Sen. Eric Barlow will run for Wyoming governor in 2026, the Gillette Republican and former Speaker of the House announced Tuesday.
“I ask for your support as we embark on this vital journey for our state’s future,” Barlow said at a campaign event in Wright, according to a press release.
Barlow is the biggest name to officially announce a run for governor. Without an incumbent in the race, several other notable Wyoming politicians have either expressed an interest in running or are rumored to be mulling the possibility. They include U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, who sought the job in 2018, Secretary of State Chuck Gray, Senate President Bo Biteman and Speaker of the House Chip Neiman. All are Republicans.
Current Gov. Mark Gordon is technically prevented from seeking a third-term in office, though he could challenge that, as the Wyoming Supreme Court has ruled that term limits on the other top elected positions in the state were unconstitutional.
Barlow is not the first candidate to announce — former gubernatorial candidate Brent Bien announced last year and political newcomer Joseph Kibler announced in April.
Born in Gillette and raised on the family ranch southwest of town, Barlow served as a U.S. Marine and worked as a large-animal veterinarian and a rancher before getting elected to House District 3 in 2013.
As a lawmaker, Barlow led the House as speaker in 2021 and 2022 and now chairs the Senate Labor, Health and Social Services Committee as well as the Mental Health and Vulnerable Adult Task Force.
“I am a leader who stands firmly on sound, conservative principles and who will fiercely defend your rights, including the Second Amendment and the sanctity of life,” Barlow said in his announcement. “I will protect your private property rights, safeguard our public lands, and keep Washington, D.C. out of Wyoming’s business.”
Throughout his legislative tenure, Barlow has pushed to move the state to a cash-based budget system. Currently, legislators craft two-year budgets around financial forecasts and expected gains.
In 2023, Barlow led the charge on successful legislation to expand the rights restoration process for Wyoming residents with first-time, nonviolent felony convictions to include gun ownership and serving on a jury and in public office.
Barlow supported a near-total abortion ban and a medication abortion ban in 2023. Even so, Baggs Republican Sen. Larry Hicks accused Barlow of not being sufficiently opposed to abortion during the 2025 legislative session before bringing a motion to rescind Barlow’s chairmanship of the Senate Labor Committee.
Barlow stood by his voting record, and 28 of the Senate’s 32 members voted to uphold the assignment before Hicks apologized a couple days later.
As House majority leader in 2020, Barlow was an early skeptic of the need for Republicans to form what would become the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
“If you do your homework and you have an idea that 31 members of the House buy into, it stays alive,” Barlow told WyoFile in 2020. “And it doesn’t matter how you label yourself and others but [what counts is] the relationships you build and what you bring to the table. I don’t understand this factionalizing because I don’t consider myself a part of any faction.”
Wyoming Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, R-Cody, told WyoFile in a statement that most Wyomingites won’t know who Barlow is.
“But for those who know him, he’s a liberal Republican who loves big government. For those who begin to research him, his voting record, and his tenure in the Legislature, they’ll see he is a clone of Governor Gordon,” Rodriguez-Williams wrote.
Other potential candidates for governor told Cowboy State Daily in July that they’re waiting to see if Hageman will run for the top post before making a decision.
Barlow choosing for himself “says a whole lot about who he is,” Wyoming politico Gail Symons told WyoFile.
“You can always count on him being the adult in the room, and for me, that’s the bottom line,” Symons said.
Barlow and his family operate a ranch in western Campbell County that’s bisected by Dead Horse Creek, a tributary to the Powder River. They were among the landowners who faced challenges stemming from the controversial coalbed methane gas boom in the Powder River Basin in the late 1990s and 2000s.
The family ranch saw drillers twist steel on their ranch as well as neighbors’ cow and sheep operations.
Though surface owners generally negotiated with drillers for rents, they couldn’t control what operators or neighboring landowners did with coalbed methane water — which was pumped in large volumes to release the gas and allowed to flow on the surface. The water wasn’t always a godsend because it sometimes flooded ephemeral grazing areas year-round and added to an already saline soil.
It was a sticky situation that sometimes pitted neighbor against neighbor while the state hesitated for years to set rules that might alleviate landowner and operator disputes, and Barlow was among thousands of ranchers in the region seeking protections for landowners caught up in the rush.
“We did have some instances that occurred in that timeframe that was detrimental to our livestock, and that’s why we stay engaged in this discussion,” Barlow told a Wyoming reporter in 2010.
Barlow took part in the Coal Bed Methane Produced Water Working Group, which was established by the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality.
In 2014, then serving in the Wyoming House, Barlow joined then-Devils Tower Republican Sen. Ogden Driskill to co-sponsor a bill to reduce the severance tax rate on coal while eliminating some tax exemptions for oil and gas. That bill failed introduction.
Earlier this year, Barlow was a co-sponsor of House Bill 75, “Coal severance tax rate,” which did pass, reducing the state’s severance tax for surface-mined coal from 6.5% to 6%.
The primary election is Aug. 18, 2026.
Are you a fossil fuel coal oil lover are do you beleive in wind solar and all energy sources NO LIES ALLOWED
“…who will fiercely defend your rights, including the Second Amendment and the sanctity of life,” Barlow said in his announcement.”. Including the right to possess deadly weapons and the sanctity of life in be one sentence is the height of irony and cannot both be true if one is honest.
Once again stuck with picking the prettiest turd out of a pile of sh*t.
I grew up in Gillette back in the days when Main Street was dirt from the railroad station to Campbell County High School (proud 1963 grad). The Barlow family was a well respected ranch family for many years before I arrived, and Eric and his family have continued that tradition to the present time. Eric has been a role model for civility and decorum during his long legislative service contrasted to the likes of Hageman, Gray, and the Freedom caucus. He provides a way forward in a state so mired in hateful rhetoric and draconian policy agendas. Take a first positive step, Wyoming, and elect Barlow as your next governor .
Rachel Rodriguez represents all that isn’t Wyoming. A Cali carpetbagger, poor representative of her district and a sellout to the citizens of are state. Top this off with her participation in the draconian Un-Freed Caucus and it all adds up that your opinion on Eric Barlow is biased, hypocritical and scoffed at. Nobody cares, Rachel so, shut up
I and most of my native Wyoming friends (Republicans, Democrats and Independents) live mostly in other states— Kentucky, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Oklahoma. We are saddened to see how things have evolved in Wyoming, and hope our native state can halt its slide in to the ditch. We realize there probably aren’t many Ed Herschlers , Matt Meads, or Mike Sullivan’s around, but people like current governor Gordon and Eric Barlow are pretty close. The recent article on young people (and older) leaving the state was a good heads up. If Wyoming allows this freedom caucus bunch to take over, or elects ms. Hageman or Chuck Gray as governor, the state will continue to decline and people will leave in even larger numbers. Eric Barlow is a good man with his history and values in the right place, and he has the backbone to stand up to these people. I and so many others are supporting him and hope the voters in Wyoming will put him the governor’s office.
Of course Rachel R. Williams has to run her mouth. This California carpetbagger/NonFreedom Group groupie represents totalitarianism and hypocrisy and a true freedom individual, Mr. Barlow, befuddles and frightens her. She’s perhaps the biggest piece o’ turd in the NonFreedom Cabal only rivaled by the ‘independent’ usda subsidy check casher the NW Wyoming Rube himself, Madam Chairman Tim French. Shut up, Rachel and go back to Cali because you are truly the fork tongued liberal hiding in plain sight
Glad to see a good person announcing their plans to run for office! Eric Barlow knows how the system works in Wyoming, and he comes from a first rate family. I know that he will do a very good job for Wyoming as Governor.
Doc Barlow is both honest and possessing of a spine; that was captured accurately. He also is an educated, reasonable man on some issues important to Wyoming citizens, including Medicaid expansion (he fought for this and sustained serious political damage with the Freedom Caucus folks). WY will not elect a governor that recognizes a woman’s right to bodily autonomy anytime soon, so that’s a wash. Given how WY has trended over recent election cycles, you could (and I’d guess, probably will) do much worse (e.g., Hageman, Gray or Biteman).
ERIC is indeed a good man; one of courage, integrity, intelligence, and strong leadership ability. Eric Barlow is the right person at the right time to lead our state forward. I believe him to be ‘his own man’ and not owing to outside false forces as our national representative so embarrassingly are.
ERIC BARLOW has my vote 🗳 in 2026
I’ve known Eric Barlow’s family since I moved to Gillette in 1978. He’s the real deal and he’s got my vote.
These days, one thing you hear from journalists writing about politics is “you can’t make this up.” In other words, everything’s possible. Well, the same’s true in Wyoming politics. Those of us who are reasonably progressive with a commitment to constitutional government more and more find ourselves in the position of having to support conservative politicians when the alternative is actual fascists. That’s the case with Eric Barlow vs. Harriet Hageman et al. One thing about Barlow–he’s like Walt Longmire: an honest man with integrity and a moral compass. Very rare in politics, but more important now.
Given that Donald Trump and MAGA radicals are hollowing out and destroying American institutions, one wonders how the several states will sustain their own independent institutions. Wyoming’s institutions, such as the judiciary and education, are already under assault from the fascist Freedom Carcass (not a mis-spelling). Having a true conservative, that is, someone committed to preserving what’s good about Wyoming, at the helm of State government will be a great help to citizens who fight against dictators, autocrats, and fundamentalists.
Consequently, I’m going to support Eric Barlow for governor.
Being the adult in the room says a great deal. We have to many whining children making laws and conducting business in our state.
Well, on the plus side Rachel Blah blah doesn’t like him. On the negative side, he thinks he’s important enough to tell the ladies what they can and cannot do with their bodies.