Wyoming's first elected Democratic Governor, John E. Osborne, who was elected in the wake of the Johnson County War scandal. Osborne would contend again in later years, including during World War One. His rise due to a land and money issue is telling and echoes to the present day.
I was just going to update the existing blog topic on the Wyoming election with this, but instead, rather than clutter that up any more than it already is, I thought I'd just do this one as a new election issue post. (Actually I started this post some time ago).
There's a pile of crying and whining right now by "conservatives" about how the Democrats ruined the GOP primary by registering to vote in it as Republicans late in the day, thereby throwing the election from True Blue (um Red?) Conservative Foster Friess to that secret liberal Mark Gordon. We now know, of course, thanks to some analysis down at the University of Wyoming, that this isn't actually correct. We posted on that the other day:
September 12, 2018. The election wasn't stolen edition.
From University of Wyoming Senior Research Scientist Brian Harnisch's Twitter feed, and as followed up on by the Casper Star Tribune:
Sure doesn't look like "Democrats meddled" in the Wyoming Republican primary. Instead - A few Democrats, more independents, and even more Republicans wanted a say in who governor will (or won't) be.#wyvote
Brian Harnisch @BrianHarnisch
Well, perhaps in some really concentrated in time way of looking at things there might have been a little bit of truth to that such that it could have been believed, but perhaps not as well. And now we know it isn't correct. While it might be true that some people who have of late been registered as Democrats and, moreover as Independents, moved to the GOP to vote for the primary the truth of the matter is that in the long view of Wyoming politics what this really does is tend to return to the GOP its members who were usually there and, at the same time, make the fortunes of the Democratic Party, as an institution, even worse. Indeed, now we know that the primary simply brought out Republican voters who were previously staying away from the polls, and that's hugely significant.
The entire concept that Friess would have won but for late Democratic switchers is highly flawed in every sense. Wyoming doesn't really have that many Democratic voters anymore in the first instance and, while there were only 9,000 votes between Gordon and Friess in the general election, it was never safe to assume that 9,000 Democrats switched to vote for Gordon. At most it appears that only 1,801 could have.
As we've already noted, what may have actually occurred is that Harriet Hageman ended up drawing the really hardcore right wing of the GOP away from Friess. . . she certainly wasn't drawing that group away from Gordon, and that torpedoed Friess. Friess, for his part, probably picked up some Galeotos voters when Galeotos' campaign was clearly imploding during the last few weeks. For that matter, Gordon almost certainly picked up a lot of voters when Galeotos 1) played the "I"m going to help Trump card; and 2) imploded. Voters who really like Trump, and I frankly think his popularity in Wyoming is grossly exaggerated, went to Friess at that point, while voters who are repelled by Trump, which includes a lot of rank and file Republicans, moved to Gordon. In the meantime, dormant Republicans, who were never of the Tea Party type, came back to the polls and didn't want the extremism that some of the GOP candidates were offering up, or the Southern style conservatism that others were offering.
So the entire "my election was stolen" crying and whining by some hard right Republicans was always pretty devoid of evidence.
In the long and short historical view, a better argument is that the GOP was stolen by well monied tea party elements and now the original owners of the party returned and whuped up on the thieves.
And that's because Wyoming isn't a conservative state.
Not one like that.
Some of this point would be better informed by anyone who cares to read it, if I had first published a thread on Wyoming's voting demographics that I haven't gotten around to pushing yet, but as this post is now topical, I'll just try to make some sense of it here. But if Wyoming's voting history is looked at, there's never been a point when its been conservative in the "look, I have a red sign" category. All politics is local, we're told, but Wyoming's is more local than most.
Indeed, localism, informed by a sort of regional agrarianism, is really the them of Wyoming politics. Wyomingites are conceived of as conservative as they take a "leave me alone" approach to most things. But they aren't terribly conservative as to everything else. Indeed, for people who have some strong social conservative views, and I frankly do, that's often a matter of frustration.
Joseph M. Carey, who had been a Republican but who ran as a Governor due to his disagreements with Francis E. Warren, and then went on to be one of the organizers of the Progressive Party. Carey is the only Governor of Wyoming to have been a member of a third party.
And this is also the reason that Wyoming has had a lot of Democratic Governors including at least one spectacular example of a Republican who crossed to Democrat who crossed to Progressive Party, and went back to Republican, Joseph Carey. If Wyoming has great governors, and there's a few who can be argued to be in that category, Carey is undoubtedly one of them. So would Nellie Tayloe Ross be one, and of course she was a Democrat. Most Wyomingites with a sense of history would include John B, Kendrick (Democrat) and Ed Herschler (Democrat) in that category. Indeed, in the list of governors who would be considered really great governors of Wyoming, only Stan Hathaway really makes the list as a GOP example. Some would include Francis E. Warren, also a Republican, as well. But by the same token, at least one of our recent truly forgotten Republicans was a conservative who somewhat foreshadowed at least one of the candidates who took a run at the office this past year and whom probably nobody would regard as a great governor.
John B. Kendrick, who followed Carey as Governor.
The fact that there's been so many Democratic governors in a state that's been overwhelmingly Republican since day one really says something. And it would have said something, potentially, had Friess won, and in my view certainly would have said something if Hageman had won, this cycle, as Throne may have, or would have, become the next governor under those scenarios. Gordon taking the GOP nomination means that Throne likely can't win, as most voters will go to him.
Democrat Nellie Tayloe Ross. Ross was bizarrely called in as example by one obviously historically clueless Harriet Hageman supporter this last election. Ross was a Democrat and went on to be the Director of Mints for Franklin Roosevelt.
But most Wyoming voters aren't Tea Party types and aren't exactly what really hardcore conservatives think they are. Indeed, on some social issues Wyomingites have consistently been in the center left, which a candidate like Friess really isn't grasping.
Courthouse in Jefferson County Texas. When I was there a couple of years ago the general election was about to be held, which explains why all the signs are on the front lawn. It was the first locality I was in which it seemed possible to me that Trump would actually win the general election, which came from listening to comments in the local Port Arthur Starbucks. Foster Friess seemed to have a campaign that was aimed at Deep East Texas, not Wyoming.
The political ethos of Wyoming, from the native prospective, is basically "leave me the heck alone". This often gets mistaken for libertarianism, but it isn't that either. Generally Wyomingites have a live and let live view of the world which doesn't equate to the liberal ethos of "tolerance" so much as it equates with "stay out of my business".
Highly respected Governor Ed Herschler, receiving a Stetson from F. E. Warren's cavalry recalling honor guard.
This is why it has so often been the case that both liberals and conservatives have badly misjudged Wyoming voters and why outsiders nearly always do. Wyomingites tend to hold deeply conservative values on many things but don't feel that this really means that politics have much to do with any of that.
They also tend to be highly agrarian in an old sense that modern politicians have a really difficult time grasping. This places them quite often on the hard left and hard right of various political questions all the time, which most Wyomingites do not feel is an inconsistent thing to do.
If we look at this in practical application, we see how this really tends to be missed by politicians and parties at anyone time. Indeed, the political demographic that most Wyomingites tend to resemble, with one significant difference, is the Southern Yeoman class of the late 19th Century. A fact not grasped at all by political demographers.
This past election gives us a good example of how all of this worked.
Two of the candidates were quite vocal about their religious faith, those being Hageman and Friess. Friess is some sort of Evangelical Christian. I don't know what Hageman's religious affiliation actually is and it was never apparent from her advertisements even though they cited a strong faith.
Now, as I've noted before, I have a post in the hopper on demographics and the Wyoming electorate and it will address religion as a factor, so I'm not going to go into depth with that here, but what I will note is that Wyoming has historically and through out its history been one of the least religious states in the United States. I'll go into that deeper later, but the reason that I'll note that is that religion tends to strongly inform two minority, but significant, Wyoming populations (Catholics and Mormons) but doesn't weigh heavily into the views of many others.
That doesn't mean that a lot of Wyomingites aren't religious, but what it does mean is that religion doesn't tend to enter politics in the same way that it does in other states. And while most Wyomingites are Protestants, there isn't one dominant Protestant denomination in the state and never really has been.
St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, Laramie Wyoming. There was a time during which the Episcopal Church could have been regarded as the most politically and civilly significant in Wyoming, but at the same time it was in the United States in general. Even then, it did not dominate in the way that it did in other localities, although having said that there was a time when being Catholic in Wyoming meant hard economic times for professionals. Today the fortunes of the Episcopal Church have enormously declined everywhere and that has reflected back to Wyoming. Casper, for example, has two separated Anglican churches in addition to the Episcopal churches.
And that's significant in that while Wyoming is conservative as a state, what this has tended to mean is that a sort of "none of your business" ethos creeps into a lot of social issues in Wyoming. Politicians who tend to assume that social issue are hot button issues in the state tend to be wrong and this is even the case among some deeply religious voters.
The classic example of this is the topic of abortion. I'll be perfectly frank that I am opposed to abortion and think it wrong in every sense. But in the Wyoming legislature this has never managed to be a really hot issue. An ultrasound bill sponsored by Chuck Gray was successful in the recent legislative session but that's the first such bill to be passed into law in Wyoming in a very long time and may tend to reflect a national trend. Having said that, this may in fact reflect a really significant change in views that may start to reflect itself in future legislators. All of the Republican candidates for Governor were careful to state they were pro life, with Friess emphasizing it. Barasso challenger Dodson was much cagier about his views, expressing the traditional weasel out words of being concerned for all the parties involved.
Previously a lot of Wyoming Republicans were very careful to state that they were opposed to abortion but didn't want to interfere with women's decisions, etc. etc., and similar positions held by Democrats have not hindered them from obtaining office in the past. Again, I'm opposed to abortion personally and think it a real issue, but it has generally not been a major topic in Wyoming's politics. I suspect that if Roe v. Wade were stricken or modified that Wyoming's law would reflect that, but I also feel that's part of a nationwide trend. And I think that trend would express itself in Wyoming at this time, in that event.
Views on homosexuality have been more strongly held by Wyomingites but not in the way the national press would have it. It's almost certain that most Wyomingites opposed the legalization of gay marriage when it was forced on the country by the United States Supreme Court but its much less certain what the state would do now. I think that if Obergefell were to be reversed Wyoming's old law would just pop back into place and the state would be comfortable with that and leave it as it is. I also think that most Wyomingites resent on some level the Supreme Court simply overriding the state on an issue like this.
But when it comes down to homosexuality itself the state has long had a "just leave me alone on what you're doing" view. Indeed, the huge irony of the entire Matthew Shepherd murder becoming a cause celebe is that Wyoming was actually highly tolerant towards homosexual conduct in that sense. Nobody particularly cared much about it as long as you weren't being forced to approve of it, a common Wyoming view on almost everything. The Shepherd murder has been grossly misinterpreted for political reason as an act of community violence against homosexuals when it was nothing of the sort whatsoever. Roughly at the same time as the Shepherd matter I represented somebody in something where the opposing side sort of silently thought my client's open homosexuality was an issue and could never get more than a big yawn from everyone on the topic, the common Wyoming view.
The reaction of the state to something like Obergefell actually tend to reflect a bit of something else, however, which is the "you can't tell me what to do" view which is strongly held by Wyomingites. That, and our provincialism, explained our delay in making the national Martin Luther King Day a holiday here and our making it Equality Day when we did. It wasn't that Wyomingites had something against Martin Luther King. Rather, and wrongly, they felt that he didn't have anything to do with us really, and so why were we being made to do something?
As an old example of moral issues in Wyoming politics, there was once a member of the legislature who rose high up in it and then went after pornography. That basically doomed his anticipated run for Governor. People weren't backing pornography, but it just seemed that it was a bit much to base your campaign on it let alone introduce a bill addressing it, as he tried to do and which pretty much torpedoed his later chances.
Perhaps the best example of this is one that never comes into campaigns but which demonstrates the general viewpoint, prostitution. I've lived in pretty much the same county, except for periods of time out of it in my adult years for various reasons, my entire life, and during that time I don't recall a single instance in which there was not a known house of prostitution in the county that everyone knew about and ignored.
Now prostitution has always been illegal here, but it's also been pretty much openly tolerated as long as it wasn't flaunted. Indeed, at one time Casper had a very open red light district that more or less did flaunt it until it spilled out of the district, when there would then be reactions. That district, the Sand Bar, was in its dying days when I was a kid, but was still around. When it closed its business was shift to other locations. One of those was an establishment near the airport, Tokyo Message, which carried on business for decades. Everyone knew this. When it was raided and closed in the last decade it was a huge surprise, not because prostitution was going on there, but rather because it was hard to figure out why it was suddenly subject to having the law enforced.
Not that raiding Tokyo Message ended prostitution here. It didn't. It ended Tokyo Message. Prostitution carries on. The point is that almost everyone knows about this and agrees that prostitution is wrong, but almost nobody really feels that there's pressing need to address it.
Therefore, candidates like we just saw in the last election who ran on their outward Christianity weren't going to really get that much traction with it. There are, no doubt, a lot of devout Protestants who may care if a person claims a faith or not, but there are more who are not likely to care that much, and many more who are Christian on some basis but don't base their votes too much on that. The two demographics that are likely to really inform their votes through their Faith, moreover, aren't the ones that people openly campaign on.
Frank Barrett, a Republican Governor who was a Catholic and who I think may have been the first Catholic Governor in the state. If you look up his Wikipedia bio, you wont find that mentioned as it likely wasn't mentioned much during his campaigns.
Indeed, that's also something worth noting. There's never been a Wyoming politician who boldly declared during a campaign that they were Mormon and it'd be likely that would work against them if they did. I do think that the Mormon faith is a having a politically notable influence on voting in some districts and even on certain issues, but it's not openly noted very often. Likewise, there's never been a Wyoming Catholic politician who ran on being a Catholic, even though several have in fact been elected. Early in the state's history that was one Irish immigrant politician who was a practicing Catholic who took steps to diminish his outward connection with the faith even while remaining adherent to it. There have been to date two Wyoming candidates who were devout Greek Orthodox, including one of the just failed candidates, and you'd have to hunt that information down to even know that. A long time very successful Wyoming candidate from my county was a practicing member of the Jewish faith and I can't even recall that ever coming up in a conversation regarding him.
Likewise the conservative assumption, still rampant post election, that Wyomingites hold radical views on the Federal government is totally misplaced.
Truth be known, most Wyomingites are aware of and comfortable with the Federal governments role in the state, which puts them in the middle or even the left in regards to that. Wyomingites are overwhelmingly opposed to transferring public lands from the Federal government to the state. Indeed, I'm sure that played a role in the votes received by both Gordon and Friess, both of whom were opposed to that, and why Hageman was not successful.
Indeed, the real Tea Party elements in the state seem to either be just incapable of acknowledging the reality that money talks, and transferring the public lands to Wyoming would result in their wholesale vending to big money elsewhere, or they live in the farm belt of the state where there isn't much public land and they have different interests than most people in the state, or they're from somewhere else and just don't get it. That showed in Hageman's votes, which were very concentrated by county and show an element of that.
This places, however, most Wyoming voters somewhere on what we'll call the "green" scale, green being the traditional color of agrarian parties. They aren't read or blue. And on this issue, that's a good thing. They're voting their interests, and those interests are value driven, not money driven, which in contrast, for all its talk of "freedom" and the like, Libertarians in this state tend to come down to (ie., "we'll all make boatloads of cash if only the government gets out of our way").
This, by the way, is also pretty demonstrable by the fact that the state loves Federal highway money. Truth be known, I highly suspect that most Wyoming voters would be thrilled if the state took Federal Medicare money in the amounts that were offered to it, and we don't grasp why we said no on a matter of odd principle. But then the last couple of legislatures has been highly Tea Party influenced.
It'll be interesting to see if that ends. This election might have been a watershed. Thousands of new Republicans registered to vote and the evidence is that the public lands issue may have brought them in. They aren't Tea Partiers by any means.
