The Wyoming Freedom Caucus can blame itself for its resounding defeat

The Freedom Caucus bristled whenever anyone, including yours truly, described it as “far right.” So, the media started using adjectives like “further right” and “hard-line conservatives.”

Thanks to Tuesday’s shocking primary election results, we now know what to accurately call a huge chunk of these Freedom Caucus members, including its top leadership: “former legislators.”

Please note that I did not write “losers.” I am not a cruel man, just a very happy one. And I know the political winds can shift quickly, so I am definitely not counting on the electorate to prevent the Freedom Caucus from ever coming back.

As the (ahem) far-right caucus proved when it took control of the House in 2024, it all depends on which voters actually show up on Election Day.

But this was a trampling unlike any other election in the state’s history. The Freedom Caucus, with its never-ending gloating about its “mandate,” was led to the slaughterhouse without any idea of what was coming.

Thirteen House incumbents lost, plus nine other candidates. Voters spurned six Freedom Caucus members who tried to move to the Senate.

That leaves the caucus with likely just 10 reliable House votes. It’s an astounding turnaround from January, when the group could count on about 35 votes, give or take, in the House.

I realize there were Freedom Caucus survivors, like Rep. Tomi Strock of Douglas, whose winning margin was 121 votes. But they were few and far between, and sometimes inexplicable. 

How, for example, did Rep. Bill Allemand, R-Midwest, win after his embarrassing DUI arrest and plea deal was splashed all over the news for months? In unofficial results, he defeated Peter Boyer, Bar Nunn’s mayor, by 27 votes.

But look at some of the Freedom Caucus’ most eyeball-popping losses.

House Speaker Chip Neiman, R-Hullett, lost his bid to move to the Senate when he was defeated by Sen. Ogden Driskill, R-Devils Tower, one of the Legislature’s biggest Freedom Caucus disparagers.

Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, former Freedom Caucus chair and co-chair of the powerful Joint Appropriations Committee, was pinned to the mat by challenger Douglas Moore.

House Majority Floor Leader Scott Heiner, R-Green River, who decided what bills would fall on the cutting room floor at the introduction deadline, was upset by Kenneth D. Roberts of Kemmerer, a Wyoming Game and Fish commissioner.

How about pundits who pooh-poohed the premise that “Checkgate” was a major scandal when it dominated the Legislature’s budget session?

Nine Freedom Caucus House members and a Senate ally were given campaign checks from a Jackson donor that were delivered — some on the House floor during a legislative session! — by conservative activist Rebecca Bextel.

Bextel had been lobbying lawmakers on an anti-affordable housing bill under the guise of stopping local governments from infringing on private property rights. It was sponsored by Bear. 

Out of the 10 check recipients, only Rep. Christopher Knapp, R-Gillette, will appear on the general election ballot. Gone are Neiman and Bear, whose joint conduct during the Checkgate incident and investigation was appalling.

Bear, who had accepted his $1,500 check from Bextel, didn’t admit it when the issue first came up. Instead, he berated Rep. Mike Yin, D-Jackson, who had called out Bextel’s actions to the entire House without mentioning her name and diplomatically not identifying any check grabbers.

Bear said Yin was “making accusations of an individual that cannot be substantiated, and that accusation is offensive to this body.”

Neiman, who much later acknowledged Bextel gave him his check in his office, a few feet from the House floor, also objected to Yin’s claim and asked him to substantiate it.

Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, R-Cody, Freedom Caucus chair, said if what Yin said was true, it “essentially would be bribery and unethical.” She claimed Yin made a defamatory statement.

I think voters made a statement of their own when they rejected her bid for the Republican nomination for secretary of state.

Gone are Rep. Darin McCann, R-Rock Springs, who was famously photographed by Rep. Karlee Provenza, D-Laramie, accepting Bextel’s check on the House floor with Rep. Marlene Brady, R-Green River, standing nearby clutching her check.

At least McMann admitted what he did. Brady told reporters it was none of their business.

Other members of the Checkgate gang who lost their seats were GOP Reps. Joe Webb of Lyman and Tony Locke of Casper. Sen. Bob Ide, a Casper legislator endorsed by the Freedom Caucus, is also out. So is Mark Jennings, a former representative who was trying to win his House seat back. 

Even Rep. Nina Webber, R-Cody, who had escorted Bextel on the House floor, lost her reelection attempt. Only Knapp escaped.

Two other Freedom Caucus defeats loom large in explaining why the devastating blows to the far-right movement were inflicted internally. They happened to two members of the caucus with extremely high profiles.

Former Rep. Jeanette Ward of Casper was the poster girl of the Freedom Caucus during her one term in the House. The self-described “political refugee” from Illinois, who couldn’t win an election there, made headlines by promoting the most red-meat issues one could toss in front of Wyoming voters.

Whether it was banning supposedly “pornographic” material from libraries, taking on the LGBTQ+ community or reproductive rights, she was always controversial.

Voters quickly tired of her act and replaced her with Julie Jarvis, a “traditional” Wyoming conservative who didn’t share Ward’s extreme views. Ward responded by watching her from the House gallery and making derogatory statements about Jarvis on social media.

The rematch was a test of whether the Freedom Caucus has any staying power. The verdict is in, and it doesn’t. The totals are unofficial until the state canvassing board meets, but Jarvis won, 685-496.

If we’re lucky, Wyoming will join Illinois as the next state Ward flees.

If you’re looking for a Freedom Caucus loss even more significant than the ones suffered by Bear and Neiman, examine what happened to Rep. Ken Pendergraft of Sheridan when he tried to succeed Senate President Bo Biteman of Ranchester, who left office to unsuccessfully pursue Wyoming’s U.S. House seat.

I will never forget sitting at Joint Appropriations Committee meetings and watching Pendergraft try to gut the University of Wyoming, the Wyoming Business Council, the Department of Health and Wyoming Public Media. He had no justification for taking a chainsaw to these budgets, just the vague belief that he knew money was being wasted and he would stop it.

The Freedom Caucus plan was to sic Pendergraft on the Senate, which saved all of these institutions from his wrecking ball last session. He was supposed to “educate” the chamber, which was only a vote or two away from being taken over by Freedom Caucus sympathizers, and show them how to responsibly work a budget.

If ever a man was totally unfit for that job, it’s Pendergraft, outpointed by Melissa Butcher in Senate District 21 by 17 percentage points.

People I spoke to ahead of the primary thought Pendergraft was a shoo-in for the nomination. It’s the perfect example of the “Peter Principle,” a concept that observes people in a hierarchy tend to rise to a “level of respective incompetence.”

In Wyoming, it should be forever known as the “Pendergraft Principle.” The architect of the Freedom Caucus’ plan for statewide political dominance went down in flames.

Rising from the ashes should be a Legislature with people who didn’t arrive at the Capitol hoping to burn everything down. 

With new legislative leadership and an executive branch likely headed by former Sen. Eric Barlow of Gillette, a level-headed man who has shown intelligence and compassion during his 14 years in the Legislature, hopefully Wyoming can close the chapter on the nightmarish past two years and head toward a much brighter future.