Being good at fighting the people in charge doesn’t mean you’ll be good at being in charge.
On Saturday, Nov. 14, Republican legislators will choose the leaders who will guide the Wyoming Legislature for the next two years.
Voters don’t get a ballot in that election. But every Wyoming resident has a stake in whether the people selected know how to lead.
Winning elections takes one set of skills. So does delivering a fiery speech or fighting for a cause in which you believe. Running a legislative chamber takes a different skillset entirely.
The Legislature’s 2026 budget session made that painfully clear.
Wyoming has a citizen legislature. Members don’t have personal staff. Most of them have ranches, businesses, practices or jobs waiting back home.
When the Legislature wastes time, it’s wasting time that belongs to people who gave something up to be there. Good organization and respect for colleagues are necessities.
Passing a balanced budget is a constitutional responsibility. House members on the Joint Appropriations Committee started that process in January by making sweeping cuts to the governor’s recommendations, including funding for the University of Wyoming and economic development.
The state Senate, under President Bo Biteman, Vice President Tim Salazar and Majority Floor Leader Tara Nethercott, largely restored the governor’s recommendations. Then it worked through additional changes in an orderly fashion.
The House went another direction.
House members considered 247 budget amendments. The Senate considered 72. House debate stretched past midnight, twice. Leadership added a Saturday session, and during that session one representative collapsed while speaking at the podium.
After all that, a conference committee reconciled the differences in fewer than 30 minutes, and both chambers jointly adopted 37 amendments
On March 1, House Majority Floor Leader Scott Heiner posted on Instagram that the House had spent 200½ hours in session, compared with fewer than 153 for the Senate. He offered those 31% longer hours as proof the House was doing more work for Wyoming.
Throughout my Navy career and my years at GE, I heard a recurring reminder from people who knew how to run things: “Work smarter, not harder.”
Longer hours aren’t an accomplishment necessarily. Sometimes they’re evidence the work wasn’t organized well.
To be fair, legislators must have the chance to debate and amend a budget. Many House amendments reflected legitimate objections to the committee’s cuts. Those objections deserved a hearing.
The question is whether leadership saw those fights coming and managed the floor so members could have them without burning through nights and weekends.
It didn’t.
Here’s the thing. People who spend years opposing those in charge don’t automatically learn how to lead once they’re in charge. The House leadership chosen after the 2024 election had spent years opposing the people running the Legislature. The 2026 session showed it hadn’t made the transition.
The Senate’s leadership team, with complementary skills and real trust among its members, showed what it looks like when that transition happens.
So what should legislators look for on Nov. 14?
Start with the presiding officers.
The Speaker and the Senate President answer for the whole chamber, including members who voted against them. They appoint committee chairs, refer bills and keep order. A Speaker who uses those powers to reward friends and punish critics is running a faction. The job is to run a House.
Then the floor leaders. If you’ve ever sat through a county commission meeting that ran three hours longer than expected, you know what poor scheduling costs. Floor leaders set the calendar. When debate runs past midnight twice in one session, that’s on them.
The best speech in the room won’t move a calendar.
The House Majority Whip needs relationships. Anyone who has worked a branding crew knows the loudest hand isn’t always the one you put on the chute. A good whip knows colleagues, listens and tells them the truth. With so many new legislators arriving in January, coaching them should be a priority for the whole leadership team.
Committee chairmen matter more than most people realize. Appropriations, Judiciary and Minerals demand real subject knowledge. Every chairman has to run hearings fairly and use limited time wisely. Public testimony deserves a fair hearing even when the chairman dislikes the message. And once testimony ends, members deserve room to ask hard questions and reach their own conclusions.
Across all of these jobs, temperament matters.
Decisiveness isn’t rigidity. Confidence isn’t arrogance. Accountability isn’t control. Respect doesn’t require intimidation.
Good leaders make hard decisions without treating disagreement as disloyalty. They admit mistakes. They adjust when the facts change. They hold friends and critics to the same standard. And they build up capable legislators instead of collecting obedient ones.
That’s the difference between loyalty and trust. Loyalty might win someone a caucus election. Trust makes a legislature function after the ballots are counted.
The choice on Nov. 14 belongs to Republican legislators, and the public should respect that.
But the consequences belong to all of us. The budget. The schools. The county roads. The university in Laramie. Every one of them runs through a Legislature that either works or doesn’t.
Your legislator gets a vote next Saturday. You have a week to call or email and ask what they’re looking for in a leader. Ask whether they’re voting for a fighter or a manager. Then watch the first weeks of the 2027 session and see whether you got your answer.
The measure of leadership isn’t how long the lights stay on in the Capitol. It’s what gets accomplished, and how.
Gail Symons can be reached at gailsymons@mac.com
