Kathy Karpan, former Wyoming secretary of state, dies

Kathy Karpan, longtime public servant, attorney and former Wyoming secretary of state, died Friday in Cheyenne at the age of 83. 

Karpan’s tenure from 1987 to 1995 in the second-highest statewide office was part of a 40-year span in which Wyoming voters elected women to the position that oversees elections and business registrations, among other things. 

While part of an Equality State tradition, Karpan also blazed a trail all her own as the first woman elected to a statewide office “other than superintendent, who wasn’t a widow, who in effect had the benefit of her husband having held office before her,” Karpan told the Wyoming Historical Society in an interview last year. 

“My message to women in Wyoming would be: Don’t be afraid to run. Take the chance, you might win,” Karpan said in the interview. 

A lifelong Democrat, Karpan was not always on the winning side of Wyoming politics. She ran for governor and U.S. senator in 1994 and 1996, respectively, but lost to Republicans both times. Meanwhile, Karpan was a mentor to many, her longtime friend Rodger McDaniel told WyoFile on Monday. 

“I’ve heard from young people who were candidates for, typically, the Legislature, for whom she was a mentor. They all described her as a mentor, somebody they could talk to, and she would reach out and offer them advice and direction,” McDaniel said. “And she did that her whole life.”

Karpan’s penchant for mentorship, McDaniel said, grew in part from her time working for Teno Roncalio, the last Democrat to have represented Wyoming in Congress. 

“Teno was somebody who believed in mentoring and bringing people along who had potential for involvement in politics and public service. And Kathy did the same thing as secretary of state,” McDaniel said. 

From Roncalio, Karpan said she learned that public service and political life could be a way to “help individual human beings.”

“Because when I worked for him, we helped constituents,” Karpan told the Wyoming Historical Society. 

It was while serving as the director of the Wyoming Department of Health in 1986 that Karpan kicked off a campaign for secretary of state. She won and did so again in 1990. During her tenure, she oversaw the first statewide special election in Wyoming history. Karpan also helped spearhead the state’s revamping of its limited liability statutes — an endeavor that inspired the rest of the country’s business regulations. 

“Former Secretary of State Kathy Karpan was a strong leader who left a lasting legacy on Wyoming. Through much-needed reforms in the Secretary of State’s office to providing a shining example of what serving in a public office is all about,” Wyoming Democratic Party Chair Lucas Fralick wrote in a statement to WyoFile. “Secretary Karpan will be dearly missed by those who knew her, and we will continue to strive to serve by her example.”

Early life and career 

Karpan was born in Rock Springs in 1942, when the city was a Democratic stronghold thanks to the community’s unionized coal miners, according to wyohistory.org. 

“In first grade, I knew that I was a Catholic and a Democrat,” she said. 

The family moved to Rawlins after her father’s job with the Union Pacific Railroad was transferred. After Karpan’s mother died when she was 12 years old, Karpan helped raise her two younger siblings, Judy and Frank. 

Given such responsibilities, a higher education was thought to be out of reach for Karpan, but a scholarship to the University of Wyoming College of Commerce and Industry changed that. She earned a degree in journalism and served as editor of The Branding Iron. Years later, she graduated with a master’s degree in American Studies at UW and from the University of Oregon’s School of Law in 1978. 

In Washington, she got a job in the Department of Commerce. Closer to home, she worked in the Wyoming attorney general’s office. In 1997, the U.S. Senate confirmed Karpan as director of the Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement at the Department of the Interior — a full circle moment for the coal miner’s daughter. 

In private practice, where she worked in her later years, she was “an excellent lawyer,” McDaniel told WyoFile. 

Her longtime legal partner, Margy White, spoke of Karpan’s “enviable sense of humor” in a 2016 interview with wyohistory.org. 

“My personal favorite story of Kathy practicing law arose from a deposition she took of a person who had only a fleeting acquaintance with the concept of truth. After the deposition, Kathy said if and when we called this person to testify at trial, she would say, ‘the plaintiff would like to call Pinocchio to the stand,’” White said. 

Karpan was also an insatiable reader. When she and McDaniel, who both worked for U.S. Rep. Roncalio at the time, would travel around Wyoming, Karpan “would read aloud books like Lyndon Johnson’s biography,” McDaniel said. 

“She was really a wonderful friend,” he said. 

Last year, Karpan lamented the Wyoming Legislature’s shrunken number of women members and the “brutality” and “mean-spiritedness” of the current state of politics. Yet, Karpan expressed hope for “the best and the brightest and the most caring and generous and tolerant and loving of our young people” running for office. 

“I’d like to think that my legacy would be: Jump in, get involved, run,” Karpan said.