Wyoming GOP doesn’t respect voters’ fundamental right to select nominees

The officers running the Wyoming Republican Party don’t really want primary elections. 

Their actions prove that. Last week, the party sued the state so it can implement a plan to effectively endorse candidates and finance them before the party’s primary election. A state law prevents the party from making such changes.

The GOP’s elite, led by Chairman Bryan Miller, wants to tell the party’s rank-and-file members what values and beliefs a “real Republican” candidate must possess to have the sacred “R” by their name on the general election ballot.

That’s a scary proposition to many Wyoming voters, but it’s apparently what party leaders want the most. 

Toss a pebble into Wyoming’s rarified air, and if it hits a person in a crowd before it lands, the chances it will be a Republican are mighty high. (Please note: This is not true if you conduct this test in Albany or Teton counties. But if you do it in Niobrara County, it’s nearly impossible to have any other result.)

This month, registered Republicans in Wyoming outnumber Democrats 212,099 to 30,199. People look at the Democrats’ puny numbers, plus the party’s lack of candidates willing to throw their hats into the ring, thus making competitive races rare, and know the only way to have a say in primary elections is to register as a Republican.

While most parties welcome such advantages, executive officers who run the Grand Old Party in Wyoming know it comes with the risk that they can’t control who is on the ballot and who will win. That’s why when people turn on their TV and open their mailbox, they see commercials or flyers that brand opponents RINOs, a derogatory term that means “Republican in name only.”

The party’s leadership wants to effectively cull the herd, so folks who win office will think and vote like they do. If they want to have the GOP’s imprimatur and the money that follows, candidates need to follow orders.

This goes against the long-standing practices of both major parties, which have remained impartial about candidates before the primary election and let voters pick the party’s nominees. This is codified in a state law that prohibits political parties from financially backing one of their candidates over others before the primary election.

Republican officials are sick and tired of not being able to put the “right” members of their party in office so they can set the agenda for state elected officials, state lawmakers and Wyoming’s congressional delegation. The only way to legally do that is to end the prohibition on backing a candidate before the primary.

In its federal lawsuit, the Wyoming Republican Party is challenging the constitutionality of the state law. It maintains that political parties have the “absolute First Amendment right” to endorse one candidate over another.

The legal challenge is only being made against the ban on a party to finance campaigns before the primary, including spending money to print and distribute voter guides that provide information about how “aligned” candidates are with the GOP’s platform. These highly subjective voter guides would also be available online.

At their state convention in April, Republicans passed bylaws that established a framework to vet, endorse and financially back candidates running in the primary election. They pretended that their bylaws trump state laws.

But that simply isn’t the case, as the party learned last week when, before filing its federal lawsuit, a state district court ruled that the party must follow state law in elections for local party leadership.

The far-right GOP zealots who comprise the party’s leadership team have long maintained that the state has no say in the Republican organizational structure and internal business because it’s a private group. They believe they have a constitutional right to anoint whoever they want to represent the party, before the primary election, voters be damned.

I know it must break the hearts of the Republican Party’s officers to see a member of their own party think for themselves and vote for candidates who are against banning abortion, for Medicaid expansion, or myriad other issues. But that’s the election system we have in this country: People are allowed to vote for candidates who are independent thinkers and won’t toe the GOP line.

If it means electing candidates who others consider so-called RINOs, it’s not the end of the world for the party. Elected members who are most “aligned” with the party’s platform may simply have to work harder to persuade others in their caucus to agree with them. It’s called politics.

The Republicans dug their own hole when the party made its No. 1 priority banning “crossover voting,” so Democrats can’t switch parties after the candidate filing period opens.

The reason the law passed wasn’t secret; Republicans didn’t want Democrats to “steal” their primaries by supporting more moderate candidates. But because so few Democrats actually switched parties, it was statistically impossible for them to be the deciding factor in the contest that most upset conservative Republicans: the 2018 gubernatorial primary, when Mark Gordon defeated two far-right rivals and went on to win the general election.

But in races like the crowded 10-candidate field in the Republican U.S. House primary, temporarily converted Democrats, independents and RINOs can split the vote and accomplish exactly what the party feared. That means the most conservative, pliable candidate — the one most likely to peddle any red-meat cultural issue party leaders want pushed on a given day — may not get the nomination.

The Wyoming Republican Party can’t have it both ways. It can’t be a private club that ignores state laws and also benefits from a process in which the state and counties pay to administer elections. There’s no official figure on how much it costs to put on a statewide election, but the most recent estimate I’ve heard is about $1.2 million.

To my knowledge, no Republican official has ever said the party will pony up that much money to run its own primary election. If this private club isn’t willing to spend the party’s money to do so, it must either adhere to state election laws or pass legislation to change them. Winning this lawsuit won’t free the Republican Party from the debt it incurs operating its own primary.

A state law that prohibits a political party from financing one person’s candidacy over others wouldn’t be the subject of litigation if the GOP respected the fundamental rights of its own members. Voters who register with a party and obtain its ballot expect it to be neutral in primaries. Let the people, and not the party kingmakers, choose our leaders.