In Wyoming, the blue-wave analysis is overblown. Tuesday’s election results prove the point.
Wyoming is a presumptively red state. Our lifeblood, as a state, is mineral production.
To win as a Democrat in Wyoming, a candidate first has to overcome the presumption that the Democratic Party wants to take food off the tables of the families who work in the mineral industry.
All other things being equal, that presumption is hard to overcome.
So, to gain any traction, a non-Republican candidate has to give voters a reason to break from the presumptive Republican vote.
It is not enough to give voters a distasteful candidate from whom to run away. A candidate has to give them something to run toward. By and large, none of the non-Republican campaigns delivered that message.
Harriet Hageman won the U.S. Senate seat over James Byrd, 63% to 33%. Hageman ran a campaign built around not making mistakes. She skipped the debates and gave Byrd few opportunities to score points.
Chuck Gray went into the U.S. House race carrying a lot of baggage. He received 52% of the vote, to Lisa Kinney’s 32%, Shawn Johnson’s 7% and Jeffrey Haggit’s 4%. The race also drew 1,031 write-ins, 1,231 overvotes and 6,226 undervotes.
Those numbers show a level of dissatisfaction with all the candidates.
To his credit, Gray worked hard. He traveled the state. He attended meetings. He was in the news all the time, which built name recognition.
He ran on his allegiance to Donald Trump, which plays well in Wyoming, even if it does not play as well across the rest of the country.
After the primary, Gray tried to soften his image on social media. He posted often about how much he supports the Wyoming Cowboys.
Meanwhile, a PAC affiliated with his father ran a lot of negative ads against Kinney.
Kinney and Johnson ran underfunded campaigns and focused their efforts on the general election. Gray has been running for office for years. In Wyoming, a candidate cannot campaign for a few months and expect to win.
Given Gray’s performance at just over half the vote, I suspect challengers will surface and start their campaigns earlier than in the past. I also suspect the field will be much smaller than the nine candidates he faced in the primary.
And I expect Gray to start his 2028 campaign the minute he takes office. Look for him on the news and at events around the state for the next two years.
In the governor’s race, Eric Barlow received 67% of the vote. Democrat Ken Casner received 14%, and Rebecca Bextel received 16%.
Casner spent no money in the general election and took no donations. In Wyoming, that approach is a recipe for failure, and it showed.
Bextel ran an unusual campaign. She left the Republican Party and joined the Constitution Party as an “insurance policy” against Barlow. She crisscrossed the state talking about her “baseball bat” and “big balls” which was an odd way to campaign.
Bextel, for all her bluster, finished two percentage points ahead of Casner, who raised and spent zero dollars.
Bextel took lots of donations.
Her campaign reports show she raised $88,954 before the primary and $408,993 for the general election. At least $362,233 of the general election money came from a national party.
Over the whole campaign, she spent $128,876. Her amended report shows $433,286 carried forward, but that figure appears to add her primary spending instead of subtracting it.
By my math, the campaign should have about $369,071 left. What Bextel will do with that money is a question for another day.
Barlow was rewarded for hard work. He spent more than 400 days crisscrossing the state, meeting people, listening and getting to know the people of Wyoming.
His campaign was a model of how campaigns work in Wyoming. Stress your own abilities and say nothing negative about the other candidates.
In Wyoming elections, I don’t give much credence to “blue-wave” or “red-wave” punditry.
I trust Wyoming voters. They care deeply about our state, and they choose the candidate they believe will work hardest for their interests.
Every candidate who won outworked the opposition.
If future candidates take one lesson from this election, it should be this: If you want an office, be prepared to develop a plan, raise the money, spend the time and do the work of meeting the voters.
In Wyoming, the candidate with the clearest vision who works the hardest generally wins.
Tom Lubnau served in the Wyoming Legislature from 2004 to 2015 and is a former Speaker of the Wyoming House. He can be reached at: YourInputAppreciated@gmail.com
