On paper, Wyoming looks like the reddest state in the union.
According to USA Facts, in six of the last seven presidential elections, Wyoming voters have favored the Republican candidate 70-30 and more. This was usually the greatest margin of any state (although Utah edged out Wyoming in the 2004 and 2012 elections).
Despite such blowout voting numbers, in the metrics that really matter, Wyoming bleeds more pale purple than red.
According to The State Leadership 2025 Index, Wyoming is only the 16th most conservative state in the Union - trailing Kansas, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Missouri, and Georgia.
Even progressive states like Minnesota and Wisconsin rank higher than Wyoming!
Wyoming gets 35 percent of its state revenue from the federal government - more than 40 other states.
Wyoming ranks dead last in keeping our grown kids in the state of their birth.
Only six other states employ more state employees per 10,000 residents than Wyoming’s 2,151.
We are seventh-worst in university employees per 10,000 residents.
We rank ninth-worst, just below California, in terms of “Teacher Share of K-12 Staff.”
In fact, “Across the country, in every state with a Republican trifecta, there is a core disconnect between what people vote for, what is delivered legislatively, and what is performed bureaucratically,” reports the State Leadership Initiative (SLI).
“While voters cast their ballots for deregulation, an end to DEI, and common-sense immigration enforcement, the public sector employees tirelessly work and collude with national organizations to deliver the opposite.”
SLI was launched just over a year ago to address the problem. In August 2025 it published its Shadow Government Report. It found that, “on issue after issue, the administrative state trudges forward in open defiance of … the voters who ostensibly elected the government.”
“The illusion is that electoral control yields policy control,” but “(t)he reality is that . . . National associations of Medicaid directors, insurance commissioners, education officers, budget chiefs, etc. all define the architecture within which state officials operate.”
Wyoming saw this dynamic unfold in 2021. While parents were waking up to the presence of pornography in our children’s libraries and were showing up at school boards to speak common sense in the face of nonsensical COVID policies, the National School Board Association (NSBA), supported by irresponsible rhetoric from the Wyoming School Board Association and its members, was colluding with the Biden White House and the Merrick Garland DOJ to treat concerned parents as “domestic terrorists.”
That outrageous episode was not a one-off. The SLI’s Report found that “professional associations” regularly hide behind a non-partisan camouflage to pour partisan sand in the gears of government. The Deep State is not only a D.C. phenomenon. Its tentacles run deep in state, county and municipal governments.
Some of these professional associations have been in the Wyoming news - like the infamous NSBA, the National Governors Association (NGA), or the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). But, many more fly unnoticed under the radar of the voters and officeholders that they seek to undercut.
Have you ever heard of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers (ASTHO)? Probably not, but Wyoming’s Health Officer, Alexia Harrist, serves on its board of directors.
This organization was a major force advocating draconian COVID restrictions and speech suppression while undermining Wyoming’s abortion law.
Have you ever heard of the National Association of Medicaid Directors (NAMD)? This organization perennially lobbies from within the bureaucracy for Medicaid Expansion.
Wyomingites are just beginning to ask how much taxpayer money goes toward organizations like the Wyoming Association of Municipalities and the Wyoming County Commissioners Association.
They want to know how much we subsidize their lobbying efforts through membership fees.
They want to know how much we spend to send elected officials to their conferences and what sort of indoctrination happens there.
Wyomingites deserve to know how these national organizations are influencing their elected officials with communications not touchable by open-records laws.
In February, HB 131 Government membership and cooperation with associations, was offered to do this. But it failed introduction on a vote of 27-34. It will be back.
As we are entering this campaign season, the SLI Report should be on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Candidates who truly want to make a difference can no longer be naïve about the headwinds that they will encounter if they are elected to public office. They should educate themselves on how self-government is subverted when un-elected associations dictate how elected officials operate.
Now that the filing season is over, it’s time to show up at campaign forums and town halls to ask substantive questions about this sprawling shadow government.
From the governor to the local school board, voters should know how any candidate for office intends to resist the partisan national associations that will be working against the will of the voters who put them in office.
Jonathan Lange is a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod pastor in Evanston and Kemmerer and serves the Wyoming Pastors Network. Follow his blog at https://jonathanlange.substack.com/. Email: JLange64@protonmail.com
