One of my earliest memories of Chuck Gray comes from his days in the Wyoming House of Representatives.
The Capitol was under renovation, so the Legislature was meeting in temporary quarters. I was sitting in the hallway outside the House chamber when I heard shouting. I looked over and saw Gray berating a distinguished-looking older gentleman.
The gentleman turned out to be former U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, who’d come to Wyoming to support the Convention of States effort.
I remember thinking: This is how you treat a former United States senator who came here to advocate for something he believes in?
That lack of decorum wasn’t a one-time impression. I saw versions of it again and again during Gray’s legislative service and his term as secretary of state.
So I’ve made my decision.
I won’t vote for Chuck Gray.
That’s my choice. Yours belongs to you.
And despite the familiar “lesser of two evils” argument, your ballot gives you more than two choices in Wyoming’s U.S. House race.
You can vote for Chuck Gray.
You can vote for Democrat Lisa Kinney.
You can vote for Libertarian Shawn Johnson.
You can vote for Constitution Party candidate Jeff Haggit.
You can write in someone else.
Or you can leave the race blank.
Each choice means something different.
Gray won the Republican primary with 25.4 percent of the vote in a nine-person field. He won fairly. But about three out of four Republican primary voters chose someone else.
That doesn’t mean they oppose him. It does mean a lot of Republicans are making a fresh decision in November.
If you believe Gray best represents Wyoming, if Republican control of Congress is your overriding concern, or if his strengths outweigh your concerns about his temperament, voting for him is a rational choice.
Kinney offers a different calculation.
She’s a Laramie attorney who served 10 years in the state Senate, including as minority leader. For conservatives who won’t vote for Gray, her case rests on competence, temperament and the ability to work with people who disagree. Ideology comes second.
That’s a real choice.
Johnson offers another.
An attorney, former Casper vice mayor and former sheriff’s deputy, he fits comfortably within Wyoming’s long-running, small-L libertarian streak. His campaign stresses limited government, fiscal restraint and independence from both major parties.
Haggit offers yet another conservative option, and his candidacy carries an extra consequence.
Under Wyoming law, a party earns major-party status when one of its candidates wins at least 10 percent of the vote for U.S. House, governor or secretary of state.
That makes the Constitution Party’s 2026 effort bigger than one congressional race.
Rebecca Bextel left the Republican Party to become the Constitution Party’s nominee for governor. Her candidacy, along with Haggit’s, reflects a growing effort to build a party to the right of the Republican establishment, one with real appeal to Freedom Caucus sympathizers.
For those voters, a Haggit vote may be as much about building a new Wyoming party as sending him to Washington.
The same rule cuts both ways. Democrats need 10 percent to keep their major-party status, too. In a crowded field, a Kinney vote carries weight beyond this one race.
Then there are the last two choices.
A write-in says none of the four candidates earned your vote, but someone else did.
A blank says none of them earned it.
Both are legitimate decisions.
And no, a vote for Johnson or Haggit isn’t a vote for Kinney.
A vote for Johnson goes to Johnson. A vote for Haggit goes to Haggit. A blank line gives nobody a vote.
If you’d otherwise have voted for Gray, choosing someone else does lower his total. That’s the political consequence. It doesn’t magically add a vote to Kinney.
Candidates still have to earn votes.
Kinney, Johnson and Haggit have sat for substantive interviews and shown up at public forums. All three are scheduled for the Oct. 15 Wyoming PBS debate.
Gray has been harder to find. He’s ghosting the PBS debate and he shirked the Sheridan Chamber of Commerce forum without sending a note.
That raises a fair question.
If you’re the Republican nominee in a state where Republicans dominate voter registration, how hard should you have to work for the votes of Republicans who backed someone else in August?
Gray gets to answer that through his campaign.
You get to decide whether the answer is good enough.
Your ballot doesn’t ask who everyone else thinks will win.
It asks what you want to do with your vote.
So understand what your choice means.
And don’t surrender it because someone tells you the outcome’s already decided.
Gail Symons can be reached at GailSymons@mac.com
