Former Wyoming Secretary of State Kathy Karpan died Friday, Phil White, the brother of her longtime law partner, confirmed Saturday to Cowboy State Daily.
Karpan, 83, loved Wyoming, maintained ardent curiosity throughout her life, and was so well read, “she was a history book,” said Rodger McDaniel, her friend and political colleague of 50 years, in a Saturday phone interview.
She’d been battling cancer for months and lived longer than doctors expected, McDaniel added.
“But that would be Kathy,” he said. “Tough as nails.”
McDaniel and Karpan met when she was running the office of Democratic U.S. Rep. Teno Roncalio, who served terms in the mid-1960s and 1970s and remains the last Democrat Wyoming has sent to Congress.
“Very impressive woman,” said McDaniel of Karpan. “Intellectually curious, smart, well-read, interested in everything and quite, of course, involved in political endeavors in Wyoming for 50 years.”
Being a woman didn’t help a person’s electability. Nor did being a Democrat during the red waves of 1984 and 1994.
But Karpan persisted, ultimately serving two terms as Wyoming Secretary of State from 1987 - 1995.
“I think people should know how committed she was to Wyoming,” said McDaniel. “She was involved politically in so many ways to try to make a difference. And (she was) one of the brightest people I’ve ever met.
“It’s sad that she’s gone,” McDaniel added.
Gov. Mark Gordon said he and First Lady Jennie Gordon were saddened upon hearing the news, calling Karpan a "long-time public servant."
"The Gordon family extends our heartfelt condolences to the Karpan family," he said in a statement.
Coal Country
Karpan was born Sept. 1, 1942, in Rock Springs. The town was then unionized coal country and a Democratic Party stronghold, WyoHistory reported.
When she was 12, Karpan weathered the death of her mother and helped to care for her two younger siblings.
The family moved to Rawlins, where Karpan graduated from high school in 1960.
Karpan served as the editor of the University of Wyoming’s student paper, The Branding Iron, then graduated with a degree in journalism.
While in that role she met President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
She landed her first journalism job at the Cody Enterprise, and a later job at a newspaper in Canberra, Australia.
Karpan earned her master’s degree in American Studies, then a law degree from the University of Oregon in 1978.
She served as acting deputy legal counsel in the Economic Development Administration in the U.S. Department of Commerce, in Washington, D.C., then returned to Wyoming after Ronald Reagan’s decisive 1980 presidential victory.
Karpan managed McDaniel’s 1982 campaign against Republican incumbent Sen. Malcolm Wallop. The McDaniel campaign was outmanned and out-financed with U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson and U.S. Rep. Dick Cheney both pushing against McDaniel, the latter confirmed Saturday.
“The night after the election the campaign staff and I, and Kathy, gathered in the bar of the old Hitching Post to lament the results,” McDaniel recalled. “I’ll never forget Kathy, in tears, saying people will look at the numbers and never realize how close this race was.”
Wallop won 57% to McDaniel’s 43%, with a monetary war chest twice the size of McDaniel’s.
But, McDaniel said, a poll in mid-October had showed the Democratic candidate briefly taking the lead.
“That’s when Simpson and Cheney got involved,” he recalled. “They were pretty influential in turning that around.”
Karpan later landed a job in the Wyoming Attorney General’s Office, then directed the Wyoming Department of Health.
She ran successfully for the Wyoming secretary of state’s seat in 1986. When she ran again in 1960, she carried every county against her Republican opponent.
The Unseen Hands
In the early 1990s, pro-life group Unseen Hands Prayer Circle launched a ballot initiative to ban abortion hoping to build enough conflict against the Roe v. Wade decision to see it overturned in the U.S. Supreme Court.
A pro-choice group then represented by now-retired Wyoming Supreme Court Justice Kate Fox challenged the effort in court.
Though Karpan, as the state’s chief election official, was named as a defendant in the Unseen Hands case, she didn’t wage pro-life arguments in it.
Karpan told Cowboy State Daily in November 2024 that as a Catholic, she believed life begins at conception, but she also disagreed with enforcing her own belief on others.
Some of the other Catholics and pro-lifers of all stripes shunned her over that during her 1994 run for governor.
On the other hand, she also opposed the notion of using federal funding for elective abortions, which brought the ire of women’s rights groups, Karpan said.
“You don’t want the government in that matter, why would you want to use government dollars to pay for it?” said Karpan.
“I had the unintended consequence of making everybody unhappy,” she said, adding with a laugh, “I took a stand in the fire, and I took fire from all sides.”
Karpan lost her bid for governor to Republican Jim Geringer during the massive, national red wave of 1994.
Karpan demonstrated during her November 2024 interview that she was still sharp. She punctuated her points with logic and humor.
When told that Cowboy State Daily Executive Editor Jimmy Orr — a former political campaign strategist who sparred with Karpan multiple times — had touted her as an invaluable source on Wyoming politics, Karpan said, “Jimmy Orr! Well shoot me in the head!”
Last Run
When Simpson announced his retirement ahead of the 1996 election, Karpan decided to campaign once again — as then-chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska told her she held a high approval rating among Wyoming voters, WyoHistory wrote.
White, the brother of Karpan’s longtime law partner Margy White, told WyoHistory that, “I had known Kathy for a long time, but I was amazed at her energy, her grace and charm, and ability to interact, calling out and connecting to her many good friends in the audience.”
Karpan's opponent, Mike Enzi from Gillette, won the election that November and went on to hold the seat until 2021, as Wyoming became a supermajority Republican state across every level of elective partisan governance.
Karpan was confirmed as the director of the Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement in July 1997, then when President George W. Bush was inaugurated, she returned in 2001 to practicing law at her Wyoming law firm Karpan and White, P.C.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
