The person who Wyoming most needs to understand the shellacking Republicans earned in the midterm elections doesn’t get it. At all.
And based on what she said last week, U.S. Sen.-elect Harriet Hageman probably never will.
Opinion
That’s to the detriment of her home state and all of her constituents, including the voters who marked her name on 65% of the ballots cast and those who chose her Democratic opponent, former state legislator James Byrd of Cheyenne.
In a state that gave President Donald Trump huge majorities all three times he’s run for president, few expected that this year’s election would turn out any differently for Hageman as she sought the seat held by retiring U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis.
There was never going to be a blue tsunami here, unlike much of the country. Republicans easily won the two federal and five statewide races, and Democrats gained one seat to bring the party up to nine in the 93-member Legislature.
As Trump’s handpicked challenger four years ago to his nemesis, then-U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, Hageman will be forever tied to Trump’s legacy. In Wyoming it means the nearly two-thirds of voters who chose her like her brand of politics.
Hageman will represent them, but she should also recognize that she will indeed hold a minority view in Congress. A large swath of the members who controlled both chambers will be gone, replaced by politicians with a far different view of the nation’s future.
What was Hageman’s reaction to her party’s historic losses from coast to coast, with a surprisingly strong repudiation from the heartland? It was her tiresome one-note: Anyone who does not agree with Trump is America’s enemy.
“We are about to engage in a battle for the future of this nation, and as we all recognize, the looming fight with the left is about much more than just policy differences,” she posted on Facebook. “It’s about the very survival of this country as it has been and as we know it.”
To Hageman, there are only two possibilities awaiting America.
“Are we a capitalist nation, or will we slide precipitously into communism?” she asked. “The left hates our founding principles of freedom, just as they hate our strength and prosperity.”
That’s patently ridiculous. What a majority of Americans believe is that after six years of Trump in the White House, the prosperity we had is gone thanks to an unnecessary war, skyrocketing fuel prices, misguided tariffs and ever-rising grocery bills.
People are also sick of this grifter and his family getting rich conning the country, and want Trump and his henchmen punished for using the Constitution like a wet wipe.
Many on the left, center and right of the political spectrum want to go in a different direction, ASAP.
Yet Hageman writes, “A strong United States of America embarrasses (the left), so they aim to tear it all down. And I aim to stand in their way.”
State Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, is as conservative a politician as I’ve ever seen. But his assessment was the opposite of Hageman’s, because he knows why the GOP got clobbered and isn’t afraid to say so.
“Turns out starting a war nobody wanted, sky-high inflation, trading America First for Israel First, covering up the Epstein scandal and breaking every single campaign promise doesn’t win you elections!” Biteman wrote on X.
“I saw this coming a mile away,” he added. “The GOP deserved every bit of this ass kicking.”
Biteman ran for Hageman’s U.S. House seat in the Republican primary and finished seventh out of nine candidates. Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who got Trump’s blessing, won 25% of that vote, sailed through the general election and is now headed to the U.S. Capitol, where he’ll be assigned a basement office by House leadership and hopefully not embarrass us as much as he has in his current gig.
“Wyoming is sending its best to help President Trump fight back against the liberals who are hell-bent on destroying this country,” was the Wyoming Republican Party’s post-election statement. Its leaders should join a comedy club circuit in red states, where they can whine to an audience that licks it up.
Gray will do or say anything to please Trump. The “not on my watch” tough-guy talk against data centers that marked his House campaign will flip once he’s given his marching orders from the pro-AI White House.
Some of Hageman’s Wyoming predecessors in the Senate were good examples of the way effective representatives act in a divided country. The late Sens. Alan Simpson and Mike Enzi often tried to find common ground with their adversaries to get things accomplished to benefit Wyomingites.
“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,” Simpson once observed.
“It turns out that when we work together we can create a better bill than when we just try to do it alone or force others to accept our ideas,” Enzi said in his final speech on the Senate floor.
So, what did Rep. Hageman say after serving four years in the U.S. House as she prepares for her new job?
“Wyoming has a great deal at stake in the coming years as we know the forces of the left will stop at nothing to prevent us from safely accessing our own natural resources,” she wrote on Facebook election night.
Hageman added that Wyoming must defend America’s energy independence because “not only does our economy depend on it, so does the very existence of the United States of America.”
Hageman introduced a bill in April that seeks to grant sweeping immunity to the fossil fuel industry against legal and financial accountability for climate change damages. If enacted, the bill would remove legal remedies for the public to hold corporations accountable.
It is unimaginable today that Hageman will do anything but carry the water for the fossil fuels industry during her six-year Senate term. She will no doubt continue to be rewarded with major campaign donations from individuals and energy industry-related PACs.
Don’t expect any statements about working across the aisle with senators who want to create a balanced energy blueprint that includes renewable resources that don’t pollute the planet. She’s demonstrated that protecting the wealth of Wyoming’s traditional energy industries is what matters to her.
It’s clear that Hageman and Wyoming’s senior U.S. Sen. John Barrasso are on the same page. On X, he wrote that “we should listen to what voters unmistakably said last night (because) their priorities must always come first.”
Then he explained what he means about how Republican senators must show voters they are fighting for them.
“We will aggressively oppose terrible ideas that drive our country toward the socialism Democrats embraced,” Barrasso wrote. “Our commitment is to common sense.”
No, for decades Wyoming’s congressional delegation has shown that whenever they are not in power, they obstruct changes that millions of voters demanded Congress enact, and try to stay in office until the political winds shift their way again.
America would not have seen the seismic shift it had in Congress last week if people were happy about what Republicans are doing about the economy, inflation, immigration, and ending war and political corruption.
I’m sure Biteman isn’t the only one in his party who wants to see something different from Wyoming’s GOP lawmakers in Washington, D.C. If Hageman has a bipartisan bone in her body, it’s an optimum time for her to use it.
