‘Checkgate,’ primary day and sharp Wyoming elbows

If a list of the “achievements” of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus is compiled, early in our legislative budget session, it would read as a litany of failure, embarrassment, venality, hubris, deceit, greed, shame and outright idiocy. Sprinkle in a generous dose of ineptitude, and that pretty much sums up what these gomers have accomplished since we gave ‘em their election certificates.

The report card of Freedom Caucus actions is a diametrical opposite to the tenets in Wyoming’s “Code of the West.”

Before we talk about how to rectify this goofiness, we need to look back and remember how we got into this muddle in the first place.

For the past couple of election cycles, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus has blown smoke up our fundaments, extolling with patriotic fervor their own virtues. They promised us a Big Rock Candy Mountain of responsive government and fiscal restraint, and sugarplum visions of cowboy culture and “Wyoming values.” And enough of us bought their snake oil to give them control of the Wyoming House of Representatives.

Rhetoric from the Freedom Caucus tantalized us with a populist message that appealed to our sense of self as Wyomingites. They convinced enough of our friends and neighbors that Wyoming has been doing things all wrong since 1890, that they stepped into voting booths and gave the caucus a chance to prove themselves.

What has transpired since then should mortify us all.

The performance of the Chemtrail Caucus has been an embarrassment for the Big Empty. They have crawfished on every bet, pulled hidden cards from their sleeves and bluffed with outright lies. They claim to be “grassroots,” but all that grows from their shallow roots is cheatgrass.

Instead of better government, they have given us a power-mad cabal in our legislature that wants to sell our public land, strangle our schools, starve our communities, engage us in a culture war that nobody can win and make of us a meek herd of sheep instead of cowgirls and cowboys.

And they’ve done some bad stuff, too.

Thankfully, wiser heads in the Legislature have deep-sixed the bulk of the Chemtrail Caucus agenda early in the session. Even bills brought by caucus-controlled standing committees have failed introduction. And the Chemtrail Caucus has predictably cried foul, and blamed the “establishment’ for their own failures to introduce good bills.

Then came “Checkgate,” when Rebecca Bextel, a right-wing activist and fundraiser, sauntered onto the House floor and brazenly handed out checks to legislators, all of whom are either members of the caucus or have ties to the group. When Rep. Mike Yin pointed out in a floor speech the next day that checks had been distributed in the chamber, Chemtrail Caucus members castigated Yin and said that he’d accused members of taking bribes.

But Yin had a receipt, in the form of a photo of the transaction on the floor snapped by Rep. Karlee Provenza. In response to this proof, the House unanimously moved to investigate the incident, and the Senate unanimously condemned the event.

On a personal note, I have been following Wyoming politics for five decades, and Bextel’s is the most boneheaded move I have ever seen or even heard about.

The cherry on top is the announcement by the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office that they are launching an investigation into Checkgate to determine if the crime of bribery took place on the House floor. Perhaps the sheriff is investigating the Chemtrail Caucus merely to, as Rep. John Bear said about the UW cuts, “get their attention,” but I doubt it.

Now, what do we Wyoming citizens do about this mess?

Aside from any administrative remedies from the legislature, or legal remedies from law enforcement, we have the ultimate remedy in our hands and sharp elbows. We gave the Chemtrail Caucus the power that they now abuse, and we can take it from them on Aug. 18, 2026. We can muster our friends and neighbors to vote against them with our hands, and usher them out the door with our sharp elbows.

We can resolve among ourselves that Wyoming needs more cowgirls and cowboys, and fewer dry cleaners from Missouri. And we can act on that resolve when we step into the voting booth.

More than consequences imposed by the Legislature or the courts, we can throw open the windows and doors in the Big Empty, air the place out and vote the Freedom Caucus out of office. That is a consequence they can’t deny. That will get their attention.