So you're living in Wyoming (or the West in general) during the Great War and there's talk of food conservation, and you are a hunter. . .

what would that have been like?

Advertisement for the Remington Model 8 semi automatic rifle, introduced by Remington from the John Browning design in 1905 and kept into production, amazingly, until 1950 in the later Model 81 variant.  The rifle, while advertised as "big enough for the biggest game", was designed to compete with lever action rifles of the era.*

We'll start off by saying that its obvious, particularly for retrospective looks into things, to say "well it was a lot different than it is now", but that's both obvious and trite in regards to something like this.

Yes, our friend the studious professor from the Laws of History page.

We should also note that hunting is one of those activities that looks at the present, past and the future nearly with an equal focus in ways that we don't look at a lot of other things.  It connects us very much to our past in certain ways, and keeps us in focus on nature in a way that few things do.  It has been acceptive and receptive, however, of technology, and resistant to at the same time.  Indeed, ironically we are in the age, at least here, where hunting with bows receives nearly as much local interest as hunting with firearms does, even while, at the same time, the ongoing technological revolution, and in this case partially a revolution spurred on by warfare, not only continues to impact hunting but also to threaten it in significant ways. At the point at which electronic scopes that coordinate with rifles become common, for example, if they ever do, things have drastically changed and for the worse.

One of my favorite photographs, an elk hunter in Wyoming in 1904.  A lot of what's depicted in this photograph could still be taken today.  Horses remain in common use for elk hunting, for example.  On the other hand, he appears to have used a Winchester rifle (not a carbine), to take this elk.  Given the era, there are a lot of cartridge options so we don't really know what he was using.

Let's admit another thing.  This is one of those rare, rare, posts here that better fits the original intended purpose of this blog than most of the endless boring posts I otherwise put up (although careful observers might note that recently more and more of the posts actually at least pertain to things that happened prior to 1920)**.  And let's further admit that I don't know all of the answers on this one, so I'm hoping that somebody can fill in the blanks and add details.

Maine deer hunters, 1908.

Okay with all of that in the works, let's start off with some basics.  First of all, there were a lot of good reason to go hunting in 1918.

Now, there are always a lot of good reasons to go hunting.  It's a good way to really connect with real nature, not some sort of sanitized look at me in my high tech gear pretending to be in nature.  And its a good way to get the protein you are actually evolved to eat.  It's good to be out in nature in general.  But in 1918, it would have also been a good way to get meat without being subject to the public harassment the government was engaging in at the time.

World War One era poster, one of a series, on various "less" days.  As I've posted here before, for the nation's Catholic and Orthodox minority, the social pressure that applied to such things must have been a particular nightmare during World War One as they already had days in which they abstained from various foods and the government's actions, perhaps intentionally, didn't jive with what they were already doing. So they were getting days added to their already "meatless" days.

There was no rationing in the United States during World War One.  Or not of the type we'd see in World War Two. About the biggest thing that the government did was to deprive brewers and distillers of grain, which started them off to the temporary extension of those industries that would follow the war with the passage of the Volstead Act in 1919.  But meat wasn't rationed, for example.

The government urged consumers to save wheat by switching to other grains, such as corn and oats, for their recipes. It then restricted brewers supplies, and then cut them off, from corn and barley.

Which did not keep the government from engaging in an ongoing campaign of harassment which included all sorts of meatless and porkless days. There were no "deerless" days, or antelopeless days, or the like, so getting one would have involved getting some meat that some annoying campaign wasn't involved with.

And most Americans lived in lot more rural settings than they do today, so that put them in closer contact with nature than contemporary Americans, who might mistake pigeons in the park for nature.

Packing out a deer in 1908.  Not four wheelers then (and I still don't have one).

So good to go, right?  Just pack up and drive out and go hunting.  After all, there were no "deerless" or elkless days.

Well, that's where the difficulties really begin when we look at this topic.

Col.. Billy Mitchell after hunting boars in France. This photo was taken during World War One under obviously different conditions than we'd see in the states, but the draped over the front fender method of carrying game was really common as long as cars had this general configuration.

Maybe, maybe not.

Now, by 1918 cars weren't brand new in the US by any means.  Scenes like that in The Wild Bunch in which a person is amazed by the presence of a car in the Teens are baloney, where as a scene like that in The Professionals in which a Model T is already old would have been common.  The Ford Model T was by far the most common automobile in the United States at the time, but the car had not achieved the universal ownership standard it would soon.  Lots of people didn't own a car at the time, even though a lot did.  People living in larger metropolitan areas, particularly did not. Surprisingly a lot of rural people also did not; they did not need them.

Deer hunters in the Adirondacks, 1903.  Note the Winchester lever action rifle.

But cars were coming on strong.

The automobile of this period was not the same as today's by a long shot.  I've sometime pondered vehicle evolution, and I basically feel that the automobile had three stages of development, those being 1) early primitive; 2) modern car and 3) extra modern car.  We're in the extra modern period, but that only goes back maybe fifteen years or so (and we're about to launch into another era, with the hyper modern car, electric and all techno etc.).  In 1918, they were at the tail end of the early primitive car.

Montana hunter, 1902, returning home on skis.

The Model T was undoubtedly the most common American car of the era, although it certainly wasn't the only car available.  The Model T is, moreover, a really rugged car with good off road capabilities.  You'd be better off in a Model T than a Metro Geo or a hybrid of some sort.   They had good low gearing, narrow wheels and tires, and a really good clearance.

They were also mechanically bizarre in modern terms and had strange features of all sorts. And with a giant four cylinder engine, they really weren't a long range vehicle.

So, while you could go places with hem, they didn't go all that far.  If you've ever wondered why, when you travel old state highways, there are all sorts of abandoned old gas stations, that's why.  Indeed, if you were to travel from Casper to Laramie on State 487 you might notice that, after Casper, there were gas stations at Clark's Corners, Medicine Bow, after Medicine Bow in the sticks, and Rock River.  If you were traveling in a Model T back in the day (all of which would have been on dirt roads, in the era we are speaking of) you would have stopped at every one of them to "top off".

Still, a Model T was revolutionary if you had one.  You could hunt close to town. And if you were really adventuresome, you could have loaded up a lot of one gallon gas cans and maybe have even gone further.

Which is not to say that people without a Model T, or to take a decade or two prior to our focus when everyone lacked a car, did not go out hunting if they lived in towns. They did.  It's just would depend upon your circumstances and where you lived.

If you lived in a smaller town and had a horse, which some did, you could ride out, or ride out with your carriage.  Or you could just walk out if the town was small enough.  Such activities were not uncommon, they just involved more and different effort than driving out in your car.

Of course, before we move on, a lot of Americans didn't need to go anywhere to hunt as the rural population was a lot higher than it is now.  It wasn't the case that everyone lived on a farm, as cranky pundit Jim Kunstler, looking forward as he is to a post apocalyptic America, seems to believe (in regard to the Great Depression), but a lot more people did than do now.  Farmers and ranchers tend to nearly always be hunters in varying degrees.  Indeed, I've known some who hunted hardly at all, but then knew some others who were frank that they lived off of wild game rather than their own beef, which they raised for profit.

So if we consider that a lot of Americans lived on farms and ranches, or more did than do now, and quite a few more lived in very small towns that bordered farm or ranch country, that makes the scenario a bit different.  Quite a few people really didn't need a car, they just walked out their doors and on to their places or a neighbors. And quite a few in addition walked out their front door and down the street on early mornings for the same reason.  And of course if you lived on a farm or ranch you owned horses if you were going hunting for big game.

This is an obviously staged photograph, but it depicts something that actually did occur in the era, native hunters.  These men would have been born at the latest in the late 19th Century when all of the western Indian tribes still engaged in some subsistence hunting.  This actually remained a course of conflict with authorities at the time as the states insisted on enforcing their fish and game laws, while the Tribes were still acting on their treaty rights. As we've explored here before, this still comes up from time to time even today.

So hunting paradise, right?

Well, maybe not so much, or not so much for everyone everywhere.

For one thing, while the situation we describe above was common for many, it was also the case it wasn't for quite a few also.  Americans living in big cities were immobile in a way that they have never been since.  Even the wealthy had to go to a lot more effort to leave town for anything. There's a reason that the hunting trip as expedition for the well healed started up, and that is part of it.  That it carries on to this day is in a way a legacy of that.  For those with more modest means, getting out of town as a ready option had not really yet arrived and was in fact some time off.  Indeed, the teens were still the era of livestock in town.

And then there was the game itself.

One thing that's really difficult for modern Americans to sometimes appreciate is that American wildlife was saved by hunters.  Game populations in the United States and elsewhere in North America had declined enormously since the mid 19th Century and hunters, around the turn of the century, stepped into address that.  Hunters, not other interests, were the prime movers in hunting season and license laws. And it was hunters that stepped into make market hunting illegal, something that started in the tail end of the 19th Century and was still going on in the teens.  All that wold have an enormous restorative effect on wildlife.

But it hadn't yet.  In some areas of the country game remained very common, but in others that was not the case.  Antelope, for example, an animal so common in Wyoming that they outnumber people were hurting.  Deer populations in much of the west, as well as elk, were way, way down.

And waterfowl was hurting as well.  Market hunting of waterfowl was only just being eliminated and so the restoration of waterfowl populations hadn't yet arrived.  So, while we look back on the era romantically, in reality a lot of game populations were in trouble and therefore there wasn't a good of hunting opportunities as there are now.

Okay, let's say that you are now past all of that.  And you may have been. There were upland birds in quite a bit of the country in abundance a century ago. There were enough in the way of waterfowl to hunt, even if it isn't like it is now (it's much better now), and there were deer and elk in sufficient numbers to hunt, even if again it wasn't like it is now (it's better now).  And small game was abundant, just as it is now (well, maybe not quite as abundant as now. . . we have rabbits living in our yard all the time).  So you we're past all that and you are out there bagging your game, right?

Rabbit hunters, 1916.  I'm not sure where this photograph was taken, but my guess is that it's in the upper Mid West.  The hunters are all armed with shotguns and they have rabbit dogs, which aren't allowed everywhere (maybe they were then).  The rabbits, based on their color, might be snowshoe hares.  The meat would have been consumed in short order and its likely that the fur would have been sold as rabbit fur has a value now and it had more of one then.

Well, maybe again. 

Here too we have to consider something that came in during the last century but hadn't really arrived yet. .. refrigeration.  And more particularly freezers.

We ran this photograph just recently.  Party of women grouse hunters in Idaho armed with pump action shotguns, most likely Model 1897s.

Eh?

Yes, we're still in the age of the ice box.  And that's what people had, assuming they were living in conditions where they had that.

New York deer hunters, early 20th Century.

Somehow people overcame this, as people did in fact go big game hunting. With small game, such as rabbits, or with game birds, this isn't that much of a problem as you could put them in the ice box and eat them soon, assuming you didn't get a large number of them.  And people hung game at that time, which they really don't (and probably shouldn't) do now.

Florida deer hunters, 1922.  They have two white tail deer, one of which is being carried by the older looking gray bearded hunter.  They're also all armed with shotguns

Hanging game is an age old custom where the quarry is hung in a cool dark room for a time, often several days (or with a large animal longer).  I still recall people hanging deer when I was a kid, but I don't know anyone who does it now. 

Hanging quail

Hanging small game and birds is apparently still quite common in some regions of the globe and I've heard, but have no first hand experience of it, that it's still done on the British Isles.  It strikes me as dangerous if you can avoid it, but it was done.

Deer in cold storage locker in Texas, 1930s.

But it's not like you can hang a deer in most of the United States all winter long.  I know that this is and was done in Alaska, but the climatic conditions are obviously rather different there.  In Wyoming you couldn't do that.  You might be able to for a few months starting in January, but the seasons were over by then.

I don't really know what people actually did under these circumstances.  Freezers didn't become common until the 1950s.  I've heard of people hanging meat in meat lockers, so maybe they did that on some occasions.  Or maybe they just consumed most of what they go at the time, which would mean sharing quite a bit of what you had. That's possible as well.  

If anyone knows, I'd appreciate knowing as well.

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*Something I haven't addressed in this thread, as it would be more of a material thread, but very much well worth noting is that hunting arms, particularly in regards to rifles, were about to undergo a revolution.

Today the bolt action rifle is by far the most common big game rifle in the United States, although AR platform semi automatics are making huge inroads.  But prior to World War One that most definitely was not the case.

The reason is not so much technological, as in technological advancement, as it has to do with what people were familiar with. The Remington 08 was one of at least two semi automatic rifles that were offered to American sportsmen at the time and there were bolt actions, although none of the big American manufactures made a sporting bolt action (so if you wanted one, you had to buy an import, probably a Mauser, or you had to buy a M1903 in some configuration from the U.S. Government, which was perfectly possible).  In spite of what people may wish to believe, technological advancements in firearms over the last century, while real, has been much more marginal than imagined.

The reason had to do with what people were used to.  And th at was the lever action.  Lever actions, an American innovation, had come in strong after the Civil War and had only been rivaled, after cartridge arms were fully established, by single shot rifles, which were the choice of very serious sportsmen.  The Remington 8 was an attempt to compete in that market.

Bolt actions had been around for quite awhile but it was really advancements in smokeless power that made them a really suitable, indeed ideal for many, rifle for hunters.  Be that as it may, by the time that smokeless bottle neck cartridges really came in strong, with military bolt actions, in the 1890s the lever action was dominating the field.  Advancement in elver actions, the most critical of which were again by John Browning, meant that lever actions were adaptable to most of the newer smokeless rounds. As scopes were rare in teh game fields at the day, the greater degree of accuracy afforded by bolt actions wasn't really appreciated at first.

Bolt actions were really introduced to American shooters with the Krag, the rifle that was adopted to replace the "trap door Springfield" and which introduced smokeless ammunition to American military use.  It was a good enough rifle for what it was, but it was outclassed right from the onset by the Mauser rifles, and therefore its service live was short.  That meant that the Krag became available as as surplus rifle to sportsmen nearly as soon as it had actually seen use.  The Krag, however, shot a cartridge, the .30-40, which was only marginally better than the .30-30, a cartridge that Americans were very familiar with already, and the Krag couldn't fit a scope, not that anyone would have really thought to do so. So it make little impact on hunting arms other than that it became one.

It was World War One that changed that.  The war exposed well over a million American men to the bolt action rifle and thousands of Masuer 98s rifles were brought home as war prizes.  Remington, which was making the M1917 Enfield on a contract with the government, kept it in production in a sporting form, somewhat out of necessity as the brief cancellation of the contract meant that it had a lot of actions on hand and nothing else it could do with them.  Winchester, which had also made M1917s, didn't try to compete at first but that soon changed and in 1925 it introduced the Model 54 rifle, a design based on the M1903 which would go on to become the legendary Model 70.  Lever actions remained in use by they started declining as a result  Automatics, on the other hand, simply didn't take off for the most part, in spite of a couple of exceptional examples to the contrary, until the Fantasia like persistence of AR manufacturers convinced many that the Jam Master was suitable for the game fields like it was for the battlefield, even though the latter has always been debated.

As bolt actions came in, scopes did too, but very slowly.  Indeed, while German hunters armed with 98s had been using scopes since prior to World War One for European big game, scopes didn't really enter the picture much in the US until just prior to World War Two.  After the war, however, they really took off.  

Shotguns may have seen more change in a century in some ways, as odd as that may sound, than rifles.  If that's true, that's due to the changes in cartridges more than anything else, but having said that, it isn't the sole reason.

As we've already seen, "repeating" shotguns had come in pretty strongly by World War One in the U.S., and pump action shotguns were already quite common. The John Browning designed Model 1897 was a major presence in the game fields by that time. Here automatics had, however, also made an appearance and they'd really seen more acceptance than they had in the big game fields in regards to rifles.  Here too a Browning design, the Auto 5, was a large part of that.  Manufactured from 1902 to 1975 it was a shotgun that commanded loyalty well after it was actually obsolete.  It was already a common shotgun by 1918.

If a person wasn't using an automatic, they were probably using a side by side shotgun, and that gun may well have been a 10 gauge.  The reason for that is that shotgun shells were just 2.5" long, not the 2.75" standard length that they are now, and the thought of making a 3" or 3.5" was unheard of.  That would ironically come in with steel shot, after it was mandated in recent decades for waterfowl hunting, as it's been noted that the principal impact of steel shot was to return the shotgun to its earlier level of performance.

While all these types of shotguns are still around today, the over and under, a common shotgun now, was not.  Indeed, the over and under was uncommon at the time.

Waterfowl guns of the era tended to have enormously long barrels based on a misunderstanding of barrel length and performance.  This changed over the years even though, even now, shotguns primarily designed for waterfowl will sport longer barrels than they really need to.

**As World War One draws to an end, the long run of nearly daily posts here dealing with the Punitive Expedition through the Great War will inevitably wrap up and the blog will return to more of its original nature.  Having said that, we only recently started to see a lot of posts on the Influenza Epidemic of 1918-19 so that will have an impact on "century ago" type posts. And the peace talks, remaining fighting on the border (yes, it's not over) and the occupation of Germany will all play into future posts.

Countdown on the Great War: October 23, 1918

1.  Jozef Swiezynski was appointed Prime Minister of Poland as part of the process of establishing the independence of that country.

2.  The British dispatched a task-force from Baghdad with the goal of clearing Ottoman forces from what is now Iraq.

3. The Aghios Gerasimos was sunk by the German submarine UC-74 in spite of the Germans having officially called of the U-boat war.

October 22 , 1968. A Treasonous Act

On this day in 1968, an event that would not come to light until 2016 occurred in which then Presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon called H. R. Halderman, then an aid of his, and ordered him to have intermediaries persuade South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu to refuse to participate in the Parish Peace Talks.

Thieu.

It seems likely that Thieu was already of the mind to refuse to participate, in which case Nixon's action, which asserted that, through intermediaries, that he was likely to win the election, which was in fact correct, had no real impact. Still, the action, designed to aid his position in the election, is shocking and far worse than his support of the cover up of the break in of the Watergate Hotel some years later.  It seems that President Johnson was aware of the action and ordered Nixon's campaign staff's phones bugged but he chose not to reveal the story, which makes sense in context. 

Also on this day the still controversial Gun Control Act of 1968 was signed into law by President Johnson. The act came about in the wake of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy.  It's provisions remain in effect today and in spite of the common claim to the contrary about American firearms legislation, it created universal registration, at the manufacturer level and the original retail level, of all firearms.  It also included other restrictions that remain including the necessity of new firearms being transferred only through licensed dealers and a restriction on the age of purchase, which was at two different ages for long guns and handguns.  Ammunition sales were likewise restricted.

On the same day the crew of Apollo 7, all of which had the common cold, returned to Earth.

Countdown on the Great War, October 22, 1918: The British reach the Schelt. The Atlantic is Quiet. A Hollywood Starlet becomes a victim of the Spanish Flu.

1. There were no shipping losses at all on this day, which is remarkable in and of itself.

2.  The British reached the Schelt River in Belgium.

3.  The British also reached Khan al-Sahbil, Syria. This was the first time in the Pursuit to Haritan in which the British made visual contact with the Otttoman's once again.

Myrtle Gonzalez.

4. Myrtle Gonzalez, the American movie industries first Hispanic movie star, died of the Spanish Influenza at age 27 at her parents home in Los Angeles.  She had acted in 78 films.  In spite of her young age, she was retired at the time having married actor and direct Allen Watt the year prior.  It was her second marriage Watt had been commissioned in the Army and the couple lived for a time at Ft. Lewis, Washington, but her frail health due to a heart ailment demanded her return to Los Angeles and Watt was released from the service to care for her.  She left a son, age seven, from her first marriage.

Countdown on the Great War, October 21, 1918: Germany calls a halt to the U-boat war, Fatigue and Illness catch up with the Desert Mounted Corps

Maj. General Peter E. Traub, C.O. 35th Division, learning a few points about moving picture camera from 1st. Lieut. E.W. Weigle. Location: Sommedieu, Meuse, France. Date: October 21, 1918. Taken by: Pvt. Price, SC. NARA Ref#: 111-SC-51079

1.  The U-boat war ends as Germany suspends submarine warfare and orders the boats to return to port.  Before it receives the order, the UB-94 sank the British coaster Saint Barchan.  Eight of her crew died in the sinking.

Saint Barchan wasn't the only ship lost that day.  The USS Cero was destroyed by fire in Narragansett Bay, being a casualty to an accident as so many things and people did during the war.  The MMML 561, a British motor launch, was lost at sea. The British cargo ship Moscow was scuttled by the British at Petrograd to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Reds.  The German UB-89 collided with the SMS Frankfurt at Keil, to the loss of seven lives.

2.  Allenby is forced to reorganize the Desert Mounted Corps due to illness and exhaustion in his troops.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Good Shepherd Catholic Church, Denver Colorado.

Churches of the West: Good Shepherd Catholic Church, Denver Colorado.:

These cell phone photos, taken from a vehicle, depict the Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Denver.  The church was originally built as St. John the Evangelist Church, in 1909, but it was later consolidated due to demographic changes with St. Philomena's, which was accordingly closed. When the parishes were consolidated, the church was renamed reflecting the combination of the two parishes.  This well preserved church in is in the Cherry Creek region of Denver.

Countdown on the Great War. Sunday, October 20, 1918. The Allied advance keeps on keeping on, New American Divisions keep on forming, German Submarines and mines keep on sinking ship, the Spanish Flu is still on a rampage, "Slackers" who failed to buy Liberty Bonds get publicity, and Church Services Closed.

American troops getting newspapers from the back of an American Red Cross truck.

1.  The British occupied Roubaix and Tourcoing.

2.  The U.S. 96th Division came into being, showing how the Army had grown and was continuing to grow.  It never left the states.

3.  The British schooner Emily Millington was sunk by a surfaced submarine without loss of life.   The British mointor HMS M21 hit a mine and sank in the English channel.

4.  The Spanish Flu was on a "rampage":

Best Post of the Week of October 14, 2018

Best posts of the week of October 14, 2018

Traveling for Boots

Today In Wyoming's History: October 14, 1943. Material shortages in World War Two and the Hunting Camp.

Countdown on the Great War: October 19, 1918. Empires and monarchies of all types continue to fall apart, the Allies continue to advance, the German Navy continues to sink ships, and the Flu remains uncontained.

1. The Allies captured Bruges, Courtrai, and Zeebrugge, Belgium.  In the process, 12,000 Germans surrendered.  The Belgian Army engaged in the last cavalry charge of World War One when the Guides Regiment successfully charged at the Burkel Forest.

2.  The Portuguese sailing ship Aida sunk by a German U-boat. The British ships Almerian and the HMS Plumpton struck mines, sinking the Almerian and damaging the Plumpton. The German submarine UB-123 also hit a mine in the North Sea and went down with all hands.

3. The West Ukrainian People's Republic was established in the Ukrainian provinces of the Austro Hungarian Empire.

4.  A flu hospital was established in Casper.

5.  Old allegiances of all types were seemingly being modified everywhere.  Icelanders voted overwhelmingly for becoming a separate kingdom with the Danish king as their sovereign.

The 2018 Wyoming Election Volume Five: On To The General Election.

Some of these signs will be coming down after the first entry on this thread on August 21, 2018.

The polls will be opening in one hour at the time this post goes up on Tuesday, August 21, 2018; the Primary Election Day.

And hence the new thread. They'll soon be an update here on who won, who lost, and maybe why those things occurred.

August 21, 2018  The Primary Results Edition.

For the first called races, it's clear that John Barrasso handily defeated Dodson in spite a of a vigorous well monied campaigned by Dodson.  Barrasso appeared to be worried towards the end but he seems to have pulled in over 60% of the vote.  He'll go on to face Trauner in November, who nearly unseated Barbara Cubin for the House some years ago but who has a tougher candidate in Barrasso.  The Tribunes endorsement of Dodson doesn't seem to have made much of a difference.  Unless final results change, Dodson only carried his home county, Teton.

Cheney defeated her two challengers with nearly 70% of the vote. The surprising thing in that race is that Blake Stanley, who was virtually unheard of in the campaign, pulled down over 10% of the vote.  She'll face Gregg Hunter in the fall, who prevailed in the Democratic primary and who has nearly no chance whatsoever of winning in the fall.

While it hasn't been called, Kristi Racines seems to have won the Republican Primary against Nathan Winters.  She will face Jeff Dockter in the fall, who is unlikely to win.

Ed Buchanan prevailed in an uncontested race for Secretary of State and will face respected Democrat James Byrd.

Mark Gordon, who early on was regarded as the favorite, will in fact be the nominee.  He appears set to pull over 30% of the vote in a crowded field.  Gordon was the victim of a really aggressive campaign by Harriet Hageman, who appears likely to come in third place behind Foster Friess, the eccentric conservative monied import.  Friess appears likely to cone in with about 26% of the vote and Hageman about 22% of the vote. Galeotos, who did really well early on just tanked late in the campaign, pulling in only, so far, about 13% of the vote.

In my view, Galeotos made a big miscalculation by associating himself with Trump during the campaign and just before all the most recent news about Russian intrigue.  To add to that, real Trump fans were probably more likely to go to Friess who received the endorsement of Donald Trump, Jr. and, just yesterday, Donald Trump.  So Galeotos likely lost favor with Republicans who are not keen on Trump and those who really are likely went for Friess or Hageman.  Gordon, who never associated himself with Trump but who ran to the more or less center as the campaign went on can take some comfort in the fact that if Galeotos had dropped out, as he probably should have, most of those votes would have gone to him, which would have put him up around 45% of the vote.

Hageman did take some counties, with all of them either being farm belt or coal belt counties, which is telling.  Elsewhere, at least in my view, she did some damage to those associating themselves with her campaign.  One local candidate that invested a lot in signs lost his race as an example.  He heavily associated himself with her effort, and at least a couple of people I know determined not to vote for him for that reason.

Gordon goes on to face Mary Throne in the fall.  Throne has been a very active Democratic candidate but her chances are now decreased by Gordon winning the primary.  Her best chances would have been against a more extreme Republican so she's now lost that

(Note, quite a few of the races were called as I was typing this, which is probably why it reads a bit odd).

August 22, 2018.  The Day After Edition.

Well, now its the day after, so to speak.

So what does the primary race tell us.  And it's a question worth asking as, for many of these races, they are now over.

Wyoming is a Republican state. The Democratic Party, in the past thirty or so years, has been capable of putting a candidate into the Governor's office and to that of the Secretary of State, and to elect a few legislators, but little else.  While that the Democrats can get a candidate through the door anywhere in Wyoming at all is actually impressive, the trend line has been towards Democratic deminishment, not increase.

But the GOP hasn't been healthy either.  Starting at some point during Governor Mead's term in office, or perhaps more accurately Barrack Obama's Presidency, a minority, but a significant one, turned towards the Tea Party element of the party.

Yesterday that element was repudiated.

That doesn't mean it's gone, but it did receive, to borrow the term of Tom and Ray, the dope slap.

And so, to an extent, did Trump loyalist in a state that's presumed to be the most loyal to Trump, but which is highly likely not.

In choosing Mark Gordon as the GOP candidate for Governor, the state went with a candidate that went increasingly towards the middle as the campaign went on. Wisely, when attacked for essentially being a RINO, Gordon talked up his local credentials and didn't go to the hard right.  Indeed, while he's a poor speaker, in my view, he and those on his staff proved to be politically savvy on the Wyoming voter, going increasingly towards the middle rather than the right.  Hageman's efforts to taint him with the Sierra Club and the like didn't hurt him, and in fact likely helped him, something that people with Hageman's frame of mind should keep in mind.

Also telling was the spectacular fall of Sam Galeotos in the race. Galeotos was at one time nearly neck and neck with Gordon but fell sharply at the end of the race. Some of that was likely due to his supporters seeing that Gordon was a little stronger and opting to make sure that Hageman was defeated.  Some of, however, was that he tainted himself in a political miscalculation in which he embraced Trump.  That likely drove GOP moderates who are conservatives but not Trump fans towards Gordon.  I know for a fact that at least some younger voters were horrified by Galeotos' Trump embrace and totally rejected him at that point.

Galeotos didn't do well anywhere, but did come in third position, behind Gordon and Fiess (but not necessarily in that order) in Sweetwater and Laramie Counties, the latter being his home county.

Somebody who did much better than I would have anticipated and who did embrace Trump was Foster Friess.  I frankly regarded Friess as a joke when he entered the race but he ended up with 26% of the vote, more than Hageman's 21%.  Friess is a true conservative who was endorsed by the Trumps in the race and likely did pick up some Trump fans who were not fans of Hageman's hard right Tea Party views, the two not being the same. And to his credit, Friess managed to sound less goofy as time went on.  He ended up taking the majority of the votes in six of Wyoming's twenty three counties in geographic groupings that are a bit hard to figure.  One group was concentrated heavily in the southwest corner of the state which suggests, but only suggests, that he may have pulled well with Mormon voters who make up a significant demographic in that region.  Friess is not  Mormon but an evangelical Christian, but he did campaign on that in a state where that's almost never done, suggesting that whoever discerned a voting block of religious voters may have been right.  He also did well in Park and Big Horn Counties, both of which also feature a large Mormon demographic. That's just a guess as to what was going on in those areas, however.

Teton County, where Friess hangs his Stetson, went overwhelmingly for Gordon, which is interesting.  They also put Hageman in the basement with less than 10% in third place which means that Galeotos grossly under performed in that county.

Friess was less than 1% behind Gordon in Natrona County, the state's second most populous county, and I don't know what that means, so I could be off the mark on why people did or did not go for Friess.

The map reveals that Hageman pulled in the majority of votes in the few Wyoming counties that are farming, rather than ranching, counties, and the coal counties.  While little discussed, the farming counties have tended to be much more aggressive in "taking control" of this or that than the other counties, including the ranching counties, which is more than a bit of an irony in that there's little public land in those counties.  Those counties were the epicenter of a landowner effort to seize control of hunting licenses back in the 1980s. Apparently much of that view simply remains.  She did very well in all of those five counties save for Campbell County, the state's biggest coal county, where she was less than 1% in front of Friess.  That was the only county which went for Hageman in which Gordon wasn't in second position.  Hageman did not do well in the Friess counties (nor in all of the Gordon counties either, obvious, given her overall third place finish) which raises the question of whether her discourtesy was a factor in counties that went for a very courteous Friess.

Hageman was sufficiently divisive, I'm convinced, that association with her took at least one local candidate down. One of the county commissioner candidates in Natrona County heavily associated himself with her during the campaign, with his sign appearing in very high frequency with hers, and with him endorsing her.  I know that this turned off GOP voters in the primary and while I never heard a single person suggest that they'd vote for him due to the association, I did hear some say that they would not based on the association.

It's worth noting that the strongest dose of tea, that offered by candidate Taylor Haynes, was flat out rejected by the voters . . . again.  Haynes pulled 5.6% of the vote.  Even if his share of the polls was added to Hageman's, which it would have been if he had not run (at one time I thought he'd act as a spoiler in regards to Hageman, but that didn't occur), she still would have fallen short of defeating Gordon, although that would have placed her in second position.  As noted, if Galeotos has likewise pulled out, and towards the end I thought he might act as a spoiler to Gordon. . .and he somewhat did, he would have polled much higher as Galeotos did pull down 12% of the vote.

What all of this would seem to tell us is that Tea Party elements remain strong in the state, but they also remain a distinct minority and are concentrated in areas where the impact of their views are actually unlikely to be felt or where coal has been a significant employer.  Public land issues, which came up a lot during the race, but not as much as public land backers would have like, likely surfaced and drove a lot of voters towards Gordon, which individuals who have proposed monkeying around in this area should remember.

The Tribune, on the other hand, noted the reelection of Chuck Gray as evidence that these views remain strong and growing, but they may wish to take a second look at the pool results.  Gray won reelection, but 36% of the vote when for GOP contender Daniel Sandoval who barely campaigned.  Sandoval's main point was that Gray, in his view, was a divisive extremist.  If Sandoval could pull 36% of the vote without really campaigning it shouldn't be assumed that Gray is all that popular in his own district.

Gray not need worry, however, as the Democrats are running Jane Ifland, who is the type of candidate that pulls the Democrats down every election.  Candidates like Mary Throne lose a lot of votes due to candidates like Ifland as it becomes hard for middle of the road voters to support somebody from a party that tends to regular field candidates who are so far to the left. So Gray is now secure, and Throne, who is a good candidate but who occupies the middle, is not really very likely to go anywhere in a campaign against Gordon.

On other races, incumbents did well, as expected.  John Barrasso did much better than it looked like he might do, which means that Trauner now has virtually no chance, which Trauner, who had to have hope going into the primary, is likely aware of.  Barrasso pulled down 65% of the vote in a race in which he didn't do much campaigning until the very end, when his campaigning looked a little desperate.

Cheney, whom I'm convinced was vulnerable to a primary challenge, pulled own 68% of the vote, better than Barrasso, but those results show that she likely was vulnerable.  Her opponents basically didn't campaign at all and at least one could be regarded as highly eccentric. That they pulled over 30% of the GOP vote by doing nearly nothing is telling.  Her seat is safe, however, as the Democrats chose Greg Hunter, an import from the Mid West, who has absolutely no chance whatsoever.

In other races, a trend toward the more traditional type of Wyoming Republican was seen in the election of Kristi Racine for GOP State Auditor candidate.  She certainly had the credentials, but she was faced by candidate Nathan Winters who simply ran on his being a Baptist minister and a legislator.  Winters supported one of the land grabbing bills earlier and his candidacy seemed to rely heavily on his legislative history and his occupation.  It failed with Racine taking 60% of the vote.

So, at the end of the day, the Tea Party elements in Wyoming failed and the GOP received a wake up call.  Whether those in Washington, who are really hard to unseat, heard it, is another matter.  But locally the GOP should have.  Republican voters went much more towards traditional Wyoming Republicans than they did for Tea Party insurgents.  As has tended to be the history for state's entire existence, the state looked favorably on somebody occupying one of the state's traditional industries, indeed its longest traditional industry, as long as that person also respected the state's outdoor history.  It rejected the extremes.  Those who were claiming that "it's out time" and "time for a change", by which they meant a leap to the Tea Party right, were disappointed to learn that this isn't what Wyomingites wanted and its unlikely to ever be.

The alarm bell should also have gone off a bit for those who made a lot of assumptions about Wyoming voters and the state's economy, and in an interesting way. Hageman couldn't see an economy that extended beyond the state's two long time primary ones, agriculture and the extractive industries, and was hostile to the concept that the state should look at anything else.  The state rejected that reward looking vision. But notable in that, the ranching counties rejected it as much as any other county.  Only the coal and farming counties went for Hageman. The long held assumption heard by me personally during this election, that "all the ranchers are for Hageman" was flat out wrong.  Of course, it didn't hurt that Gordon is a rancher, while Hageman could only say she was "from" a ranch, but rather obviously "is" a lawyer.  But more than that, in ranching country the tide has turned in my view on the public lands issue as local ranch families fear a transfer from the Federal government to the state, and for good reason.  That idea only is popular in the lower ranks of the extractive industries, were the decisions are not made, and in farming country, which it won't impact.

The state, however, also rejected a massive modification of the state's economy, which was a position that Galeotos took.  This fits into a topic that I posted earlier which may be that the state is basically comfortable with the economy as it is and perhaps only wants a slight modification of it.  It didn't adopt the radical new computer economy proposed by Galeotos, and it didn't feel that businessmen who had done well elsewhere and then come back in, or just came in, such as Galeotos, Dodson and Friess had any solutions to things that they were willing to listen to.

A wake up call should also have been sent to those who like to believe that Wyoming always, and closely tracks national trends.  It does track national trends to some extent, but often it doesn't, and often not closely.  The results of the last general election left some assuming that Wyoming is super solid Trump Country.  It isn't.  Double Trump endorsements didn't carry Friess over the bar and embracing Trump in the primary probably doomed Galeotos to defeat.

The results by the end of the night also had to be a disappointment for Democrats, however.  Democrats fielded a couple of good candidates for the fall but their chances are now basically dashed and they likely know it.  Throne supporters who secretly hoped for Hageman to run, as she had her best chances against her, know that her chances against Gordon are extremely poor.  Trauner supporters who would have hoped for Dodson on the basis that Trauner is more Dodson than Dodson, will have a straight forward race in front of them but one in which a Barrasso who is more unpopular than might have been supposed was still able to command a large majority in the primary.  The Democrats didn't even field a candidate for some offices, and in the remainder where they did their candidates are unknown and have virtually no chance whatsoever, except for some local races where the odd Democrat or two who is well known stands a chance.  The sole exception might be Jim Byrd's race against Ed Buchanan, but that's a real long shot.  Against Elizabeth Cheney, who would have been vulnerable, they did not field a candidate who can win in the fall, which says a lot about the state of their party in general and also says why, for a lot of voters, including former Democrats, the Republican primary is the real election.

A final note might be made of the very odd nature of American elections and the Wyoming primaries in general.  Because of the suicide of the Democratic Party in Wyoming, as noted before, the primary has become the general election, effectively, for many offices.  That's okay I suppose, and most Wyomingites, even those who register as Democrats, actually are Republicans of the old school variety.   So the process is functioning democratically, if oddly.  On the other hand, the first past the post system continues to provide some odd result, but then a party election, which this is, isn't supposed to provide the final results, even if it often does.

August 23, 2018.  The Setting Records Edition.

According to the Tribune, Tuesday primary had an all time record number of voters participate in it, which likely reflects the nature of the candidates.

One thing, however, which wasn't a record, were the number of Democrats. . . all time low.

In other observations, between yesterday's post and today, I've now heard or read a couple of more observations that Galeotos' going for association with Trump did him in, with one of those observations coming from Bill Sniffin, in the Tribune, the former newspaper man and a backer of Galeotos.

And it can't help that the investigations of Trump are getting closer and closer to Trump himself.

August 24, 2018.  The Conspiracy Theory Edition.

You'd think that you'd at least get a break from politics for a couple of days, but this unusual election continues to feature. . . well, the unusual.

And the absurd.

Reader's the Tribune today are graced by a story of the absurd in the form of a conspiracy theory being advanced by Rex Rammell.  Rammell, you will recall, is the extreme libertarian with Constitutional ideas that befit his role, this election season, as a candidate for Wyoming's Constitution Party as that party seems to be populated by people who have a copy of the constitution that the rest of us don't.  I.e, their interpretation of the Constitution is, well, wrong.  Generally, they're state focused libertarians of a really extreme bent.

Rammell ran for Congress last time but dropped out prior to the end and endorsed another candidate who now holds a state office.  He hasn't gone away, however. The relocated Idaho veterinarian who first showed up in Wyoming's newspapers when his Idaho elk ranch was causing problems announced early on to run in the GOP primary on a platform even more extreme than Taylor Haynes, which is really saying something.

Now Rammell is claiming that Mark Gordon "hijacked the [Republican] party" and he's only running as high ranking Republicans urged him to do so in anticipation of Gordon winning the primary as an illegitimate candidate.  Rammell, Rammell claims, is the Republican Party's plan B.

Bull.

Rammell would have been the Democrats dream as there's no earthly way that he could win the race, but that must truly be regarded as a dream as he's so extreme there's no way that he could have won. The poor showing of Haynes is plenty proof of that, as is the defeat of the fairly extreme but nowhere near as extreme Harriet Hageman.

It's hard to know if Rammell really believes this absurdity, but he likely does.  There's a group of people for whom the terms "conservative" and "liberal" are presumed to wholly define who is right and who is wrong, even though in the modern context the terms are less than applicable to many situations.  I don't really regard Rammell and Haynes as "conservative" in the real sense, and I'm not sure that I fully put Hageman there either.  Rammell certainly is extreme right wing, however.

Rammell isn't the only one grousing over the GOP primary results.  Foster Friess is as well.

I never thought Friess had a chance until the very end of the election.  He's not from here, he lives in Teton County (probably part of the kiss of political death for Dodson), and his connection with the state was obviously rather poor.  So that he did as well as he did really surprised me.  I still don't know what all to make of that, but I think the result showed us some sleeping demographic information and the combined results of a lingering late oilfield transient population combined with lots of advertising money.  Be that as it may, Foster is now upset because he believes that thousands of Democrats switched parties to vote.

Before we go to that, his actual statement shows the delusion that some candidates, including Friess and Galeotos, had about Trump's popularity here.  I frankly don't think Trump is popular in Wyoming and I now know of  several voters who would have voted for him but for his self identification with Trump.  One of the Cheyenne newspapers reported his choice to attempt that association as risky at the time.

Friess did that as well and secured, as readers here know, the endorsement of father and son Donalds prior to the election.  Donald Jr.'s, I thought, read particularly oddly as it essentially emphasized that the Trumps have a lot of money and Friess has a lot of money and they met at things that people who have a lot of money meet at. . . which you and I, Wyoming voter, don't go to.

Anyhow, Friess sent a letter out to each GOP candidate running except for Gordon which stated, according to Wyofile:

It seems like the Democrats have figured out this party switch deal to their advantage, . . .  I guess there’s 114,000 registered Republicans and 17,000 registered Democrats. No way is that the actual mix, and with Trump getting 70% of the vote, it shows how the Democrats have been able to control our elections with putting on a Republican coat.

This is a really odd complaint in that both political parties claim they're right and that everyone should be in them.  This shows, quite frankly, that candidates really mean everyone should think like them.

I'll get to the actual news, to the extent we have any, in people switching parties, but perhaps Friess should actually try to board the logic train here.  Trump getting 70% of the Wyoming vote isn't a good result.  It's awful.  Hillary Clinton had about as much chance of winning in Wyoming as Karl Marx would, and yet Trump only got 70% of the vote.  That doesn't show massive Trump support, it shows that even with Clinton as the single worst candidate that the Democrats could have run in 2016 he still didn't get almost every vote.

Indeed, it might be worth noting that Republican voters, when given a choice of candidates in the primary, only gave 7.2% of their vote to Trump.  Not exactly a "woo-wee, we love Trump" vote.  That 7.2% probably better reflects what Republican voters actually have been thinking of Trump even if 70% of the general voters went for Trump in the general election.

None of which means that he doesn't actually have a bit of a point, but even that doesn't play out the way people of his mindset might think.

The Albany County Clerk has stated that she think 2,000 to 3,000 Albany County voters switched parties this election.  This happens every election, she notes, but this was more than normal. And those voters switched to the Republican Party.

Defeated Republicans, like Friess, view this as a conspiracy and are urging the laws be changed so that you have to change your registration twenty five days prior to the election, if you are going to, and also to feature a runoff between the top two vote getters. We note that Friess came in second. This, he feels, would make it more likely that a real "conservative" would get elected.

In actuality, what it likely would do is boost the overall chances of Democrats.  What has been occurring is that there is an election season switch of independents and Democrats into the GOP as it's the only chance they have of actually getting a say.  Frankly, there aren't that many Democrats left in the state anymore and of the ones who remain, quite a few are in the left wing extremist camp and aren't going to switch no matter what. So the Democrats who move over, and the independents, are the centerist ones who likely could be in either party but who don't go with the GOP as they view some of its candidates and politicians as extreme.  The bigger story here, however, is that there's been a migration from the Democratic Party to the GOP in the state dating back to the 1980s.

Indeed this is best symbolized by the fact that some of the Republican stalwarts of long standing were at one time real Democrat standouts.  Fremont County's Eli Bebout is a solid Republican legislator who at one time was a real Republican contender for the Governor's office. But before that, he was a really notable Fremont County Democrat.  Indeed, Fremont County and Sweetwater Counties were very Democratic counties in Wyoming prior to the mid 1980s. As trends like this are long, it's worth noting what occurred.

Starting in the mid 80s and then continuing on to the present day voters who are really old style Democrats lost faith in the Democratic Party and started moving to the Republicans or to no party at all.  As the Democrats became less blue collar and more abortion on demand and every radical social cause.  With each step to the left more Democrats left, but some remain.  

What's missed by the bellyaching from Friess and the like-minded on that is that at the same time that the Democrats were marching left nationally, the GOP tended to be marching right.  A person can argue for or against any of these things but for middle of the road voters the GOP in Wyoming still tends to remain the only party that they can logically be in, which in turn means that the actual party isn't anywhere near as far right as Friess and Rammell believe it is.

And that's because the Wyoming electorate is actually sui generis.

Friess and Rammell, neither of whom are from here, don't seem to grasp that.

And that's why the GOP ought to rejoice about people joining it at the polls.

A lot of the new GOP voters will remain in the GOP. Yep, they'll pull it to the center. But that fact means that the GOP continues to remain viable.

If folks like Friess had their way, the result would mean that thousands of independent and moderate Democrats would have no say until the general election. And as the Democrats have managed to actually field moderates for the Governor's office and the D.C. offices most years, that means that the fortunes of Democrats would be enormously boosted.

Put another way, if Friess believes that because he's an evangelical Republican with a lot of money who is really conservative, he would have won the primary but for switching Democrats, how would have have done against Marty Throne, a Presbyterian Wyoming native who has lived here her whole life?  I don't know where Throne stands on social issues and the election may have well come down to that, but he shouldn't assume that a more controlled primary yields a more "conservative" figure in the Governor's office.  

And for matter, there's no real reason that either party should burden the state with picking their candidate to run in the general, if they don't want an open primary. They could just do it in a convention.  But there's no reason to believe that would result in a Friess or a Hageman either.

On other political matters, things aren't looking good for that figure that Friess cited in his example the other day, Donald Trump.  Indeed, the chances of him getting impeached are getting higher and higher, although its still unlikely.  Amazingly, Trump has managed to make his controversial choice for Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, look really good, as Sessions turns out to be pretty principled and won't interfere with ongoing investigations.

So this of course means that the Democrats are beginning to lick their chops about their chances of retaking the House, which means that Nancy Pelosi is of course anticipating being Speaker again and is already saying she won't step out of the way in regards to that office.

Which of course brings us back to the modern Democratic Party and why it has done so poorly.  Why can't it find anyone to run it other than those whose political views were formed when Lyndon Johnson was the President?

August 31, 2018   The Write In Edition

Oh, you thought you'd be so fortunate as to not have this thread reappear before September, didn't you.

So did I.

Well, no such luck.  It turns out that the primary had some surprising results, and people who were surprised by the results continue to unfortunately make news as well.

First, the surprises.

Some Democrats mounted last minute, although very quite, write in campaigns that had an effect.  The most significant of those was for State Superintendent of Public Instruction in which legislator and lawyer Mike Massie secured the Democratic nomination for that office.

Massie ran, and lost, for this position some years ago in a race that saw Cindy Hill take the position.  In retrospect, most folks likely later wished that Massie had won.  He likely stands less of a chance against incumbent Balow, but he is a solid candidate and it is a good thing that the race now features two solid candidates.

Chris Lowry took the Democratic nomination for State Treasurer.  I know almost nothing about him other than that he's a chemist for a laboratory in Laramie.  That's about all I know, and I feel he stands no chance of success, but at least there's now a choice.

Some state races also saw successful write in campaigns for both Republican and Democratic seats i the legislature, but as I don't know anything about them, I'll pass on further comment.

I can't help but comment, however, of Foster Friess who is taking his loss in the primary very badly.

Frankly, the degree to which Friess was successful really surprised me but I think there's a lot going on there.  If I ever finish some threads that are pending, I'll expand more on that in the future.  But what I'd note is that Friess seems absolutely convinced that Wyoming's politics are quite similar to Arkansas' and that his victory was assured but for mean old Democrats crossing into the GOP and stealing the election from him.  I know that there's a case to be made there, somewhat, but there are other explanations for what occurred and what may very well have occurred is that his loss in the primary means his party won't see the other party take the Governor's chair in November.

Be that as it may, he apparently was seriously contemplating a run in campaign.

Friess, who isn't from here, and who has lived in Teton County only, seems to very seriously have a political demographic model of the state which fits a Southern state rather than a Western one.  He'd do well to winter over in Helena, Missoula, Laramie or even Denver this year, and get a bit of a clue.  He seems to think the nomination was his by applying almost Leninistic logic to the effect that he represents the people, those being the people who count, i.e., the conservative people, who think like he does.  Frankly that isn't exactly how that works at all as Wyoming (future thread, maybe) isn't that type of conservative.

People who are that type of conservative have reason to be really concerned right now in general as it appears that the political winds really are changing in general.  Friess is a diehard Trumpster and Trump is in huge trouble.  By November the Trump political credit might very well be spent.  In any event, it likely was never that great in Wyoming anyhow.

Friess was talked out of mounting a write in campaign, he says, by fellow Republicans who argued that this would only throw votes to Throne.  They were probably correct.

I have to say that while Friess did much better than I thought he would, and while he seemed less of a gadfly as the election went on (and obviously a lot of Wyoming voters came to view him favorably enough to vote for him) there's been a real lack of humility here post election to a degree that's fairly stunning.  To suggest that that the law ought to be changed as you lost, and then contemplate a write in campaign against your own party because you feel that you should have won by right, demonstrates a concept of possession of the office that's really stunning.

It would be different, in my view, if in a closely run race there was a major issue that was hugely distinct between your opponent and you.  I can think of examples of that from the 1970s where national candidates reflected that, although not in a way that I think makes their personal stands admirable.  But if you really have a big issue, such as on a national scale a topic of war vs. peace.  Or if you have a have a local issue where your own party's candidate is sharply at odds with you on a matter of grave importance, that would make sense to me. But here that's simply not the case. There are really no issues where Friess and Gordon aren't basically on the same page, more or less.  That means, quite frankly, that Friess was the weaker candidate simply because he's a rich outsider, and that would have been taken into account by some voters who would otherwise have gone fro the GOP in the Fall.

A couple of real differences, although not ones, that are in sharp distinction, that may weigh into Friess' odd reaction is that Friess appears to be a genuine Trumpster.  Most Wyomingites aren't, but those who are, tend to feel that Trump is right on things at a level that's dogmatic.  That scares quite a few rank and file Republicans, but those who feel that way don't grasp that at all.  Trump is right, they feel, on everything, and people who don't agree with that are deluded or worse.  The second thing, however, is that Friess is clearly an evangelical Christian and thinks because Wyoming is a conservative state it is by default an evangelical Christian one. That's flat out wrong.  In fact, historically Wyoming had been one of the least religiously observant states in the union, and that for its entire history.  We will have more on that in the thread I keep mentioning, but in terms of really strong religious adherence that may make a difference in an election you have to look towards practicing Catholics and Mormons here, both of whom are a demographic minority and neither of which are evangelicals.

For all those reasons, it seems to me that Friess has forgotten where he says he lives, which was apparent during the election and which has become rather obvious after it.

September 6, 2018  The Money Edition and Fifth Column Edition.

The Tribune reported yesterday that the recent primary pushed this current election up to the most spendy in Wyoming's history. . . and its' not even over.

Costs for a Wyoming election do have to be kept in context.  Even expensive Wyoming elections are cheaper than man of those around the country. But at the same time, with the smaller population, they should be.

The Tribune reports that the total amount spent in the 2010 Gubernatorial contest was a little over $4,000,000. That is, that's entire amount spent by all candidates during the entire campaign.  This year, by contrasts, the Republican contestants have already spent $8,000,000.

Of those, Foster Friess spent a whopping $2, 680,000 in his race to defeat.  The victor, Mark Gordon, spent a little over $2,000,000, which was a little under the amount spent by defeated candidate Sam Galeotos.  Third place finisher Harriet Hageman, the only candidate to only use Wyoming vendors in her campaign, spent a little over $1,000,000.

This certainly tells us that the campaign was unusually vigorously contested, to be sure.  It probably also tells us something about the role that Friess played in the campaign, as the megabucks Teton County import had a lot of money to spend, and frankly it worked fairly well for him as he did quite well in the overall vote count.

That may also give us a bit of an insight, sort of, as to why Friess has seemed to take the results badly.  He seems to have expected to actually win and even commissioned a private poll that showed that he would.  He's made some somewhat odd statements about perceiving a Devine mandate to run for the office and paradoxically seems to also view that mandate to have been frustrated by late Democratic changes to Republican registration at the polls, which if thought about deeply might tend to suggest that he ought to reconsider what he perceives to be that calling, or perhaps ought to be more careful how he phrases his statement so that its not misunderstood.

Wyoming's candidates to date spent more than those running for the same office in Maine, Nevada and Alaska, the latter of which doesn't total up to $1,000,000.

On spending less than $1,000,000, Democrat Mary Throne only spent $142,000.  In that fashion this race continues to resemble the one in which Democrat Mike Sullivan took the office, as he basically didn't have to do much until the general election, by which time the Republicans had ripped themselves apart in the primary.  We'll see if that history repeats itself.

Speaking of Friess, who received a couple of endorsements from Donald Trump, Jr. and one very late one from the President himself, that President is blaming a late reminder from Don Jr. for the lateness of that endorsement.  According to the President, his son reminded him to make the endorsement a bit too late, which is why he came out at the bitter end rather than earlier.

I really have my doubts that a Trump endorsement would have pushed Friess up over the bar, and indeed, I think associating with Trump turned Galeotos' campaign into a $2,000,000 failure.  As I've noted before, I don't think Trump is that popular in Wyoming and at any rate the news for Trump keeps getting worse and worse, which is beginning to have an undeniable impact in pending elections around the country. Galeotos has plenty of company.  The Trump administration is beginning to recall the Nixon administration in its late stages more and more, something that's bound to play itself out on the national political stage.

Yesterday the New York Times ran an article by an individual they claim to know by name who reports himself as a conservative fifth columnist inside the Trump administration, and not the only one, who is secretly working against the Presidents wilder actions.  Basically, the columnist reports that the truly conservative things that have been happening are largely the work of insiders who resist Trump's incoherent directions and that the nation should take solace that this is occurring.  Basically, the columnist claims that there are a group of administration insiders acting as a conservative rear guard holding down the fort until the President is gone.  It even claims that they considered removing him under the Constitutional impairment clause but elected instead just to sabotage Trump's worst inclinations and in their place enforce genuinely conservative ones.

In most administration this would be a real bombshell but by this time everyone is so acclimated to constant turmoil I'm skeptical that will occur. We'll see.  This would actually explain why Trump seems to head in one direction, such as embracing Putin, while the official policy of the US heads in another, such as imposing tough sanctions.

But it's also a bit much in some ways.  For one thing, if such a deeply caring person was a secret insider, why is he blowing it now (unless the whole administration is a house of cards and he knows its about to collapse).  And the history of such "secret insider" events usually tends to show that real events are much more mundane and the big conspiracies tend to be just the urging of cabinet members on the office holder, rather than anything more fifth column.  Indeed, the history also tends to show that the secret person is much more junior than the breaking news would hint at.

Of course, right now, we know none of that.

Trump, predictably, is raging against the New York Times.

My prediction is that Facebook will be left and right insane today.

September 6, 2016  Part Two: The Big Sky Edition

Donald Trump is going to Billings Montana today.

Why?

Well that's a good question and there are a number or reasons this is likely why.  In former years Presidents who were in political trouble tended to fly overseas. . . or at least after World War Two they started doing that.  That was always good for press.  Now, however, Trump tends to appear at rallies.  Appearing to his base appears to be the one thing that he can still definitely do that turns people out and gives him good press. . . although the results where he has appeared haven't been sterling by any means.

So why Montana?

Senator John Testor is the reason.

Montana's Senator John Testor.

Democratic Senator John Testor is running for reelection in Montana.  He's occupied that office since January 2007 after moving to the United States Senate from being President of the Montana state senate.

Running against Testor is Matt Rosendale, who is going to lose.  Rosendale is the Montana State Auditor and I frankly know almost nothing about him.

Which doesn't mean that this will be a cakewalk for Testor.  Outsiders will note, inaccurately, that Montana is a Western state (correct), Western states are conservative (generally correct but misunderstood) and that Trump is popular in the West (incorrect).  While those things have some element of truth in them, they're very misunderstood as the recent Wyoming primary demonstrated.  Nonetheless, Testor has been pointing out recently things that he supported Trump on.

Testor's from a state that's very odd politically and he's always had to walk a fine line on some things.  Montana is not nearly as conservative as people imagine it to be, and an immigration of California expatriots has impacted the state's politics in general.  It tends to have an old fashioned mix of conservative, but Democratic, farm interests, conservative Republican ranch interests, and liberal town interests.  And this has been the case for a long time and has reflected back in its politics.  Montana had a stout mineral severance tax long before Wyoming did and has been really aggressive on water conservation in a way that Wyoming has not been.  It passed really repressive and nativist legislation during World War One but it also sent Janette Rankin, the pacifist Democrat, to Congress twice making Montana the only state to have somebody in Congress who voted "no" on entering World War Two (which she also did in regards to World War One).  Testor, therefore, fits a certain Montana mold.

And that mold is one that Republicans need to worry about and apparently are. Testor has been mentioned by insiders as a potential Presidential candidate in 2020.

Indeed, Testor has to be well aware that if he had run in 2016, and his name had been mentioned, he'd be the President now.  He's not a whackadoodle Socialist like certain neo and paleo Democrats are, and he's not of the Democrats Bright Young Club of 1972, like every other Democrat who tends to be mentioned for the office tends to be.  He's a wheat farmer by trade, which is about as American as you can get, never lived far from where he was born until elected to the Senate, butchers his own beef and takes it with him to Washington D. C.. and has a family that even now still looks like your average farm family from the anywhere farming.   He has an A- rating from the NRA, higher than some Republicans get and almost certainly higher than anyone who the Democrats might otherwise ponder running.  He's generally a moderate, but has exhibited the Democratic middle migration on social issues.

In other words, had he ran in 2016 he'd have looked like a Republican to Republicans who couldn't stand Trump.

The GOP is in a situation where, right now, it has to be worried about Democrats running for the office in 2020.  Joe Biden is apparently considering doing so, knowing full well that his decision not to enter the race late gave the office to Trump.  The Democrats being what they are, there will be serious discussion of dragging out some musty candidate from the 1970s again and I wouldn't even put it past them to run the Pants Suit one more time, but Testor has to be pondering entering the race.

Which is why Trump is in Billings in a quixotic effort to boost his opponent in a region where Trump isn't really that popular, but the GOP hasn't managed to figure that out.  Perhaps Trump ought to stop and talk to Sam Galeotos on his way to Billings.]

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:

Brian Harnisch‏ @BrianHarnisch Sep 10

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

 

So it turns out that more Republicans registered to vote, but those increased numbers didn't come from the Democratic Part or from Independents in sufficient numbers to make a difference in the general election.  The State gained 3,738 new Republican voters it appears, or that's the net result after those who switched parties are taken into account.

This boosts some theories I have about what we saw in the primary, but I haven't had the time to finish the posts. Maybe that's a good thing as this did sort of make me question some of my assumptions, but this data bolsters them.

So, at the very most, after all the whining and complaining by those like Friess about changing the law to shut the door on party hopping Democrats, the actual result of that would be to shut the door on Republicans who want to participate.  Not that I think they'd care that much.  Based upon their statements I think it can't be assumed that those sorts of Republicans are regarded as the ones who aren't right thinking Republicans. . . . in more than one way.

September 27, 2018. The family squabble edition

Could it really be twenty days since our last entry here?  Wow.

Bet you didn't miss it either.

Yes, Wyoming politics has been really quiet.  Politics elsewhere have not been, but here they have been, thankfully.

Not that they've been entirely quiet.

In what must be regarded as both quixotic and minor, some disgruntled conservatives, probably of very limited numbers, have started a Draft Foster Freiss movement.

What could possibly make somebody think that this would work is beyond me.  It won't.  If he coldn't win the GOP primary and felt that was because the wrong kind of people (i.e. Democrats) were allowed in to vote against him, what makes anyone who is a Freiss backer think that in the general, where everyone could vote, he could pull it off.

No, if anything, and it would likely not amount to anything, Freiss actually being drafted into the election would help Throne who is going to have a tough time against Gordon.

In other news, the prominent western Wyoming Gosar family is involved in an odd dispute with their sibling, Paul Gosar, who moved away and became a Congressman from Arizona.  The family dispute spilled into the election when members of the Gosar family appeared in an advertisement for his opponent and it's become a general argument.  Paul Gosar blamed the other Gosar's appearing in an advertisement on former President Obama, which is additionally odd.

The Gosars are well known and one of them has run for office within the state previously  Still, seeing a Wyoming family, and they really are a Wyoming family, spill into the national scene in this fashion is truly odd, to say the least.

October 9, 2018.  The Quiet Man Edition

If anything could better demonstrate that the primary election is the real election for most offices in Wyoming than the non campaigning currently going on, I don't know what it would be.  Almost nothing at all has been going on since the primary in virtually all of the races. And indeed, why should anything be going on? They're over.

The Tribune did run an article on the race for the U.S. Senate on Sunday which was interesting.  Gary Trauner is a known name and you would think that the Senate race would be noisier.  Trauner wold apparently like it to be as he's complaining that Barrasso wont' debate him, other than one scheduled event.

Barrasso's declination on debating is wise.  He has nothing to gain from it and he's almost certainly going to win.  Quite frankly Barrasso doesn't come across well at all as a speaker except on rare exception (I saw him speak once at a Boy Scout event where he was very comfortable and came across very well, for example).  Indeed, at least according to the Tribune he's been making appearances in Wyoming but they're basically unannounced, which keeps them from being really focused on.  He's always returned to Wyoming on every occasion that allowed.

The Tribune's article was fair to both sides and noted that the Senate has been very busy, which is obvious.  Of interest in the article, however, was that Barrasso apparently did worse in the primary for his position than any candidate in Wyoming's history.  He still took 64.9% of the primary vote in the GOP primary but apparently that's worse than the incumbent normally does.  Dodson took 28.5%.  Far fight wing candidate Holz took 2.6%, which was worse than the 4% that went to others.

Dodson was very well funded and made a serious run at the office and normally that would be a good thing for Trauner, but I don't expect Trauner to do much better than Dodson, and I doubt that Trauner does either.  Trauner came within .5% of beating incumbent Barbara Cubin in 1988 in the U.S. House race and that has to be weighing on his mind.  Absent a real gaff by Barrasso, he'd be lucky to get 30% of the vote.  But he might get that.

Indeed, Barrasso is vulnerable on some things, particularly his poor stance on public lands.  If Dodson had chosen to keep running as an independent, as he originally had planned on doing, this might be a really noisy and different race at this point.

October 10, 2018. The They're Still Running Edition.

This thread has grown so in active that a person might reasonably assume that the election is over, nothing is going on, or the author has grown tired of politics.

Hmmm. . . ..

Well, anyhow, the race has been pretty quiet, or races I should say, but some things are going on and those things are debates.

Apparently the various candidates, including the third party candidates for Governor, had a debate recently, although I didn't hear it and only watched read about it in the Tribune.  The Tribune's article wasn't enormously informative, but did indicate that what distinguished it was that Liz Cheney emphasized her actual record while the other candidates spoke on their general platforms.  As she's the only one who has held office, that makes sense.

I did listen to the Gubernatorial candidates debate that was held at Casper College, on the radio, on October 19. It was quite interesting.

I can't say that there were any enormous surprises associated with it, but there were at least some minor ones.  Mary Throne, who I have heard speak personally at a public function I was at, did much better as a speaker than the one time I heard her, and like her closing remarks emphasized, she didn't shy away from stating some positions bluntly that are likely to be unwelcome locally, which is to her credit.

Mark Gordon also performed a little better than he did in the primary debates.  Gordon doesn't generally come across as a great speaker, which of course not everyone is, but his performance in the debate was better than it had been in the primaries.

The real surprise in the debates was Libertarian Larry Struempf.  Struempf's campaign has been so silent that I had a hard time finding him and even a Libertarian website doesn't list him as a candidate.

Struempf is holds a PhD and works a computer professor for Laramie County Community College.  In response to questions from the panel he frankly came across much more like a middle of the road leaning left Republican rather than a Libertarian.  Listening to him, exactly one of his answers was really of a Libertarian nature.  The rest weren't. For example, at least twice he suggested that Wyoming needs to raise property taxes.  On a question relating to firearms carry at the University of Wyoming both he and Throne deferred to the school on the question, but he did so more succinctly than Throne.

If Struempf was a surprise, Rammel, at least by the end of the debate, was not.  Rammel conceives of himself as the only conservative in the race and seems to genuinely believe that only he can save the state and its people from "becoming blue", and that he's the last bastion preventing a liberal takeover of the state.  He went after Gordon a couple of times in the same fashion that Harriet Hageman did in the debates, but in a much less polished fashion, accusing him of being a secret liberal.

All in all, the debate was well done and refreshing.  Having said that, I remain disappointed by the failure of the panelist to ask certain questions.  There were no questions directly on public lands, which remains a hit issue with voters and which I'd like to hear Throne, Gordon and frankly Struempf, discuss.  And there was no discussion on hot ticket social issues, which with the recent rightward shift of the United States Supreme Court may become relevant to the next Governor of Wyoming fairly quickly.

On national shifts, those listening to the national news and in particular the national news programs would have noted that it's now believed that the GOP may pick up Senate seats next month but that there's an 80% chance the Democrats will take the House, so we'll be in for a divided Congress.  That the GOP would pick up seats is a big change in Republican fortunes and is apparently a result of the Kavanaugh hearings. That would mean that the Senate would remain favorable to President Trump's appointments for the remainder of his term.  It would also mean, with a divided government, that probably next to nothing would get done otherwise.

Maybe.

Or maybe not.  The murder of Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents inside of the embassy in Turkey seems to be working a real shift in Congress.  While the President remained equivocal about who was to blame for what early on, Republicans in the Senate have not and over the weekend they were making it plain that they would be part of a bipartisan effort to sanction Saudi Arabia in some fashion and that they had very little care or concern about the President's view of the matter.

Occasionally, although it is rare, a big event like this cause Congress to rediscover itself and while its far too early to tell, there is some reason to believe that if the Republicans and Democrats in Congress unite over Khashoggi, and they should, that they may rediscover their authority and each other and begin to function again.  It remains to be seen, but the degree to which they were making it plain that they had no doubt over matters and were prepared to move forward was indeed interesting.

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