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Democrats lose footing in Wyoming Legislature

Democrats in Wyoming are widely outnumbered by to Republicans, and this election they lost another member in the Legislature. 

Republican Mark Baker defeated Democratic Representative Joseph Barbuto for a state Representative seat.

Democrat Chris Henrichsen ran for US House against Cynthia Lummis and lost. He says the keys is not to bolster the party, but to focus on running candidates that can appeal to different kinds of voters on issues, like Democratic governors have done.

"For me the goal is not ‘How do we revitalize the party’ but how do we sort of make it that we can have viable candidates who can win on occasion but who can also put forward serious challenges on a variety of different levels."

Only three Democratic candidates ran for the 15 Wyoming Senate races up for re-election, and 21 hopefuls out of 60 possible seats in the US House. 

Irina Zhorov is a reporter for Wyoming Public Radio. She earned her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA from the University of Wyoming. In between, she worked as a photographer and writer for Philadelphia-area and national publications. Her professional interests revolve around environmental and energy reporting and she's reported on mining issues from Wyoming, Mexico, and Bolivia. She's been supported by the Dick and Lynn Cheney Grant for International Study, the Eleanor K. Kambouris Grant, and the Social Justice Research Center Research Grant for her work on Bolivian mining and Uzbek alpinism. Her work has appeared on Voice of America, National Native News, and in Indian Country Today, among other publications.