Opinion: Republican Wyoming, what happened to you?

By Susan Stubson

Oct. 20, 2024 3 AM PT

CASPER, Wyo. — “Who out there catches horses for a living?” Gabriel the Bull asked. It was a hot, windy evening in July as the singer-songwriter took to the stage at a farm turned concert venue just outside of town. Somebody deep in the cottonwoods let out a halfhearted whoop. Otherwise, silence. “My God, Wyoming,” he muttered, “what has happened to you?”

It’s the question I’ve been asking myself repeatedly. This summer, as I knocked doors on behalf of moderate Republican candidates and worked as an election judge at Wyoming’s Aug. 20 primary election, I saw my friends and neighbors drift further to the right, their views increasingly unsupportable. We are a jumpy crew, in a state cauterized by fear.

And boy, are there stories to tell. Wyoming’s primary, where more than 90% of the races were determined before election day, solidified a state Freedom Caucus majority in the Legislature and underlined our MAGA identity. With the lowest turnout in a decade, the results confirmed what I saw and heard on the campaign trail: a suspicious, angry, disengaged, weary (take your pick) majority-Republican electorate.

One doorbell at a time, I got an earful of disinformation and apathy, but I also heard from plenty of people, conservatives all, who refused to buy into the GOP’s dark message of a nation in decline (I’m one of them). Many were earnestly trying to do the right thing, but they did not know what to believe. Yet the tallies don’t lie: When in doubt, we vote tribal.

It is a reflection of who we are becoming, citizens willing to place their lives in the hands of candidates who parrot an agenda rich in threats and slim on facts, a proxy for our worst instincts. Two-thirds of Wyoming’s Republican congressional delegation are election deniers. Sen. Cynthia Lummis voted against certifying results of the 2020 presidential election. Rep. Harriet Hageman, who trounced Liz Cheney in 2022, called the 2020 election “rigged.”

Wyoming’s voters are choosing candidates who push hard-right messages that closely align with former President Trump’s fight songs: This is a state on the precipice of failure, its tyrannical government run by spendy RINOs who have allowed our property taxes to soar and tolerated a fragile election system threatened by illegal immigration.

None of this is true. Wyoming’s tax burden, with no income tax or corporate tax, ranks 48th in the country. The state has been largely unaffected by unauthorized immigration; less than 1% of the population is undocumented. Overall, the immigrant population has remained relatively steady at less than 4%. Our elections are safe, with just three documented cases of voter fraud since 2000. Recent tests of voting equipment showed 100% accuracy.

Our quality of life is not just good, it’s rich. Here on the High Plains, we have clean air and deep relationships. The worst traffic jams? Bison crossings in Yellowstone. We have next-door-neighbor access to our political leaders.

We are not without problems, however. Wyoming’s energy economy is making a thorny pivot to renewables. We face a mental health crisis, ranking third in the nation for suicide. There is an exodus of young people. Tricky issues, yes, but hardly the seeds of an uprising.

Yet the state continues its extreme rightward march as voters embrace messaging rooted in fear divorced from reality. Moderate Republican Speaker of the House Albert Sommers, rancher and electrical engineer, was dispatched by political newcomer Laura Taliaferro Pearson, a school bus driver and rancher who hammered voters with incendiary mailers. Make Liberty Win, a Virginia-based group, was behind some of the misleading mailers supporting Freedom Caucus candidates. One falsely accused several Republican legislators of attempting to remove Trump from the ballot. Others gave voters the wrong dates for the primary election or used a photograph of a Virginia man to portray a Wyoming candidate of the same name.

Nonetheless, the strategy worked.

The hard-right takeover of the state has been swift, well-organized and breathtaking in its below-the-belt attacks and dangerous rhetoric. John Bear, Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ former chair, likened his group to “a military unit that’s ready to fight and stand in the gap for the people of Wyoming.” Underscoring this fervor is an impenetrable support for Trump, who has advised all Americans to prepare for World War III. Wyomingites take it to heart. During this summer’s campaigning, Freedom Caucus candidates hit the parade circuit atop army tanks, the optics difficult to ignore.

Convictions conquer facts, and the unease is palpable. Wyoming is itching for a fight. An SNF Agora Institute political attitudes poll conducted in May found that 82% of Wyoming’s conservatives think violence is justified in advancing their political goals; only 30% believe President Biden won the 2020 election.

“Someone is going to get hurt,” a friend told me recently after describing a particularly tense meeting about a proposed gravel pit, an issue that has galvanized my hometown of Casper. I carried this tension with me. As I canvassed, I calibrated each door knock. I noted welcome mats cheerfully messaging “House protected by Smith and Wesson”; the bumper stickers, “My pit bull is fine, it’s me you should be worried about”; the flag, “Biden is not my president.” I made judgments on the fly, often moving to the next house.

In other years, door knocks were fun, a way to catch up with friends and make my candidates’ case. Not this time. One acquaintance refused to open the glass door that separated us. Hey, I wanted to say, your daughter babysat my kids. We sold doughnuts together in the church lobby. Her message was clear: Please leave.

This retreat to our corners confounds me. It’s unsettling, a collapse of our treasured view of the state as a small town with one long street. Not only are we losing our identity, we are losing our soul.

This is how the rabid win. Traditional Republicans, conservatives — call us what you will — we are beaten down, shamed for dialoguing with a perceived enemy, mocked for accepting data and facts, and castigated for our allegiance to the rule of law. I grieve the demise of the Albert Sommerses of this country, those thoughtful leaders who are ill-suited for this new gritty ring, unwilling to peddle fictions or traffic in the language of war. As we retreat from the arena, only the barbarians remain.

Susan Stubson is a writer, lawyer and a sixth-generation Wyomingite.