My friend Scott is a man’s man. A Republican, he was born and raised in Wyoming. He is from a blue-collar, working-class family. He’s a “fossil fuel-burning motorhead” (his words). He loves the outdoors, he covets his guns. He never passes up an opportunity to shoot a coyote with his AR-15. He is very much a redneck (my words).
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He is also a pallet of reds. Though he’s not politically active, he votes. He’s unafraid to choose the candidate he feels is best suited for the office regardless of party affiliation. He’s smart. A successful trial attorney, he worries about right-wing politicians’ attacks on the judiciary and the Rule of Law. Though he voted for Donald Trump three times, he now thinks the president is the “biggest idiot on the planet” (again, his words).
This is what Wyoming moderates look like, and this year the Scotts showed up. And they were pissed.
Here in the Trumpiest of states, in the primary, Republicans rejected the extreme right wing of the party, booting most Freedom Caucus incumbents. Those who remain in the Legislature will likely be knocked off critical committees, stripped of their leadership positions in January.
Freedom Caucus, you brazen, tone deaf, self-appointed voices of the commoner, did you hear the people sing?
Primary voters chose moderate Republican Eric Barlow for governor. Barlow, a rancher, veterinarian and journeyman legislator easily won the primary despite the fact the state GOP refused to endorse him, accusing him of naughty-list RINO characteristics. Like listening.
It was an overnight wonder, a decade in the making. It was also a crucible moment where a lazy electorate arose, organized and got themselves to the polls.
In 2022, I wrote that Liz Cheney could retain her seat if moderate Republicans showed up and voted. Cheney, then a three-term congresswoman from Wyoming who had fallen out of favor with many in her own party over her criticism of Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, was fighting to retain her seat against Harriet Hageman, whom Trump endorsed.
I was wrong. My theory was part hunch and, in retrospect, magical thinking. Hageman trounced Cheney by nearly 30 points.
What I did not know then were the limits of Republicans in this state. How many terrible policies from hard-right Republicans could we endure? Where was our cliff on this flat earth?
In the past 10 years, with the election of Trump and a corresponding rise of the Freedom Caucus, I had become a stranger in a foreign land, my state unrecognizable with elected leaders fomenting fear, commingling the line between church and state, praying on the House floor, weaponizing scripture, and spouting a cruel strain of Christianity I knew not to be true.
My friend group shrank. My friends, too rigid, were unwilling to hug-out our ideological differences — you know — like loving one another unconditionally. Most of them would not meet my eye in the aisles of Walmart. Cowards.
I left my church the Sunday the pastor preached a Gospel according to Trump. But I did not leave my party. This was perhaps a fight that could be won.
Surely, I thought, Wyoming Republicans would recognize the legislative repellants enacted by the Freedom Caucus majority, policies that, among others, convinced 70% of University of Wyoming graduates to leave the state, or expectant mothers and obstetricians to deliver elsewhere.
Surely voters would see the harm inflicted on this state. Surely they recognized the deterioration in the quality of lawmakers. One legislator, Rep. Gary Brown, is a convicted felon. Another, Rep. Bill Allemand, spent the majority of the last term fighting a DUI arrest, rejecting calls for his resignation. Two current legislators, Sen. Bob Ide and Rep. Joe Webb, were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (A third, then-Sen. Darin Smith, is now U.S. Attorney for Wyoming. He called that day “so patriotic.”) Though they have all been roundly rejected by voters this cycle, they continue to serve, sitting on committees of desperation, their last, wheezy attempt at poorly conceived legislation.
They were an ugly representation of us, a proxy for our worst instincts, the antithesis of our western culture: a humble, speak low, spit sideways and get sh*t done ethos.
All that is good, kind and lovely about this state, let’s shut ‘er down, those leaders seemed to say. It was embarrassing.
For Scott, his disillusionment began with conspiracy theories perpetuated by Freedom Caucus members. He was bothered by dark money pouring into the state, allowing candidates he’d never heard of to sail into office. He had no idea who these people were running the state, but he knew he didn’t like them. He knew there were common sense Republicans out there who needed to step up. Those hard-right legislators and their trick ponies they rode in on? They needed to go.
Scott, and the other 54% of the primary voters found their line. The business and legal communities, historically too skittish to take political stances, organized and funneled money into targeted races. Nonprofits drilled into civic education, get out the vote messaging.
Scott helped form a PAC, Common Sense Republicans, largely made up of attorneys (I contributed) and ran a lean, social-media campaign blanketing the state with billboards, calling out Freedom Caucus budget cuts to public schools, municipalities, healthcare and law enforcement.
Everyone saw the billboards. Hey, Freedom Caucus, those billboards collectively blared, you are not one of us. You waltzed into the state with a nationalized playbook, a campaign greased by murky, out-of-state interests, impervious to real issues at hand.
We see you in your Wranglers and dime store cowboy hat, your soft elbow resting on a split-rail fence. Take your mangled definition of freedom and leave.
You are not one of us. You are a wolf.
The rise of the Freedom Caucus in this state and an electorate’s boiling point is a study of a distracted electorate. The Scotts, the sane, the levelheaded conservative voter, they have been here all along. They were just asleep, checked out, thinking someone else would do the heavy lifting.
I do not have much in common with my friend Scott. My gun collection consists of my boys’ BB gun and a slingshot. My self-defense plan is dial 911, throat check, then run.
What we do share is a mutual respect for one another, a willingness to disagree while still remaining on the same team. That is what we call common sense in these parts. And there are more of us than we thought.
