Perennial Wyoming candidate Rex Rammell isn’t in the mix for a political office at any level this election cycle. That’s because the Rock Springs resident says he’s become disenchanted with politics and fully defeated after his long run of campaigns.
This election was the first time since 2014, Rammell hasn’t run for public office in Wyoming. Prior to that, Rammell also unsuccessfully ran for office in Idaho elections in 2002, 2004 2008, 2010 and 2012. Rammell has never won an election, going 0-for-9 over his career as a candidate.
“I just spent so much time and energy to try and help people and I’ve just exhausted myself,” Rammell said. “I’m just bowing out.”
When Cowboy State Daily spoke with Rammell on Wednesday, he said it was the last political interview he’ll ever do.
“I’m not going to do any more interviews. I’m not going to be involved anymore,” he said.
Who’s Rammell?
Rammell is a hardline conservative Republican with many Libertarian streaks in his policies.
He’s most known for his platform that federal public lands are actually the property of the state they are located in, and that the states need to take this land back.
During his 2022 gubernatorial run, Rammell vowed that he would seize Wyoming’s federal public lands within his first days in office if elected, ordering the Wyoming Highway Patrol to lock federal land managers out of their offices. He viewed this effort as part of “saving America” from a state-level approach by pulling power away from the federal government.
In 2016, Wyoming spent $75,000 on a study that identified the values of these federal lands in the hands of the state. The study showed that it would cost much more for the state to manage them than their added value, which would likely force the sale of many of these lands and remove public access to them.
Rammell’s ideas have not gained him a larger following as time has gone on. In some ways, it’s almost been the opposite.
That Race For Idaho Governor
One of his most promising races came relatively early in his political career when Rammell received 42,436 votes in 2010, finishing second in the Republican primary for Idaho governor out of a field of six candidates.
Rammell expressed regret to Cowboy State Daily about this race and said he had wished he had “lost big.”
“The worst thing that ever happened to me was that I did so well in the governor’s race in Idaho,” he said. “It gave me fuel to keep going. It gave me hope that I could convince people.”
Following a loss in 2012 when running for the Idaho Legislature, Rammell moved to Wyoming to take a veterinarian job in Torrington.
In Wyoming
His political fortunes did not improve once moving to the Cowboy State, but he has been a player in some of the biggest races in Wyoming over the past decade.
Rammell ran as a Republican in the 2016 race for U.S. House, which was eventually won by former congresswoman Liz Cheney. Also in this race was Cheyenne resident Darin Smith, who recently won the Republican primary for Senate District 6, and then-state Sen. Leland Christensen. Rammell placed seventh of nine candidates in the primary.
In 2018, Rammell ran for governor on the Constitution Party ticket, finishing a distant third behind Gordon and second place finisher Democrat Mary Throne in the general election.
Two years later, he ran for the Wyoming Legislature, finishing last in the Republican primary for Senate District 14.
His most recent, and what Rammell says will be his last, race came in 2022, when he took on Gordon in the Republican primary, finishing a distant third. Rammell caused a stir during this campaign for accusing fellow challenger and veteran Brent Bien of not being eligible to run for office because he had been recently serving overseas and didn’t meet the residency requirements to be a candidate.
With a few weeks left in this race, Rammell gave a final farewell speech in Fort Bridger where he acknowledged that his campaign was doomed.
“I said, ‘If I don’t do well, I’m done,’” Rammell said. “I knew the writing was on the wall.”
Gordon’s popularity in Wyoming may have dipped a bit since this election, publicly censured by the Wyoming Republican Party this spring for some of the vetoes he made during this year’s legislative session and his public stance on certain environmental and energy issues.
Rammell views Gordon as “a politician’s politician” and criticized some of the very same issues that Gordon has got heat for over the past year during his 2022 campaign.
“I feel like I’ve been right from the beginning, but I just couldn’t convince the people how dangerous the position they were getting into,” Rammell said. “Mark Gordon has proven to be everything that I accused him of.”
Bleak Outlook
But Rammell also admits the people made their voices heard loud and clear in this election and that he’s lost faith in society as a whole, which he believes “can’t see the forest through the trees.”
“I think everybody’s so caught up in their own little world and what’s the government going to do for me that they can’t see the direction the country is headed in,” he said. “I hate to be pessimistic, but I finally came to the conclusion that we’re not going to fix this country.”
Rammell sees Vice President Kamala Harris and her VP candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as the “most radical presidential ticket” in U.S. history. Even though Rammell is optimistic that former President Donald Trump will win, he’s in disbelief by how many people are supporting the Democratic ticket.
He believes America has become a quasi-Socialist country that’s slowly drifting away from its own Constitution. Rammell sees Americans as being too dependent on the government, which he said the Democrats have capitalized on.
“I think it’s a sign of the times that America will fail eventually,” he said. “I really see the end of the American experiment. It’s going to be ugly.”
Rammell takes credit for the idea of transferring public lands to the states based on a 2009 book he wrote.
Taking public lands away from the federal government, Rammell believes could start a cascade of events that change the makeup of the country and protect states like Wyoming from declining fossil fuel revenues. He forecasted a similar scenario for public education and health care, which he believes need to be entirely state-run.
Former state legislator Tyler Lindholm shares many of the same views as Rammell, but doesn’t believe he made an impact on Wyoming politics.
Someone with a similar track record to Rammell in elections as a frequent candidate who Lindholm believes has made a difference is Bondurant resident Bill Winney. Winney regularly testifies at the Legislature on a wide variety of topics year after year.
“It’s really hard to make a difference when you only engage in politics around election time,” Lindholm said. “Bill Winney is impactful. It’s not about elections for Bill Winney. His impact is measurable and if you talk to lawmakers they’ll say he made a difference.”
Colorful Character
In 2006, nearly 160 elk escaped from Rammell's hunting preserve just 10 miles outside of Yellowstone National Park. Facing pressure from anti game farming advocates, Idaho Gov. Jim Risch ordered an emergency hunt to kill the loose elk from Rammell's ranch.
When Rammell’s daughter won the Miss Idaho USA pageant in 2007, she refused to take a photo with the governor because of his executive order.
Later that year, Rammell was charged with obstructing a police officer after he refused to get off a dead elk that had been killed by authorities. Rammell was upset that the Idaho Fish and Game officer had killed his elk right in front of his capture pen. Rammell was acquitted by a jury the next year.
Prior to a trial Rammell was facing for taking wildlife unlawfully in 2010, he handed out pamphlets to jurors that described their rights as jurists. This earned him a felony charge for tampering with jurists, which was eventually dropped.
During his 2022 campaign for governor, Rammell was cited for driving his RV in a prohibited area on federal land.
In 2023, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit Rammell filed claiming his Fourth Amendment rights were violated when he was charged for not showing brand inspection permits for his horses.
Rammell told Cowboy State Daily he isn’t interested in getting involved with any political organizations or movements, and views his last run for governor as his last best opportunity to have his viewpoints expressed to the world. For Rammell, if he can’t make major changes to the trajectory of the country, he doesn’t want to get involved.
“What else can I do? I’ve shouted from the top of the mountains as loud as I could,” Rammell said. “I’ve done all I could to warn people about what’s coming and they still voted for Mark Gordon.”
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
