from the middle class.  One of those sorts of folks with a Rust Belt background who has lived the real American life, with blue collar grandparents, lower middle class parents, and who has done better than their parents.

Not like people who were born and raised in Wyoming or one of the neighboring states.

It was really interesting.

And it occurs to me that if you are from here, and we do have our own distinct culture, the way you look at topics like careers are fundamentally different than other Americans, or at least Americans from other places.  We're practically not Americans in this regard.  Or at least those who stay are not.

And that tends to get lost on people as we're a minority, most of the time, in our own state.  

I've noted it here before, but I was once flying into our local airport and two oil industry employees were in the seat behind me. They were both from somewhere else. One had been stationed in Casper for awhile, the other was arriving for the first time.  The new arrival asked the old one about the people in the town, and the insightful other replied

What you have to realize is that there are two groups of people here.  People who came in to work in the boom and those who are from here.

The new arrival then commented that the natives must dislike the new arrivals. That fellow, however, replied:

No, they just know that you are leaving.

And we do.

I've lived through at least three busts, one of which altered my original post high school career plan of becoming a geologist.  If you look at it, oil spiked during World War One, the price declined after the war in the 1920s and collapsed during the Great Depression, spiked again during World War Two, declined following the war but then turned rocky in the 50s and 60s, spiked in the early 70s, collapsed in the 80s, rose again thereafter, and then collapsed again in recent times.  Being born in 63, I experienced the 60s, but don't recall, them, experienced the 70s, which I do, and then the ups and downs since then.

Indeed, all over town there are accidental monuments to booms prior.  Three downtown buildings are named for oil companies, none of which still use the names they did back then and none of which is still in town.  A golf course on the edge of town called "Three Crowns" was named for the three refineries that once were here, one of whose grounds is occupied by the golf course.  In certain areas of down when they dig a foundation, they hit oil, not due to a natural deposit, but due to leaks long gone by from those facilities.  Across town one still operates.

If you are from here, and have lived through it, you come to expect the economy to be this way.  You worry about the future but you don't imagine you can control it.

Middle Americans do.

I hadn't really realized this directly, but I should have.  

My friend, noted above, hasn't lived in Wyoming except during good times and the recent collapse.  He's been panicked and has related that to me more than once.  He can't believe that things could have collapsed, and I can't grasp how a person couldn't.  Then, in our conversation, it became very plain.

He's a really nice guy with a very nice family, but he views careers in the Middle American sense. That is, you study to find a "good job", by which that means one that pays well.  You go where that job leads you, for the high pay.  It's all about the pay. The pay determines what you become, what you do, and where you live.

It doesn't for the long term Wyomingites.

Oh sure, pay always matters. Wyomingites are just as wanting to get rich as anyone else,. . . or not.  

As there are limits, and the limits are the state itself.

Wyomingites, those born here, or those here for an extremely long time and probably from a neighboring state, have an existential connection with the state that's hard to grasp.  We are it, and it is us.  

This is completely different from the "oh, gosh, it's so pretty I'm glad I came here" reaction some newcomers have.  Lots of the state isn't that pretty.  Some Wyoming towns are far from pretty.  No, it's something definitely different.

And it's also different from the belief that an industry must keep on keeping on because it must.  We see that with lots of people who moved in when the times were good.  If things collapse, it's not because Saudi Oil Sheiks can fill up swimming pools with crude oil if they want to, or if Russian oligarchs want to depress the market because they can, or because coal fired power plants are switching to natural gas.  It has to be somebody's fault, probably the governments, and probably the Democrats.

Not too many actual Wyomingites feel that way, even if we worked in those industries or wanted to.  We just shrug our shoulders and say; "well, we knew the boom would end", because we did.

Of course, as will be pointed out, we never do anything about that.  That's our great planning failure.  But frankly, it's hard to when the town's filled up with newcomers you know are temporary, and they don't want to change anything as they like the low taxes, etc., and this will just go on forever, because for them, it already has.

Which takes me back to my friend.  He's upset as the boom appears to be over and that means it might impact his take home, which in turn means that he might have to leave, or so he imagines.

Why? Well, that's what you do as an American, right?  If the dollars are higher in Bangladesh, you go there.  You, must.

You must as otherwise you won't be able to afford whatever it is you are seeking to buy, or do.  

I knew an elderly Wyoming lawyer, from here, who in his first years didn't practice law as he graduated law school in the Great Depression when there was no work.  I've known more than one engineer who took completely different jobs for the same reason.  An accountant I served in the National  Guard with worked as a carpenter.  A different accountant I knew was a rig hand during a boom, as that's where the big money was at the time.

Which gets back to career planning.

When my father planned his career, he started off to become an engineer, but he became a dentist.  It was because he knew he could obtain that job an and come back here, as that's what he wanted to do.  I know a dentist is the younger son from a ranch family, and that's what he did too.  I know lots of older lawyers who were the younger children of ranch families, who took that path as there was no place on the ranch for them.  And I'm often surprised by people's whose career paths were absolutely identical to mine, almost to the t.

Both of my career attempts, the one successful and the one that failed, had the same logic behind them.  Geology was  field that employed people here when I was studying it, and I thought I had a talent for it and would be able to find a job.  When that fell through, on to the law, as I'd never heard of an unemployed Wyoming lawyer.

But the state was the primary focus in my mind.  I'm of it, it's of me.  

"I want my kids to be able to stay here", he told me.  Well, so they can.

But whatever the economy holds for Wyoming's future, if that means you go just for the mega bucks, career wise, that career is probably somewhere else.

And that's why a lot of people leave.

Those of us who are from here and stay, really aren't unique as a population.  There are plenty of examples of this in others.

In 1876 the Sioux left the reservation for one last foray into the wild.  They knew it wouldn't last. That wasn't the point.  People who wonder what they were thinking aren't of this region.  The Anglo American culture at the time thought they should turn into farmers.  They didn't really think so, no matter what.

In Utahan Robert Redford's adaption of A River Runs Through It, the protagonist, who is moving to Chicago, asks his brother to come with him.  He responds

Oh no brother, I'll never leave Montana.

In David Lean's adaption of Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, Larissa notes when she's being transported away from disaster, that Zhivago's absence isn't accidental.

He'll never leave Russia!

We are native, to this place.