A Democratic congressman from Colorado who grilled Wyoming’s U.S. House representative Monday over whether renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America should be a lawmaking priority floated the idea of hosting his own town halls in the Cowboy State.
On Wednesday, the leader of the Wyoming Democratic Party invited him to do so.
“Great job,” wrote Wyoming Democratic Party Chairman Joe Barbuto in a Wednesday post to X, in which he tagged Northwest Colorado’s Democratic U.S. House Rep. Joe Neguse. “Let me know when you want to come to Wyoming, and I’ll gladly set up the events.
“Folks here care about the same issues as your constituents in CO — we just don’t have any members of Congress interested in telling the truth.”
Barbuto attached a video clip of Monday’s U.S. House Committee on Rules meeting in which Neguse sparred verbally with Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyoming, over just how necessary it is to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
The committee advanced the House resolution, sponsored by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, to the full House later that day. President Donald Trump called for the renaming in a Jan. 20 executive order.
Neguse’s office did not immediately respond to a Cowboy State Daily inquiry about whether he plans to come to Wyoming. But he raised the idea, possibly tongue-in-cheek, while challenging Hageman’s decision to champion the renaming bill.
Those Town Halls
Neguse pointed to Hageman’s recent 10 town hall gatherings in Wyoming.
“(You hold) a lot of them. Way more than a lot of your colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I will say. So I appreciate that,” began the Colorado delegate. “Give us a sense of what folks there are concerned about.”
Energy independence is a chief concern of her town hall attendees, said Hageman. Implementing the policies on which Trump campaigned is another, she said.
Hageman indicated that renaming the gulf supports both causes.
She noted the gulf accounts for about 15% of the nation’s oil and gas production.
“So, you’re saying there are people at your town halls that are demanding that you rename the Gulf of Mexico?” asked Neguse.
“You use the word demand,” began Hageman. “Very few people come up to me and demand anything. What people say is they want us to implement the agenda Donald Trump ran on — and this is one of them, because it has to do with pride in America and what America stands for.”
Hageman went on to say Wyomingites have a close connection to the gulf because the state is a top energy producer in the U.S. — first for coal and eighth for oil and gas. Those resources are exported from the gulf, she added.
Neguse was unpersuaded.
“We may just consider doing a town hall up in Wyoming myself so I can get a better sense of Republicans, Democrats, unaffiliated people in Wyoming — as to what their priorities are,” he said.
As for Colorado, renaming the gulf doesn’t crack that state’s top 10 priorities, he said.
This is Hageman’s first presentation to the rules committee since the current Congress was sworn in, she conceded.
“And this is the first bill you’ve decided to present to this committee on behalf of the state that you serve?” asked Neguse.
Hageman, when given space to speak, said Neguse deployed a “clever trick” to accuse her: facetiously calling the renaming effort a constituent “demand” when in fact it was part of a larger priority of carrying out Trump’s agenda.
“The state of Wyoming, with our energy resources, has a lot of interest in the Gulf of America,” she added.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
