In a stunning defeat, Wyoming House Speaker Albert Sommers, who was first elected to the Wyoming Legislature a dozen years ago, lost to Kemmerer resident Laura Taliaferro Pearson, who entered politics during the pandemic because of concerns over pandemic masking mandates.
Pearson narrowly beat out Sommers, R-Pinedale, but trounced Bondurant’s Bill Winney in the newly opened primary seat in Senate District 14, which covers four counties: Sublette, Lincoln, Sweetwater and Uinta.
Shortly after polls closed, it had appeared Sommers had handily beat Pearson. But as results in Lincoln and Uinta trickled in, the upstart Pearson had collected a total of 2,168 votes to Sommers’ 2,012 and Winney’s 485.
“I wasn’t expecting it, but then again, over the last three months, I was going door to door” Pearson told Cowboy State Daily. “I visited a lot of people well into the evening, and didn’t get home until 11 or 2 a.m.”
Pearson said that she got involved in the race because she didn’t like state mandates on masking and workplace restrictions due to the pandemic.
“I didn’t like what was happening in the state and the coercion of the vaccine in our schools,” she said. “That’s what got me engaged. I was watching what the government was pushing down on us and the state not fighting back on it.”
The contenders had sought a post formerly held for eight years by State Sen. Fred Baldwin, R-Kemmerer, who opted to not run again.
Winney has now lost seven times in the last 14 years for the Wyoming Legislature.
Sommers was among one of the biggest fundraisers in the Senate primaries.
He raised $47,708 for his campaign, $7,000 of which came from himself. Sommers raised the second most campaign money in the state this election cycle.
During the 2023 legislative session, Sommers frequently came under fire from the ultra-conservative Wyoming Freedom Caucus for holding certain bills in his desk drawer, an act that drew national coverage from news outlets like Fox News.
The 2024 session involved much less controversy for Sommers.
He partially credits the soothing of tensions amongst his colleagues due to a speech he read to the chamber at the start of the session quoting former President Thomas Jefferson, who stressed that politicians need to work together to get things done.
Pearson is a sheep rancher and school bus driver who has often testified before the Legislature over the last few years on a variety of issues, consistently expressing ultra-conservative views.
Winney, a former 30-year Navy submarine commander who ran large-scale budgets while working as a program coordinator at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., believes that the Senate is a better place to try and enact property tax reform.
Southwest Wyoming is one of the most critical areas of the state for Wyoming’s economic future, holding the keys to new forms of energy production and the Cowboy State’s legacy industries like agriculture, fossil fuels, tourism and recreation.
If elected to the Senate, Sommers previously stated that he wants to continue studying the issue of property tax reform.
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
