In a scene right out of Seuss's Horton Hears a Who, the Wyoming Republican Party Central Committee shouted from their speck of dust on a very small clover: “We are here! We are here! We are here!” I guess they're hoping some Elephant with really big ears wanders by and finally hears them.
Their shout was in the form of endorsing candidates.
Wyoming Statute 22-25-104 says “No political party funds shall be expended directly or indirectly in aid of the nomination of one person against another person of the same political party running in the primary election.”
The purpose is not complicated. Money donated to elect Republicans generally isn't supposed to get funneled into tilting the scale in a Republican primary. Picking winners is the voters' job.
The party, at best, skirted the edges of that law. By endorsing candidates, they flushed the spirit of the law down the toilet.
Until the law changes, or some court strikes it down, though, it's still the law.
Don't hold your breath waiting for anyone to enforce it. The guy in charge of enforcing election law is Secretary of State Chuck Gray. He got an endorsement. Hmmm.
Every candidate who took one of these endorsements told voters something about themselves. That the ends justify the means. That honor is negotiable when there's an edge to be gained.
Voters get to decide what to do with that information.
My guess? Most of the voters will ignore the endorsements and vote for whoever they believe to be the best candidate.
People inside the party and out warned the Central Committee off this course of action. The Central Committee did it anyway.
So it's worth asking what these endorsements are actually worth, which means it's worth asking who's handing them out.
Every even numbered year, at the primary, voters elect precinct committeemen and women, split evenly between men and women.
Once upon a time, being a precinct committee person meant something -- you rounded up your neighbors and got them to the polls. These days it's mostly a title on a name tag.
Those precinct people, county by county, then elect a state committeeman, a state committeewoman, and a county chair. Send those three off to the state level, and you've got yourself a Central Committee.
Here's the catch: it's not based on population. Three votes per county, period. Laramie County has 102,938 residents. Niobrara County has 2,467. Same three votes. Work out the math and a Niobrara County Republican carries about 41 times the weight of someone in Laramie County.
The system is skewed from the start..
Meanwhile, while the rest of us are out at the lake, roughly 73 state committee members meet four times a year to handle party business, which mostly means playing model legislature without the actual legislating part.
Their one real power: sending the governor three names when a seat opens up. That's it. Everything else is theater. You've got people who couldn't win an election themselves telling the people who did win how to do their jobs.
So they shouted from their little speck of dust, presumably to get noticed.
No surprises in their endorsements. The list reads like the Freedom Caucus affiliated roster, minus Harriet Hageman, who's apparently signed up with the national version instead.
Take Megan Degenfelder. Four years carrying the party's water as Superintendent of Public Instruction, and this is the thanks she gets — tossed off the list, thrown under the bus.
Loyalty was never this Central Committee's thing.
They also managed spit in Donald Trump's eye, by ignoring his doubled-down endorsement in the governor's race. Megan didn’t even warrant their discussion.
Eric Barlow had the right idea. “Let the voters decide,” he said, and skipped the popularity contest entirely.
So what did the party get for all this? They alienated four U.S. Senate campaigns, nine House campaigns, three governor's campaigns, three secretary of state campaigns, one treasurer's campaign, and two superintendent campaigns. Twenty-two candidates, and all their supporters, with zero reason left to help the Central Committee with anything, ever.
In return: some newspaper ink, a donor list that keeps shrinking, and a president they just insulted, but they got to shout “We are here!”
Not a bad Monday night, if your goal was making as many people mad as humanly possible.
We'll see if Wyoming voters pay attention to your speck of dust. I suspect not.
Alienation of people for nothing is not a good use of party time.
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
