When the voters dealt the river card in Tuesday’s primary election, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus hit some inside straights and walked off with a lot of chips. All the bluffs and tells of the game were over.
The voters spoke and Wyoming can’t do anything but listen.
There’s one more hand to be dealt in November, but the Republican Party/Freedom Caucus will have a big pile of chips in front of them for that game. But they busted some major intraparty players during the primary, and it will take a shocking turn of events for them not to win the last pot – control of the Wyoming House.
Individual races will be re-capped in other pages of Cowboy State Daily, and if I try to parse each one I’ll bust my word limit for this column.
Suffice it to say that, with a couple or three very notable exceptions, the Freedom Caucus won almost every hand they played.
I spent election night with a panel of Cowboy State Daily colleagues as the results came in. The Wyoming congressional delegation joined us throughout the evening, as well as former Govs. Mike Sullivan and Dave Freudenthal. For a panel of political talking heads, I think we filled the bill nicely.
Chatter around this particular campfire touched on individual races as was to be expected. But, beyond that, panelists cussed and discussed the whys and hows of the primary in broader strokes.
We conjectured on the blizzard of negative mailers that took up so much space in folks’ mailboxes, and what effect this campaign tactic had on the ultimate election numbers.
Nobody raised their hand to say, “Hey, I think massive amounts of negative mailers, many of which play fast and loose with the truth or abandon it altogether, are a great thing. We need more of that.”
But it really doesn’t matter what politicians and pundits think about the personal attacks and uber-negative mailers. We may turn our noses up at them and clutch our pearls, but that means nothing compared to how the voters of Wyoming reacted to them.
If they worked this year, we can all expect a doubling down on them next election. Voters are the ultimate arbiters of what works and doesn’t work for them. They think for themselves.
And money! Quite a pile of it was thrown around in the primary. It will be interesting, as Deep Throat advised, to follow it.
We’ll have to wait until all the numbers are crunched to know for sure, but it sure looks like voter turnout was disturbingly low for the primary.
There are already about a hundred and fifty thousand voting-eligible Wyoming citizens who don’t even register. If voter ennui and negative politics drive more of our neighbors away from the polls, then decisions affecting the Big Empty will be made by fewer and fewer people.
But, if that tactic works as a tool to elect candidates who appeal to a narrow wedge of voters, we can expect to see it used more often. That trend should worry us all.
It appears that Wyoming voters chose candidates whose ethos is smaller government and fewer government services. That is certainly the voters’ prerogative.
It remains to be seen whether in elections two or four years from now, voters will be happy with smaller government and fewer services. After all, their’s is the only voice that counts.
Finally, if winners of the primary prevail in the general election, they’ll gather in Cheyenne on the first day of the next session for their swearing in ceremony. They’ll raise their right hands and take an oath. That oath will be to the Constitution and the laws of the State of Wyoming, and not to the Republican Party or the Freedom Caucus.
Amid all the changes wrought by this primary, lets hope that never changes.
Rod Miller can be reached at: RodsMillerWyo@yahoo.com
