Wyoming Hasn’t Had A Democrat In Congress Since Teno Roncalio, 46 Years Ago

Many people who knew Teno Roncalio, Wyoming’s last Democratic congressman, said that he put Wyoming first before any kind of party affiliation.

It’s been 46 years since Roncalio represented the Democratic Party for the Cowboy State in the U.S. House for nearly a decade from 1965-1967 and again from 1971 through the end of 1978, a total of five terms.

He was known for passing valuable laws to help Wyoming get a bigger share of federal mineral royalties, protect grazing rights for the state’s ranching industry, and blocking a project that would have allowed the use of nuclear explosions to access underground oil in the Green River Basin, known as Project Wagon Wheel.

Roncalio frequently commented that public service was its own reward. It may be because of that approach that he’s unknown to many younger Wyomingites, with the Rock Springs post office named in his honor the only public designation that exists for the man who died in 2003.

Hardscrabble Life

Born in 1916, Roncalio lived a hardscrabble upbringing in Rock Springs, raised by two Italian immigrant parents as the eighth of nine children.

Like many in that area then, Roncalio’s father was a coal miner, a profession that made Rock Springs a bit of a cultural melting pot in the early 20th century. 

“It was very much a little America,” said Kathy Karpan, Roncalio’s former press secretary and chief of staff, and former Wyoming Secretary of State who also was raised in Rock Springs. 

Frank Roncalio, Teno’s son, said that when his father was a child, he would run out to the train tracks from their house on North Front Street each morning to scoop up the lumps of coal that had fallen off the train cars. They’d use that coal to light their stove that would heat their house.

Despite their own struggles, it didn’t stop the Roncalios from helping those less fortunate, feeding and housing the homeless of Rock Springs, Karpan said.

Karpan said because of his upbringing, Roncalio always sympathized with the underdog and never forgot his roots in Rock Springs, a town where Karpan said so many people worked to the bone in the mines and built great character while doing so.

Call To Public Service

After high school, Roncalio worked for a short time as a reporter for the Rock Springs Rocket-Miner newspaper. 

He then enlisted into the Army following Pearl Harbor. While fighting in World War II, Roncalio was awarded a Silver Star for gallantry in the Normandy invasion on Omaha Beach.

“He always said they issued him a toothbrush, and when he came home he had no teeth,” Frank Roncalio said of his father.

On a darker note, he said invading his homeland of Sicily, Italy, was a major personal conflict for his dad.

Laramie resident Rodger McDaniel started working for Roncalio in 1971 and developed a close relationship with the man who called him a son and brother.

McDaniel said he found a letter Roncalio had written to former Wyoming U.S. Sen. Joseph O’Mahoney at the end of the war from Berlin, Germany, expressing uncertainty about what he should do next in life. Roncalio’s father had previously died and his mother was murdered.

“He was completely in disarray about what to do,” McDaniel said. “Teno is just completely untethered.” 

Roncalio ultimately chose to go to school at the University of Wyoming, where he earned a law degree. From there, he opened his own law practice in Cheyenne and eventually became the lead prosecuting attorney for Laramie County.

McDaniel said it was Roncalio’s experience working in law that helped him learn about many important Wyoming issues like ranching and water rights that otherwise would have been foreign to him.

Connection To The Kennedys

McDaniel said Roncalio first developed a relationship with former President John F. Kennedy in 1958 before he launched his presidential campaign when he came to speak in Thermopolis. 

After Kennedy launched his presidential campaign in 1960, Roncalio was a big supporter, but the rest of Wyoming’s Democrats weren’t so sure, split between a number of candidates, Karpan said. 

At the 1960 Democratic National Convention, Roncalio helped rally the state’s delegation to cast its 15 votes for Kennedy, which gave him the final amount he needed to win the Democratic presidential nomination.

This was a significant move, McDaniel said, because many believed that Kennedy wouldn’t have survived if the vote went to a second round.

Kennedy didn’t forget this act and later appointed Roncalio to be the chairman of the International Joint Commission on Water Rights between the United States and Canada in 1961. Roncalio in turn helped with Robert Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign.

“They had a great alliance, that was a really significant part of his life,” McDaniel said.

During Roncalio’s eulogy, a three-page letter written by former U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy was read to the audience, where he said Roncalio didn’t just deliver his brother the delegates, he delivered “a whole new frontier.”

Political Career Begins

In 1964, Roncalio ran for the U.S. House, narrowly beating Republican incumbent William Henry Harrison, a descendant of the former president. 

During his first term, Roncalio voted in support of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which allowed Blacks to vote nationwide. 

He also supported what became the Fair Housing Act of 1968, despite many in Wyoming’s real estate and banking industries rallying against it at the time. McDaniel said Roncalio’s multicultural upbringing greatly influenced this.

Two years later, Roncalio ran for the U.S. Senate but was beaten by then-Gov. Cliff Hansen.

“I always thought it was why he lost that race to Cliff Hansen by only 4,000 votes, but it was the kind of courageous thing he’d do,” McDaniel said.

McDaniel devoted a chapter of his book “Profiles In Courage” to Roncalio where he mentioned this story and his life.

The assassination of Bobby Kennedy marked another important turning point in Roncalio’s life. Once again, when Roncalio was faced with his greatest moment of self-doubt, he turned back into the storm, knowing public service was his career.

Roncalio decided to run again for office in 1970, getting his House seat back when he beat future Gov. Ed Herschler in the Democratic primary and Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction Harry Roberts in the general election by 608 votes. It was the closest U.S. House race in the country that year.

“He said to me, ‘Look at it this way, every other person in Wyoming didn’t vote for me that voted,’” Roncalio said to Karpan. “He said, ‘We can’t be doing all these liberal statements, we’ve got to take care of the folks back home, we’ve got to balance this out.’”

Karpan, who started working for Roncalio after he won his 1964 campaign, said the man was filled with boundless energy and warmth, talked a mile a minute and most importantly, had an uncanny ability to connect with Wyomingites of many shapes and stripes. 

“He was affectionate, outgoing, generous, compassionate,” Karpan said.

But that’s not to say he was a pushover.

At one town hall in Sheridan in 1964, an old rancher from the audience mocked his Italian name and asked him if he was in the mafia. McDaniel said Roncalio came off stage and got in the man’s face, telling him that, “If you weren’t so damn old I’d wipe up the floor with you.”

“That’s the kind of thing he’d do and people really liked it, he just was who he was,” McDaniel said.

Wyoming-First, Then A Democrat

Roncalio spearheaded a number of initiatives that were important for Wyoming while in office.

“He emphasized with his staff that our job was to help Wyoming people regardless of party affiliation,” McDaniel said. “If they needed help that was a part of public service. That saying has really stayed with me and I think that really says a lot about him.”

Although he was unquestionably left of center politically, Roncalio would still likely be considered more conservative than the average Democrat today. McDaniel said Roncalio was well aware of the political demographics of Wyoming and felt a need to represent everyone, not just members of his own party.

During a 1964 campaign speech, Roncalio vowed to help Wyoming progress and fulfill its natural resources potential and work with people in both political parties to advance the interests of the state, a tactic he had a particular knack for.

“He was able to do that by peeling off his skin with the brand of Democrat or Republican. Underneath his skin he branded with a big W,” said Cowboy State Daily columnist Rod Miller, who worked in multiple governor administrations and with Roncalio on certain issues. “He was brown and gold all the way. He cared much less playing the D.C. game, spouting one doctrine or another.” 

Frank Roncalio remembered a campaign commercial of his father’s where he referred to himself as an “off-brand.”

Former Wyoming Republican Party Chairman Jack Speight considered Roncalio “a real friend” and said he was the most effective of Wyoming’s congressional members. 

“He could pick up the phone and just call somebody,” Speight said. “He was just a very personable guy, I considered him a real friend.”

Pro-Development

Roncalio supported the construction of dams and mining in Wyoming, but also wasn’t opposed to regulating the latter. 

“I think he believed that the choice between a strong economy and a sound environment were not mutually exclusive,” Karpan said. “He still believed you could have both.”

While in office, Roncalio helped acquire funding for various Wyoming recreation areas like Flaming Gorge and Fossil Butte and the highway connecting Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. Miller said Roncalio “worked on grazing issues better than any Wyoming congressman ever had.” 

He also helped increase the state’s share of federal mineral royalties from 37.5% to 50%, an effort he worked closely with his former opponent, Hansen, on.

“That has meant hundreds of millions of dollars to the state of Wyoming,” Karpan said.

Roncalio helped pass The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, which is the primary federal law that regulates the environmental effects of surface coal mining in the United States. Although this legislation was conservation minded, Roncalio helped include important amendments within the bill giving states the power to run the Act themselves if they wanted to. 

This bill also provided funding for the reclamation of abandoned coal mines, which provided around $70 million to the Rock Springs area alone by 2004.

“It was a tremendous piece of legislation to try and prevent future environmental degradation and clean up past environmental degradation,” Karpan said.

Karpan continued Roncalio’s legacy on this issue when she later led the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement from 1997-2000.

Karpan and Cowboy State Daily columnist Bill Sniffin also said Roncalio was instrumental in blocking Project Wagon Wheel, a late-1960s Atomic Energy Commission plan to extract Wyoming natural gas with five underground nuclear explosions.

Sniffin was a newspaper publisher and Lander resident at the time, a town that would have been directly impacted had anything gone awry with Project Wagon Wheel. 

“He was really vital in stopping that,” Sniffin said.

Roncalio was also pro-life on abortion, pushing forward an amendment that would have prevented the use of federal funds for abortions. 

Although he had more of an interventionist streak on foreign policy, Roncalio split from former President Lyndon Johnson on Vietnam, opposing the war when he ran for the House again in 1970.

“He saw that it wasn’t what people thought,” his son said.

This stance differed from former Wyoming Democratic Sen. Gale McGee, who supported the Vietnam War effort and was re-elected in the same year, 1970.

“That was back when Wyoming would vote for the whole person and not just one specific stance,” Karpan said.

Karpan said Roncalio was somewhat supportive of former President Richard Nixon until the Watergate event transpired, but also supported former President Gerald Ford pardoning him.

Roncalio won every election he ran in by a larger margin each time, which McDaniel attributes to his personality and frankness.

“Gradually, more and more Republicans came to like him,” McDaniel said.

Although Karpan said he may have decided to not run again in 1978 out of fear of losing, McDaniel said Roncalio was simply tired of working on Capitol Hill and wanted to come home.

“It’s rugged when you’re in the House you have to run every two years,” McDaniel said. “I just think he reached a point in his life where he wanted to spend more time with his children.”

Autumn Of His Years

After serving in Congress, Roncalio returned home to Wyoming, where he served as special master in the Big Horn adjudication of Indian Water Rights until 1982.

Miller said he frequently discussed water rights issues with Roncalio while Miller worked in Herschler’s gubernatorial administration.

Roncalio’s health declined in his elder years and he eventually died while living in a nursing home.

Karpan and McDaniel both credited Roncalio for helping launch their careers. He was also a father figure for McDaniel, who lost his own dad in 1969.

“I’d probably be selling used cars had I not met Teno,” McDaniel said. “It was just so inspirational.”

Roncalio remained modest until the end, which his son had been a winning formula for him his whole life. When Karpan asked him in his last few years what his proudest accomplishment was, Roncalio responded that he wished he had done more.

“I think he thought he was a very fortunate man to have the life he did and the opportunities and the chance to be of service,” Karpan said. “Public service is its own reward, it doesn't need accolades.”

Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.