The battle for the soul of the Wyoming Republican Party is not new.
It has been nearly two decades since the Tea-Party movement revealed the rift. Ever since, conservative grass roots citizenry has been working to be fairly represented at the ballot box.
Wednesday evening’s meeting of the Wyoming Republican Party’s State Central Committee was only the latest skirmish in this long-running battle.
They met via Zoom, on July 22, to evaluate candidates for state offices against the platform of the party. It’s a rather mundane idea, when you think about it. The whole point of political parties is to advance a platform of ideas in electoral politics.
So, the idea that a party’s candidate for election should actively oppose its established platform ought to be an utter impossibility. But it happens all the time.
Wednesday’s endorsement process encountered a number of bugs that will need to be worked out in the future. Some candidates boycotted the process and suffered accordingly. Others received short-shrift due to procedural confusion.
But, speaking for myself, who exactly was endorsed is less important than the fact that the party publicly did endorse. It challenged the status quo. And there’s no going back.
The anti-platform establishment attacked the meeting as a violation of Wyoming law. And they are right. It was a deliberate challenge to laws that were put in place by the very anti-platform establishment that is now complaining most loudly.
The statute (22-25-104) says that the party, as a party, cannot spend any money to campaign for a GOP candidate prior to the primary election. This is interpreted to mean that the GOP cannot use any resources to tell voters anything about the candidates’ position vis-a-vis the party platform - even if that candidate refuses to read the platform or opposes it outright.
So Wyoming law, as it currently stands, prohibits major political parties from fulfilling their charter. Instead, they are supposed to muzzle any talk about their platform until it is too late to matter.
If you think this is a blatant violation of the right to free speech, you’re not alone. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) struck down a similar law in California in 1989. In Eu v. S.F. Cty. Democratic Cent. Committee, it held that “The ban on primary endorsements. . . violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”
SCOTUS went on to say, “By preventing a party’s governing body from stating whether a candidate adheres to the party’s tenets or whether party officials believe that the candidate is qualified for the position sought, the ban directly hampers the party’s ability to spread its message and hamstrings voters seeking to inform themselves about the candidates and issues, and thereby burdens the core right to free political speech of the party and its members.”
So, how is it that, 37 years later, Wyoming law still prohibits speech that the Supreme Court considers a core right?
The simple answer is that neither major party in Wyoming has yet challenged the law based on the 1989 ruling. That says more about the establishment in power than about the constitutionality of Wyoming’s law.
And the fact that Wyoming’s legislature has not revised the law to abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court also speaks volumes about those who have held the power of the legislature for the past 37 years.
No wonder there is such a hue and cry now that the Wyoming GOP is openly challenging the constitutionality of Wyoming’s law. Trying to paint the challengers as criminals and lawbreakers may be effective politics. But it is akin to calling Rosa Parks a criminal for refusing to give up her seat to a white man.
Not a good look.
The Supreme Court has determined that anything that infringes on a core constitutional right must survive “strict scrutiny.” You may be familiar with that phrase through recent rulings on Wyoming’s abortion laws.
The same rules that were applied to them must also be applied to laws that restrict the speech of political parties - especially when they are speaking about those who want to represent the party platform.
The State must prove to the court that it has a compelling interest in squelching the party’s speech. Then, the State must show that it is doing so in the least restrictive way possible.
That is a high bar. It will be interesting to see whether and how the governor defends the law - and whether the court will rule for the free speech of political parties, or not.
People have been complaining about Wyoming’s prohibitions on political speech for decades without accomplishing anything. Decisions get made only when you take decisive action.
So, I thank the current GOP leadership for having the guts to challenge what seems, on its face, an unconstitutionally unjust law.
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.
