Baltimore satirist H.L. Mencken once quipped, “No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”
Mencken never met a Wyoming voter.
Wyoming voters guard their towns, counties, special districts and state. When politicians promise the moon and then abuse that trust, voters show them the door.
The Freedom Caucus learned that lesson in the last election. Its members stormed into Cheyenne full of promises and bluster.
They chased chemtrails on the House floor and campaign donations off of it. They produced heartache and bad press, and not much else. Now they are wondering why they don’t control the state.
The voters handed them a rebuke. It said Wyoming was tired of the incompetence and the posturing.
In their land of denial, the Freedom Caucus and its supporters cannot admit that truth.
Instead, they started telling a new story. Dark money is flooding the state. Democrats are posing as Republicans. Wyoming is on its way to becoming Colorado.
Leading that chorus is Rebecca Bextel, a Freedom Caucus money mule and now a third-party candidate for governor.
Bextel claims Wyoming is turning blue. She claims, George Soros is somehow funding Eric Barlow’s campaign.
That claim is easy to check. Barlow’s contributions are public on the Wyoming Campaign Finance website.
Anyone can look. The donors are mostly Wyoming people from every corner of the state.
And as you will recall, the real dark money in the governor’s race came in the primary from outside Wyoming, and it was spent attacking Barlow with lies.
Wyoming voters saw through it then. They will, now, too.
Now we are told Barlow is a Democrat. That claim is preposterous.
Barlow has sponsored, voted for and passed bills supporting all 23 planks of the Wyoming Republican Party platform. The record is there for anyone who cares to read it.
Compare the records.
The assertion is made by a woman who’s claim to fame is being sued by Wyoming Game and Fish for squatting on an easement and denying the moon landing.
For some candidates, the truth is negotiable. They will say whatever it takes to get elected.
Wyoming voters can smell it.
Bextel invokes the words of Charlie Kirk, from six years ago, when he said Wyoming would become Colorado within six years.
May he rest in peace, but he was wrong. I will say it plainly: Wyoming is not going to become Colorado in one year, six years or ever.
Wyoming is not the way it is by accident. Candidates here can’t hide behind slick slogans, glossy mailers and outrageous claims.
We know our candidates. We know when someone is trying to sell us a load of bunk.
Wyoming voters choose whoever they want, ignoring endorsements of so-called experts.
Teton County, where Bextel hails from, is the state’s lone Democratic stronghold.
Conservative Republican Campbell County has elected Barlow six times.
I know the mineral workers in Campbell County, the beet farmers in the Bighorn Basin, the ranchers all over the state, the teachers, the doctors and the nurses.
They will not back anyone who wants to change the way this state works.
Through three Democrat governors, Wyoming did not become a liberal paradise. The issue was not party – the issue was the ability to choose the best course for the state.
Wyoming is a low-tax, Second Amendment, mind-your-own-business, hard-working state.
Character matters here. So, when people who appear to have no character start spouting claims with no evidence behind them, it is offensive.
It is just as offensive when a perfectly coiffed East Coast journalist, Tucker Carlson, dressed in flannel to pass as a man of the people, gives those claims an audience without asking the hard questions or doing any substantive research.
His segment was irresponsible and just plain wrong. He used to be better than that.
Wyoming voters are independent. We rarely take direction from interlopers telling us how to run our state.
Just look at how Wyoming voters ignored presidential endorsements in the governor’s primary.
Wyoming voters will give anyone running for office a fair hearing. Betray their trust, though, and expect their wrath.
Threatening to fire people once elected, threatening people with a bat and bragging about “big balls” is abusive and uncouth.
Fabricating information to get elected is worse.
The voters already rejected the Freedom Caucus candidates.
I expect them to see through the empty promises, fabrications and bluster of the Freedom Caucus cheerleader and make short work of her, too.
Wyoming is not going to turn into the gun-control, liberal paradise Colorado has become just because an Alabama transplant says so.
Wyoming voters know what is good for this state.
A crass, uninformed, arrogant and largely incompetent third-party governor is not in Wyoming’s future.
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
