Wyoming Freedom Caucus and opponents won’t be singing ‘Kumbaya’

Several members of the Freedom Caucus set to take full control of the Wyoming House next year are confident they will unify a divided Republican Party.

Rep. Jeremy Haroldson (R-Wheatland), the incoming speaker pro tempore, told WyoFile unity is “very much visible and palatable. You can feel it.”

Come on. Expecting far-right politicians who won by denigrating their enemies within the GOP to suddenly play nice is laughable. Whether you label it rubbish or bullshit, the Freedom Caucus didn’t transform from a small rag-tag group of ultra-conservatives into today’s well-organized powerhouse to do anything but push its agenda by any means necessary.

The Freedom Caucus maligned its GOP primary opponents in the Wyoming Caucus at every turn. It flooded voters with incendiary mailers containing misinformation difficult to counter in the short campaign cycle.

I don’t think Wyoming Caucus “traditional conservatives,” on the sidelines licking their wounds, expect the strutting Freedom Caucus to become less vicious. Nobody will be hugging and singing “Kumbaya” with their new overlords anytime soon.

After the Freedom Caucus posted enough 2022 victories to form a solid 26-vote bloc — not enough to pass legislation on its own, but sufficient to kill measures during a budget session — former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyoming) offered WyoFile his assessment of the movement.

“They’re based on fear, lack of trust, lack of any kind of comity and they think compromise is a dirty word,” said Simpson, a GOP icon whom the far-right claims is more aligned with RINOs — “Republicans-in-name-only.”

Simpson turned the insult back on his opponents, calling them “Republicans ignorantly needling other Republicans.” Well said. The incoming needling will be swift and painful across the state.

Rep. Chip Neiman (R-Hulett) will be the speaker of the House and Sen. Bo Biteman (R-Ranchester) Senate president when lawmakers officially vote on Jan. 14. 

Neiman became the only Freedom Caucus member in the House Republican leadership when he surprised everyone with his ascension to majority floor leader in 2022. Given the power to decide what bills would be heard in the 2023 and 2024 sessions, Neiman flexed the caucus’ muscle and positioned himself to move up the ladder if the Freedom Caucus won more seats.

All of next year’s House leadership team belong to the Freedom Caucus or are aligned with the group. Along with Neiman and Haroldson, Rep. Scott Heiner (R-Green River) is majority floor leader, and Rep. Ocean Andrew (R-Laramie) is majority whip.

The Freedom Caucus is not officially part of the Senate but endorses Senate primary candidates, and several in the upper chamber align with its positions. On many issues that includes Biteman, who agrees with the caucus’ obsession with implementing voting restrictions to “protect the integrity” of an elections system that is already one of the nation’s safest. In other words, the effort is a performative waste of taxpayer dollars. I predict they’ll recoup those funds by cutting essential services. 

Expect a Freedom Caucus budget blitzkrieg, eliminating “liberal” programs it doesn’t like, especially if they help poor people. The Department of Health will be targeted for cruel cuts when hardworking Wyomingites need better access to quality health care, not less.

The hue and cry over rising property taxes continues despite the majority of counties experiencing less than 6% increases, and some even decreased, according to the Department of Revenue. We still don’t know the full impact property tax relief measures will have on local governments to provide essential services like fire and police departments.

However, we do know a 4% property tax cap caused the state to lose $13 million in education funding this year.

The public K-12 system could suffer major losses, depending on how successful the Freedom Caucus is in wildly expanding a program that stashes $20 million in taxpayer funds into “education savings accounts” of up to $6,000 for each eligible student. Vouchers can be spent on private or religious schools, which is illegal under the Wyoming Constitution.

The Freedom Caucus won’t rest until it removes all income restrictions, so public funds can be available to all families, including wealthy ones who want to send their kids to religious “schools of choice.” But they can already do that using their own money, not public funds meant to guarantee free public education for all.

New Freedom Caucus Chairwoman Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams (R-Cody) led the fight to pass two abortion bans in 2023 that were recently ruled unconstitutional. She may look for ways to fight back. That could include pursuing new restrictions or even an amendment to put an abortion ban on the 2026 ballot.

All of these bills will likely make it through the House, so their fate rests in the Senate’s hands. I’m putting stock in the Senate and not Gov. Mark Gordon because his veto pen has proven flimsy. Instead of rejecting bad bills, he criticizes them but lets them become law without his signature. 

But I’m optimistic about the Senate, because the body chose a more traditional conservative, Sen. Tara Nethercott (R-Cheyenne), as majority floor leader. She defeated the more hard-line Sen. Brian Boner (R-Douglas).

In her new job, Nethercott can kill bills by not letting them be voted on. Will she take the most extreme dreck from the House and deep-six it? Those who abhor the Freedom Caucus agenda — and probably senators who don’t want to cast a vote that will forever link them to these disasters — certainly hope so.

But there’s no guarantee. Each majority floor leader adopts his or her own bill management practices; we won’t know Nethercott’s plans before she executes them. There’s a lot of gamesmanship, and the senator, midway through her second term, has plenty of experience wheeling and dealing on the floor. 

The best news is that compared to others who might have been chosen when both chambers made far-right turns, Nethercott is probably the most willing to compromise.

Simpson once said this about Congress, but it applies to state legislators: “Now it’s just sharp elbows, and instead of having a caucus where you sit down and say, ‘What are you doing for your country?’ you sit figuring out how to screw the other side.”

In Wyoming, all but eight of the 93 lawmakers are Republicans. A focus on exercising power over those supposedly in the same tent can cause havoc by passing harmful bills.

Wyoming saw enough chaos this year, when battling GOP caucuses upended the session over turf wars, leadership battles and extreme legislation that did nothing to address real issues like health care, affordable housing and economic diversification.

By comparison, we may be heading into one of the most damaging legislative sessions Wyoming has experienced.  

Wyoming’s shifting political winds chose the Freedom Caucus to set us on the “right” course. Based on its brief but antagonistic, win-at-all-cost history, I think voters got it dreadfully wrong.