Earlier this past week, Wyoming's voters learned, if they're paying attention, a little about the personal life of a candidate that they otherwise probably know very little about. More specifically, due to news reporting on former Secretary of State Max Maxfield filing an election claim against Representative Chuck Gray, pertaining to his dropped bid for Cheney's seat, we now know that Gray only reported around $10,000 in income from a recent tax year. Maxfield's point is that his reported loan to himself makes very little sense for a many who has such a dismal income.
And, truly, that is odd.
What that points to is fairly obvious. He has family or personal money in a fairly substantial amount.
Does that matter?
Well, maybe, maybe not.
It's worth noting that two of the nation's richest Presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt, were champions of the poor. Indeed, it's a rich irony of modern political life that the beloved Republican Theodore Roosevelt would have been regarded as a Socialist RINO by lots of today's Republicans. But their wealth was hardly a secret at any point.
It's also worth noting that Donald Trump, the hero of the Republican far right, is also a very rich man, although we don't really know how rich, for whatever that's worth.
But none of that is the question. The question is do we really have a right to know these things? I.e., The Roosevelt's wealth was not an accurate predictor of their political inclinations, so does this sort of thing even matter?
Well, it might.
Let's take the current Secretary of State race. The Secretary of State is in charge of elections, as we know, but on a daily basis he's more involved with the relationship of businesses to the state. Uniform Commercial Code filings, corporate registrations, etc., are the business of the Secretary of State.
Indeed, at least two prior Secretaries of State have had huge impacts on corporate registrations in Wyoming, one massively encouraging out-of-state entities to incorporate here and another very much discouraging it. The Limited Liability Company, now present all over the country, was a Wyoming invention that came out of Kathy Karpen's stint as Secretary of State.
A person with some relationship to business would presumably be the best occupation of that sort of position. Elections are, quite frankly, nearly a side show with the office.
Gray has a BA/BS from the University of Pennsylvania from 2012. More specifically, he's a product of the Wharton School of Business, one of the country's best business schools, which is coincidentally also where Donald Trump graduated from. One of my cousins did as well. According to a 2016 letter to the editor, at which time he was running for the state House of Representatives, he's single and an only child, and grew up in California. He's associated with a series of media outlets (at least radio) owned by his father located in Natrona County, and according to the letter he came here to run them. At one time he had a very right wing radio commentary show on one of the stations, although I've never heard it. He's a Roman Catholic, which is publicly available information, but I knew it anyhow, as on rare occasion I've seen him at Mass. I'll note it's rare not because he rarely attends, I don't think that's true at all, but because I don't attend any of the numerous Masses offered every weekend that he does.
Does any of that matter?
Well, it probably does, to some degree. The Wharton degree is impressive, but it's also the case that he seemingly remains in what we might regard his tender years to some extent, for a position that requires some expertise with business on a practical level, or at least I'd argue that it does. His primary opponent's qualifications include being a practicing lawyer, and being in the business of law (it is a business) for a decade or so. She's been in the State Senate for about as long as Gray has been in the House. She grew up in Riverton (and like all candidates with long roots here notes that she's a "fifth generation" Wyomingite). She's also married.
It would seem pretty clear that qualification wise, Nethercott has Gray beat hands down. Gray's only real campaign point is his view that the 2020 election was stolen, to add to it, and he seems to be part of the GOP right wing strategy to seize Secretary of State offices for the far right. He's been showing 2,000 Mules at his events.1
That actually gets to the religion point. I don't know Nethercott's religious views, and in a normal year, I wouldn't really care. I'll be perfectly frank that if a Shiite Muslim ran for the office who had built up a good personal business and held degrees in accounting and law, I'd vote for him or her, and you can substitute the "Shiite Muslim" there for Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto or what have you, for this office. But I do note that if you have a known religious adherence, and you are seemingly departing from it, that raises questions.
Catholicism takes an extremely dim view of lying, and for a person in a public office if it's a significant lie it can be a mortal sin. All mortal sins can be forgiven, but for a person in that sort of role, doing what you can to rectify the impact of the sin is necessary. It may be that Gray really believes the fibs he's telling about the election, or at least implying, but that alone would raise real questions about his fitness for office. If he doesn't believe them or is willfully fooling himself, that's another matter.
What about being single?
I can't see that it matters for this office at all, nor does being married.
I would note that for other offices it sort of might. I'm not going ot delve into it but on the GOP races family values are frequently cited, and the GOP has made strong points about being pro family and pro traditional definition of family. That's all fine and provides a reason to vote for them. Social issues matter.2
Yeah, these couples again. The point is that if you are pro family, but lack one in this sense, it at least raises some questions.
But if you are a strong proponent of family and are lacking some traditional aspects of one, that raises questions. They are questions that can be answered in ways that satisfy voters or not, I suspect, some of which may be downright painful to provide. If you frequently mention family, your love of family and children, it's legitimate to ask why you don't have any. A life that seemingly was principally devoted to work in which children were absent may reflect a personal tragedy of some sort, or an intentional avoidance of children. Answering one way implies something quite a bit different from another. Yes, it's personal, maybe painful, but it's personal in the same way that advocating for prohibition while being a closet drinker, or advocating for banning abortion and then having one, or advocating for gun control while keeping guns yourself, etc., etc. are.
What about residence claims?
I mentioned that just above, twice really, and this is one topic that candidates bring up constantly themselves. Candidates whose families have very long histories here always mention it. When Cheney first ran, those running against her mentioned it, and her defenders, many of whom are now her detractors, had some pretty fanciful answers for why she was in fact a native.3 Many of the same people who now accuse her of being a Virginian were really ready to ignore that up until now, but will cite that her main opponent, Harriet Hageman, has a family that's been in the state for "four generations".4 As noted, Nethercott cites her family beating out Hageman by an entire generation.5 6
Does this matter?
Well, it may and may not, once again, depending on up what that might really mean.
I'll be frank that I’m pretty nativist. But I certainly don't think you have to have a family going back to the retreat of the Ice Sheet here in order to run. I'd prefer candidates to be from Wyoming, and indeed that's one of the reasons I wasn't keen on Cheney the first time she ran. But I don't think this has to go back two, four or more generations, or really even any. I'd also note that this is the case, only Lynette Gray Bull has any right to be in the race at all.
Indeed, what I think it really boils down to is being "native to this place" in the way that Wendell Berry referred to it, quoting Wes Jackson. Some people not from here, are, and some from here, aren't.
Indeed, going further, what I think that opens up in the topic of provincialism and carpetbaggerism.
Charges of being a carpetbagger are easier to look at. A carpetbagger is, of course, somebody who moves into a location just to take advantage of it for personal gain without having any real connection to it.
Cheney was open to that criticism the first time she ran, but while in office she pretty steadfastly represented what most Wyomingites held to be their interests most of the time, and was loved by the GOP. In being willing to sacrifice her career for the Constitution, which she clearly is, she's immune to any charges of being a carpetbagger at this point.
This is much less clear in the cases of Chuck Gray and Gubernatorial candidate Rex Rammell. It's easy to wonder about Gray, who is still a political toddler in some ways, as he was only here for two years when he first ran for office in 2014. And the fact that his work connection with the case is thin has to make a person wonder. Rammell, for his part, is originally from Idaho, where he also participated in a series of gadfly campaigns. Normally, quite frankly, a person from the region can't really be accused of being a carpetbagger as they're from the region, which is extremely similar to being from the state. Rammell is an Idaho native. He moved in to the state in 2012, just like Gray, citing a veterinarian position he wanted to take as the reason why, but after a string of failed campaigns in Idaho launching off on new ones in Wyoming does make a person wonder.
It doesn't make a person wonder as much, however, as it does when the Idahoan accuses a person actually from Wyoming as being inelgible to run, as he had a Marine Corps career that took him out of the state, and who takes a shot at Governor Gordon as he was born in New York as his mother happened to be there when she went into labor, both of which Rammell has done.7
A person might wonder about Anthony Bouchard, who is from Florida originally, but he seems to have had a public life in the state prior to having a political one, which you really can't say about Gray or Rammell, but he points to something else that is disturbing to natives, which is the influences of migrants into the state.
Migrants into the state have always been a feature of Wyoming's demographics, but it hasn't always worked the exact same way. Frankly regional migration has always been very common and from this prospective looking at Wyoming as part of an overall region is helpful. Nebraskans, Coloradans, Montanans, Dakotans, etc., come into the state, and we go there, pretty routinely. This is part of the natural mix of demographics of the state, especially one that has borders that look like a big box.
The state has always taken in migrants from long distances too, but often these same people flowed back out when the economy turned. But more recently the state began to take in the very wealth from elsewhere who very often have radically different views than natives or regional natives do, and to add to that the state has taken in an influx of people from what, for lack of a better way to put it, had been part of the Confederacy at one time, or part of the Rust belt, or from the Pacific Coast.
Wyoming's politics had traditionally been conservative, but middle of the road as well, if that can make sense. To a large degree, the central defining feature of much of the Wyoming view traditionally has been "I don't care what you do, as long as you leave me alone." Wyomingites were pretty laissez-faire on social issues for the most part, and pretty patriotic. Wyoming of 1982, rather than 2022, would have been shocked and appalled by Donald Trump. In a state in which up to 50% of the population is from somewhere else, it's folly to believe that the state's current politics isn't a reflection of the politics of elsewhere, right now, to a pretty strong degree.
As a strong recent example of this, the amendment to the state constitution back in the 90s to prevent Obamacare from telling us what to do with medical treatment probably wouldn't have passed in the 70s or 80s. And efforts to restrict abortion in the legislature, and I do oppose abortion, fell flat in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Something culturally changed to bring us where we now are.
As part of that, big money has come in from various sources to fund really extreme right wing politics, which was coincident with a migration in of people who held very strong far right views. One old time Wyoming politician publically stated that this had corrupted the state's politics when he got out.
Probably nothing symbolizes this better than Susan Gore and Foster Freiss. Gore is an import with Goretex money and has been a major factor in the Wyoming Liberty Group. The group's views are really imported ones, not ones that rose up here locally. Freiss, as a politician, was a good example of the same thing. Extremely wealthy and very conservative in a non Wyoming sense. When he ran, his campaign struck me like something out of Alabama, more than Wyoming.
Of course, that doesn't mean that nativism doesn't have its own problems when taken to excess. We've really been seeing that recently as well.
Truth be known, Wyoming has a very long and pronounced history of our politicians having moved in. This doesn't mean that every politician has moved in, but more than we might suppose. Certainly, early in the state's history this was practically the rule for higher office. Francis E. Warren, for example, didn't grow up here.
Being from here does, or rather might, given you insights you'd otherwise lack if you didn't. I've thought for some time that if you haven't lived through a couple of petroleum depressions, you really don't know anything about the state. And if you don't identify with the land itself, you aren't qualified in my view to run. But the claims about being a "x" generation Wyomingite have a danger in that to a certain degree certain people almost assume that this makes you a type of royalty.
Indeed, just because your ancestors homesteaded in 1898 doesn't mean that they were benighted souls of Arthurian Legend. It probably means they were dirt poor. Rich people didn't homestead. And being part of one of Wyoming's traditional occupations means something, but it doesn't mean everything, particularly if you aren't doing it. "Grew up on a ranch" tends to mean that you aren't ranching anymore.
Indeed, this gives rise to what we'll coin the John Wayne Effect, which is that I dress like a cowboy and claim a tie to ranching, I must be just like the Ethan character in The Searchers, as that's just like John Wayne was really like, right?
Ummmm. . . .
This may sound silly, but there's all sorts of people who run around assuming that John Wayne was who he portrayed in the movies. No, he was an actor. Yes, he bought a ranch at some point with his movie money, but he wasn't actually a 19th Century cowboy, but a 20th Century actor. And to make the point all the more, he wasn't a Marine Corps Sergeant in the Second World War, either. He didn't even see service in the war.
This really shows up this time of year as people will cite they're "from a ranching family" or in some cases appear in campaign photos like gunfighters or cowboys. Gunfighters, I'll note, is a new one. Cowboys isn't.
Now, don't get me wrong, dressing like a rancher is okay if you like to dress that way, but if you appear in campaign ads dressed like a cowboy and with ranching things and stuff, you probably better really be one. Otherwise, it suggests, or should suggest, that you somehow want to keep your real means of making a living sort of secret or are somehow not too proud of it. Or, there's some disconnect between your means of making a living and how you imagine your real character, probably identifying with the "rugged individualist".
Well, I've punched cattle. . . and still do, and I love it. But it's hard work, truly.
So what of all of this?
I guess these things cut both ways, but what it comes down to in the end is the extent to which you really identify with the state on an existential basis. And by that I mean the whole state. If you can't walk into the Hines General Store in Ft. Washakie and identify with the occupants there, and their problems, at least a little, you probably aren't qualfied to be there. And by the same extension, if you can't walk into the Hines General Store without looking like a goofball to those there, you probably ought not to be running.
We'll call that the Hines General Store Test.
Footnotes.
1. As an aside, all of this makes Gray's early Congressional race ads in which he appeared at oilfield locations wearing a hard hat pretty silly, really. Gray isn't from here, hasn't been here that long, and has never worked that kind of job in so far as we can tell. Those were of course supposed to show his support for the oil industry, but he hasn't even been here long enough to experience what its like when we have a real industry collapse.
2. Or at least they should, as we note later on in this essay, to a large degree in Wyoming's history they really have not.
3. I was told by one of them, at the time, that hte fact that her mother had gone to grade school in Wyoming made Liz a native even if she wasn't born and raised here.
I'd bet dollars to donuts now that the same persion was her fan all the way into 2020 and then now probably calls her a "RINO".
4. And some of those same people are supporters of Chuck Gray, who is not a native and who hasn't been here all that long.
5. It may be just me, but I wonder how people tally the count for generations. My family has been in the region since the 1860s or so, but that's only three generations in reality in terms of families. I guess that may say something about my family marrying late or something, but four or five generations is a really long time for Wyoming and its a little hard to add up. In pondering it, however, part of my wife's family which arrived later would make her the fourth generation, and one that arrived in the region earlier would make her something like the sixth or seventh.
I'll note that some people take liberties with this, although I'm not saying any of the current politicians do, in counting a prior ancestor as a generation even if their kids packed up and moved to California, where your parents were born, and then you moved back in.
6. It's also worth noting that the Democrat Lynette Gray Bull has the best claim to ancient ancestor status in the state and region, as she's a Native American.
7. Both of Gordon's parents were ranchers in Kaycee Wyoming and he grew up on the ranch. As an odd fact, Gordon is the grand nephew of Gen. George S. Patton.
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