“Wyoming is becoming Colorado.”
That’s the warning now appearing in Republican primary campaigns as the Aug. 18 election approaches.
It’s meant to scare you before you ask too many questions. It implies you must vote for the Freedom Caucus candidate or watch Wyoming turn blue.
To believe it, you have to accept three claims: Wyoming is at risk of becoming Democratic. Republicans outside the Freedom Caucus aren’t conservative. Democrats are infiltrating the Republican Party.
Those are serious claims. They require evidence.
The evidence says something else.
But here’s what actually happened in Colorado, and it’s not what the campaign ads want you to hear.
Colorado didn’t move from solid red to solid blue overnight, whatever the ads want you to believe. It spent years as a competitive state with a Republican lean. Democrats still won governorships and other statewide races. Then, over roughly 15 to 20 years, the balance changed.
Colorado grew quickly. Its suburbs changed. Unaffiliated voters became the largest bloc. Democrats built strong organizations, recruited candidates, and invested in reaching voters.
Colorado Republicans, simultaneously, moved toward harder-line candidates and rhetoric. They appealed to the party’s most ideological voters while losing touch with longtime Republicans. That narrowed their coalition. Moderate Republicans and suburban voters felt pushed aside.
Democrats only needed enough of them to stay home or cross over.
Here’s the thing: that’s the one part of Colorado’s story Wyoming is beginning to repeat.
Wyoming isn’t following Colorado in voter registration, presidential results, legislative control, urban growth, or Democratic organization. There’s no growing Democratic machine, no registration surge, no metro area reshaping your state’s elections.
Wyoming is following Colorado in the effort to define fewer and fewer Republicans as real Republicans.
The numbers aren’t close.
Wyoming Republican registration grew from about 135,000 in 1994 to more than 228,000 in 2024. Democratic registration fell from more than 79,000 to fewer than 35,000.
Donald Trump received about 68 percent of Wyoming’s vote in 2016, nearly 70 percent in 2020, and more than 72 percent in 2024.
Republicans now hold 29 of 31 seats in the Wyoming Senate and 56 of 62 seats in the House.
Wyoming isn’t becoming more Democratic. Look at your own state’s numbers: it’s becoming more Republican by registration and representation, while becoming more divided inside the Republican Party.
That distinction matters.
When nearly every meaningful race is decided in the Republican primary, registration becomes partly a decision about ballot access. Some Democrats and independents register Republican because that’s where the contest is, and recent limits on changing affiliation give them more reason to stay that way.
That doesn’t prove an organized Democratic takeover. It proves one-party dominance affects voter behavior.
Migration doesn’t support the warning either. Many people moving here from Colorado call themselves conservative political refugees who left because their state moved too far left. Their arrival adds Republican voters, not Democratic strength.
The manipulation becomes clearer when candidates redefine ordinary Republican disagreement as Democratic influence.
At a debate this week, former Rep. Mark Jennings described the time he signed onto a bill with then-Representative Eric Barlow as “bipartisan.” Barlow was the lead sponsor.
Jennings was a Republican. Barlow was a Republican. Not one Democrat had signed onto the bill in question.
That wasn’t bipartisan. It crossed a factional line inside the Republican Party, not a party line.
The same trick appears in claims that certain Republicans “vote with Democrats.” With only two Democratic senators and six Democratic representatives, that’s bound to happen. The Democrats aren’t controlling what bills surface for debate. They pick one side or the other in the policy questions Republicans are allowing.
The useful questions are different. What did the bill do? What would the result mean for Wyoming?
A voting percentage stripped of the bill, the reasoning, and the consequences proves little.
This campaign tactic follows a pattern. It starts with exaggeration. It becomes manipulation when Republican disagreement is relabeled as Democratic influence. Repetition turns it into propaganda. When candidates keep making claims contradicted by registration, election, and legislative facts, it becomes lying.
Fear serves a purpose. It keeps you from examining governing records, judgment, competence, and proposed solutions.
So when a candidate warns that Wyoming is becoming Colorado, don’t argue over the prediction. Ask why he needs you to believe it, and then force the conversation back to housing, health care, and workable local solutions.
You need to recognize the tactic. You need to challenge the motive behind it. A candidate who spends his time inventing enemies is trying to keep you from examining the candidate standing in front of you.
Wyoming isn’t in danger of turning blue anytime soon. The real danger is letting fear, propaganda, and outright lies replace honest debate in a Republican primary.
Don’t let a campaign distract you with an imaginary Democrat.
Make the Republican candidate answer for himself.
Gail Symons can be reached at GailSymons@mac.com
