Five Republicans and two Democrats seeking to become Wyoming’s next junior U.S. senator have filed to run for their parties’ nomination in the Aug. 18 primaries.
U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman and Sam Mead, the nephew and great-grandson of two former Wyoming governors, are likely the most recognizable names among the GOP candidates.
Voters elected Hageman to Congress in 2022 and again in 2024. She sits on the House Natural Resources and Judiciary committees and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, along with several other subcommittees.
Mead, great-grandson of the late Gov. Cliff Hansen and nephew of former Gov. Matt Mead, is a rancher, former engineer with Blue Origin, former mayor of Kirby and Whiskey distiller. He made recent news declaring his opposition to the pumped storage project at Seminoe Reservoir.
Three other Republicans contest them on the ballot, including Jill Edwards, a Laramie resident who is “a Wyoming mom who works multiple jobs … busy putting food on my children’s tables,” she said in a social media post. “My mission is to fight for Wyoming by protecting our land, supporting our families, strengthening rural communities, and ensuring access to mental health care,” her campaign website states.
Jimmy Skovgard, married, 60, and the father of four, also appears among the GOP choices. He began his career as a data analyst and now operates an oil field business cleaning drilling sites and spills.
Touting his support for public lands, he said he is running “to reject the politics of division and restore accountability, transparency, integrity, and compassion to public service.”
John Allan Holtz, a Laramie resident and former Douglas circuit court judge with a military, law and technical engineering background is also on the Republican primary ballot. He is 76, unmarried and shouldered the responsibility of imposing fate on the convicted.
“All of a sudden you go into court … and then you’ve got to sentence someone, and that’s where that gets a bit tough,” he said. “The sentencing thing was the most difficult.”
Blue boys
Democrats have a choice to make as James Byrd, a former state representative who served from 2009-2019, faces Billy Benavidez, a greenskeeper from Sheridan and the father of two.
Byrd, a Cheyenne resident, is 72 and has worked in the fields of computer networking, geophysical exploration and software management. A passionate public lands supporter, he recently blasted Hageman over her bill to require construction of roads in some roadless areas of national forests.
“Washington politicians are completely ignoring the people to ram through a corporate handout,” he wrote in a statement regarding the attack on roadless areas. Hageman’s bill “goes far beyond a standard policy adjustment. Washington wants to build taxpayer-funded roads through untouched forests, carving up critical big game habitats and blue-ribbon trout streams just to lower the overhead costs for major commercial developers.”
Hageman did not respond to a request for comment.
Benavidez said he stands for freedom, against spying on Americans through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and for term limits. “I’m running for office for one term only,” he said, “and please put that in bold.”
Voters he has talked to, “they’re very concerned about the dark MAGA,” he said, “as well as the far, far, far, far, far, far, far, left, which is out of the mainstream. My platform, essentially, is Gov. [Dave] Freudenthal and a remnant — because we’re not many left — a remnant of the old JFK.”
Wyoming, last among states in alphabetical line, cast the decisive votes in the 1960 Democratic National Convention that nominated Kennedy as the presidential contender.
Hageman vs. Mead
Hageman, elected first in 2022, said in a statement Monday that critics mischaracterize her position on public lands. She has claimed in a court filing that federal land ownership is an occupation equivalent to a casus belli, a situation that justifies war or conflict between nations.
She sided with the state of Utah, which in 2024 sought ownership of 18.5 million acres of federal property, an effort critics said would ultimately make Western public lands private. The U.S. Supreme Court would not hear the case.
“I have never voted for the ‘mass selloff’ of our public lands, a fact that is directly contrary to the claims being spread by fearmongering radicals who ultimately seek to block all access to and use of our federal lands, while conveniently fundraising off their dishonesty,” her statement reads.
Mead, 36, said D.C. rulers are exploiting the state. “Wyoming’s public lands are being put on the table to cover Washington’s debts, and the people who should be fighting hardest against that are the ones defending it,” he states on his campaign website.
The candidate also outlined his opposition to the pumped storage project at Seminoe.
“The money side doesn’t make sense,” he told WyoFile, carrying a price tag of up to $5 billion and returning $10 million a year to Wyoming.
“On top of that, we heard a lot of public comment from people in Casper who are concerned about their fisheries,” he said, “concerned about the habitat for bighorn sheep above Seminoe Reservoir.”
For her part, Hageman has touted productive use of federal property.
“I have worked hard to protect the resources we have been so richly blessed with in Wyoming,” she wrote Monday, “both as an attorney and as your representative in Washington, D.C. I have consistently advocated for the ‘multiple use and sustained yield’ approach to land and water management, prioritizing access, responsible development, and effective conservation.
“The federal government is not history’s greatest land manager,” her statement reads. “Thanks to numerous inefficiencies, built-in delay, pure inertia, and decision making based on politics rather than sound science, Washington, D.C.’s management and oversight of faraway lands is a national tragedy, largely imposed by the very people who claim to be “environmentalists.”
The right field
The other GOP candidates added to their thoughts. Holtz, the former judge and engineer, supports roadless areas.
“I’m not in favor of roads,” he said of the national forest debate. “They will, in my opinion, increase fires.”
Regarding data centers, he’s also skeptical, despite his background in military engineering and computers.
“Cheyenne right now has approximately 70 data centers that want to come in,” he said. “I think that will ruin Wyoming and will change not only our climate but our political climate.”
Skovgard, the oil field businessman, is upset by the polarized climate the country is in.
“I have seen this in my own family,” he wrote in a statement. “A brother who forwards link after link filled with half-truths. A sister who lives in the Big Horn Basin [sic] and worries that “illegals” will invade her home.”
“These are not natural divisions,” he said. “This is deliberate manipulation for control, and it cuts deep. If manipulation can divide a family, it can divide a nation.”
“What if she attends a committee hearing looking like a tired Wyoming mom who works multiple jobs, doesn’t have a glam squad following her around with a ring light and a flat iron?”
Jill Edwards
Edwards said in a policy statement she supports keeping public lands public and using them in a balanced fashion. She’s outspoken on social media, blasting criticism of her coiffure after reading a critic’s comment “We deserve someone who brushes their damn hair.”
“It’s wild and untamed, just like Wyoming,” she said in a Facebook post, mocking her detractor.
“What if there’s humidity during a filibuster?” she said sarcastically. “What if she attends a committee hearing looking like a tired Wyoming mom who works multiple jobs, doesn’t have a glam squad following her around with a ring light and a flat iron?”
