An old Wyoming political adage used to say, “All politics in Wyoming are local.” The adage meant, in Wyoming, it does not matter what the national issues are. Voters in Wyoming will vote on the local issues first, to the exclusion of the national issues.
This last election showed the old adage, sadly, may no longer be true.
The Freedom Caucus, in the last election, fundamentally changed the way campaigns are conducted in Wyoming.
The Wyoming Caucus adopted the traditional, locally-focused strategy. The caucus donated their funds to individual candidates, and allowed the local candidates to spend their money as they saw fit. In other words, it was local control of the campaign.
The WY Freedom PAC (The Freedom Caucus) adopted a different strategy. Following the lead of Secretary of State Chuck Gray who first used the company in Wyoming, the Freedom PAC spent over $150,000 with Nevada-based consulting firm McShane, LLC to adopt a one-size-fits-all strategy to advance their cause. And it worked.
McShane, LLC is a political consulting firm that advertises on its website “that victory requires a data driven plan, rigid discipline, and an obsessive focus on goals and metrics.” In other words, the company analyzes the potential voting pool, determines which issues are persuasive, and then implements a focused relentless campaign to advance the candidate’s campaign.
McShane provides videos, mailers, data collection and analysis and other campaign consulting and advertising services. Voters in Wyoming become numbers in an algorithm to the candidates, and the messages are targeted for the purpose of getting the candidates elected.
While McShane controls product for its customers, and their methods in the last elections speak for themselves, other consultants will now be drawn into the state. Since McShane’s methods succeeded, we should expect more of the same.
Wyoming politics are forever changed.
The crystal ball of political future does not bode well for Wyoming politics being local. Chuck Gray and the Freedom Caucus proved high dollar out-of-state style politics wins elections in Wyoming.
In the future, campaigns will be professionalized. The days of a neighbor saying “I want to change things; I’m running for office” are over. We can expect highly professionalized campaigns, leveraging data analytics, voter segmentation, and targeted messaging.
The days of the grassroots campaign have been killed by the very folks who claim they are grassroots candidates.
Broad, over-sung national issues will undermine local issues. Local water projects, schools and roads will now fester in voters’ apathy. Consultants from outside Wyoming will prioritize wedge issues, such as immigration or gun rights, which play well in national politics but don’t necessarily address the specific concerns of local voters.
Instead of building the state, the political discussions will increasingly reflect the polarized nature of national politics.
Unfortunately, national firms don’t come cheap. The days of a grassroots neighborhood campaign are going evolve to candidates who have access to larger war chests and encourage spending on expensive tactics such as digital campaigns, and polling. This could lead to an arms race in campaign spending, making it harder for grassroots or underfunded candidates to compete.
Instead of campaigning to friends and neighbors, the national firms will treat each voter as a data point. Instead of neighbors talking with neighbors, the national consultant approach will rely heavily on modern voter engagement tactics, including digital outreach, microtargeting, and sophisticated voter databases.
Traditional campaign methods, like town halls and direct voter contact, will be overshadowed by more impersonal digital interactions and scandalous mailers.
In the 2024 primary, the Freedom Caucus adopted a unified slate-driven approach, which allowed several candidates to combine their strategies and run with a unified message. We can expect candidates to pool their resources and run as slates in the future. Local politics fall to the collective.
We might see like-minded candidates for Congress, state elective offices and the Legislature create a unified fund and run on national wedge issues together. That way, the candidates can get more bang for their buck with the high-priced consulting firms.
Instead of evaluating individual candidates, we will see people announcing a slate of politicians. The individual positions of the candidates will merge in a morass of unified targeted professional messaging.
Person to person contact will fall by the wayside.
The only thing that will stop us from this dystopian campaign future is pushback from the Wyoming voters to the professionally driven campaign tactics. Traditionally, Wyoming’s political culture valued independence and local control. This last election showed the Wyoming voters are susceptible to those paid to get our vote.
It remains to be seen if the Wyoming voters will put their foot down and demand a return to local politics. Given the results of the last election, the trend will be to more and more national consultant-based campaigns from both caucuses.
The high-dollar consultant driven campaigns from places like California, Illinois, New York and Florida have been imported into Wyoming. Those who claim they are candidates of the people embraced the high-dollar unified political consultant approach. And with the intrusion of national consultants, a little bit of our state soul has died.
Wyoming politics has been Californicated, and we are worse off for it.
Tom Lubnau served in the Wyoming Legislature from 2004 - 2015 and is a former Speaker of the House.
He can be reached at: YourInputAppreciated@gmail.com
