The Wyoming Republican Party passed a bad idea to sue the state to overturn Title 22 as it applies to major parties. The legal hook is Eu v. San Francisco County Democratic Central Committee, a case about limiting state control over political parties.
Looks like a power grab by the party. It’s really a slow-motion surrender of power.
Title 22 is what gives major parties real authority. It recognizes them as official players in elections, lets them nominate candidates through state-run primaries, gives their nominations legal force and allows them to help fill vacancies in office.
Strip that away, and a political party stops being a governing institution. It becomes a private club.
And private clubs don’t run elections.
You Can’t Ditch the System and Still Use It
Primary elections are public. They’re run by the state. Paid for by taxpayers. Governed by statute.
If the party claims Title 22 doesn’t apply, it creates a contradiction you could drive a truck through:
Why should taxpayers fund a process the party says the law can’t regulate?
Taxpayers are not going to pay for a private club of a few hundred people to run our elections. After one ridiculous incident, the public won’t stand for a private club running their government.
The California Experience
History offers a clear trajectory. When courts recognize that political parties are private associations with strong First Amendment protections — as they did in Eu — they limit the state’s ability to structure elections around those parties. That tension forces change.
In California, that evolution played out in a way worth paying attention to. In 1988, George H. W. Bush carried California. It was still a competitive state for Republicans. Since Eu was decided in 1989, California has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate.
That shift was driven by many factors—demographics, policy, national trends—but the structural changes to how parties interacted with election law were part of the backdrop. As party control over nominations weakened and the system moved toward broader participation, California ultimately adopted more open primary structures.
The lesson is not that Eu alone caused that transformation. It is that once the legal framework begins to separate parties from the mechanics of elections, the system tends to move in one direction: away from party control and toward voter-centered, open formats.
Wyoming would not be immune to that same logic. If parties are no longer bound by Title 22, the state will have to construct an election system that does not depend on party control. The most likely result is some form of open or nonpartisan primary. The power grab results in precisely the outcome many proponents of these proposals seek to avoid.
Walk away from Title 22, and the state will rebuild an election system that doesn’t depend on parties. That means open or nonpartisan primaries. Exactly the outcome many pushing this idea claim to oppose.
The Quiet Risk No One Is Talking About
There’s another loss hiding in plain sight.
Right now, political parties play a key role in filling vacancies in public office. That authority exists because the law recognizes parties as part of the governing structure.
Take away that legal foundation, and the justification disappears. No statute means no authority.
The power doesn’t shrink. It vanishes.
The Tradeoff They’re Ignoring
In a manic grab for power, the Party is ignoring that their actions do not happen in a vacuum.
The Eu decision didn’t hand parties a free lunch. It offered a trade. More autonomy means less integration into the machinery of government.
You can be independent. Or you can be powerful inside the system. You don’t get both.
Strength Isn’t Walking Away
Cut loose from Title 22, and here’s what follows, less control over candidates, no guaranteed access to primaries, loss of vacancy appointment power and a system drifting toward open elections.
If the goal is to build a stronger Republican Party in Wyoming, the answer isn’t to abandon the structure that gives it power. It’s to master it.
Because autonomy has a price.
And here, the invoice comes due in political relevance.
Tom Lubnau served in the Wyoming Legislature from 2004 to 2015 and is a former Speaker of the House. He can be reached at: YourInputAppreciated@gmail.com
