Ahead of the 2026 general election, Wyoming Public Radio and KHOL Jackson offered all candidates in competitive races for statewide and federal offices 20-minute interviews to introduce themselves to voters and discuss their positions. The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Jeffrey Haggit is the Constitution Party’s nominee running for U.S. House. His campaign website is www.shawnforwyoming.com. He spoke with KHOL’s Evan Robinson-Johnson.
Click here to listen to a special episode of Open Spaces previewing the races for statewide and federal offices.
Evan Robinson-Johnson: To start, could you give a quick introduction of yourself?
Jeffrey Haggit: My name is Jeffrey Haggit. I just recently retired a couple weeks ago after 49 years working at the same company as an instrumentation technician here in southwest Wyoming. I've lived in Wyoming since 1976. I'm a graduate of Western Wyoming Community College. I'm running, this is my third time running for the U.S. House [for the] Constitution Party. I was chairman of the party for quite a while, until just recently, and just trying to educate people and trying to be a part of the process.
ERJ: What should people know about the Constitution Party? We have a candidate also running for governor from Jackson, and I think it's the first time for a lot of people that the party itself is even part of the conversation.
JH: Yeah, that's Rebecca [Bextel]. She's running for governor. We got a gal running for secretary of state. And then myself.
The Constitution Party, since 2010 it's been around, and it kind of comes and goes. We’re trying to get going again now. A lot of people have never heard of us. As the name implies, the Constitution Party would just need to get back to the Constitution, and Congress seems to kind of give [it] lip service, and that needs to change.
ERJ: Were you a Republican or Democrat before?
JH: I probably was Republican. Then I was independent for some years, and then a neighbor introduced me to the Constitution Party, and that's how I found out about it. I studied up on that, and that just really fell in line with my core beliefs. I always thought we needed to get back to the basics.
ERJ: Any reason that this campaign will go a different direction than the previous two?
JH: I think it's good we're getting more attention this year. I'm running against Chuck Gray, and the Libertarian candidate [Shawn Johnson] is different from what it has been in the past. I haven't got a chance to meet him. I'm sure I probably will meet him at the [Wyoming] PBS debate up in Riverton later.
Everybody asks, ‘Well, what's the difference between you guys and the Libertarian candidates?’ Because we're both for a limited government. There's a lot of similarities in that regard, but we tend to diverge a little bit when it comes to more social issues.
ERJ: What do you feel separates or distinguishes you from Chuck Gray?
JH: I've talked to Chuck before a few times, and we actually agree a lot more than we disagree on stuff. There's not a lot of separation between us. This is a Republican state. We all know it. I will probably get the votes [from] ‘anybody but Chuck Gray’ kind of people. But I have a lot of people in this part of the state who vote for me just because I've worked with them and they've got to know me, and they trust me. They always vote for me. It’s a different set of people.
Before it was Harriet Hageman, she’s out of the picture [because] she’s running for Senate. And then, Liz Cheney before that. It’s going to be different, just because of the people involved in the race, I think.
ERJ: What issues have you heard from those voters, especially in your part of the state, that they care most about?
JH: Obviously, it's the data centers, and property taxes is a big one, and health care, that’s another one.
ERJ: Let's just take those three. Where do you come down on each of those?
JH: Healthcare is getting to be expensive for a lot of people. There's Medicare if you're old enough. Telehealth has its place. This is such a rural state that telehealth is good for most things, well, about half of the things probably, stuff like ‘I’ve got sinuses, can you give me a prescription.’ But I think you're going to see that being stressed more, put to the stress test, in this state more.
When I was running before, I was telling people, ‘You need to be educated on how to take care of yourself as far as preventive measures and just have things in the house on hand and just good diet and exercise.’ Everybody can't do that, but if you can, that goes a long way to staying healthy. I know people that retired and they just don’t make it because they don't keep up on things. I think if people can take care of themselves, but as far as healthcare goes, it's going to be a process. It's just going to have to work itself out. I don't have the magic answer to it.
ERJ: How about data centers?
JH: Data centers, that I know more about. In Cheyenne, they keep annexing land and adding data centers. I think it's going too far, too fast. A lot of people are concerned about the water and electricity and where they [are] going to get those. We don't have a lot of that around here.
But the bigger picture I see is: What are they going to be used for? We’ve already got more than China. And so they're gonna be used for Flock cameras that are necessary for a surveillance state. Cloud computing sure, but Flock cameras and digital ID — if you don't have the data centers, then they can't implement that stuff. So I'm against data centers for all those reasons. I just think at the level they want to put them out there, they’re a bad idea.
ERJ: You don't see them as a good new source of revenue for the state?
JH: Not really. I don't understand why some of these communities are bending over backwards to give them tax breaks and stuff. If communities want them, that's fine. They can let them pay for themselves. And they can set up, work out deals with them to help pay for the schools. If they can work out a deal like that, that’d be great.
As somebody in Congress, I think that's just something the states need to work out themselves. But that's my personal opinion.
ERJ: And how about property taxes?
JH: If you go back to the original founders, they were very against this concept. Owning land and private property is paramount to being a free man. It's just a core, unalienable right to own land. So, if you're paying taxes on anything, it's not really yours, is it? Because as soon as you quit paying taxes – I know Rebecca [Bextel] has brought up the instance of an elderly gal in Jackson whose tax bill is more than her Social Security income. It's just gotten out of control.
You're paying taxes on something that's an unrealized gain, you know? Say you bought your house for $80,000, and now it's worth $300,000. You haven't sold it. You're still paying taxes on all these unrealized gains, and that alone is not right. At the very least, you should go back to the original price on the original property or [what] you [paid] for the property. But I'm against property taxes.
ERJ: So you support the 50% cut ballot measure this fall?
JH: Yeah. I mean, there's some revenue that's going to have to be made up somehow. In Uinta County, we have a 1% tax that's gonna be voted on that's supposed to go towards the fire department needs. I'm for that, because if you don't have the right fire apparatus in place, your insurance rates go up. So if you want an extra 1% tax on purchases to help offset what they're losing in property taxes, I'm in favor of that.
ERJ: What do you personally think are the biggest issues facing Wyoming right now?
JH: We need to diversify. I understand that everybody says that. Ok, diversify to what? That’s the big question. Everybody's talking about leaving the state, or not everybody – they want the kids to stay here. But what are they going to get into? The data centers, once they're built, they might employ 20, 30, 40 people. I don't really see that as the solution.
I think the bigger picture, not just in the state but for the country as a whole, is we need to get back to – or the state won't even matter if we don't save the country. We got some problems we need to fix in Congress. I've just seen a podcast or a gal, they did a freedom of information request for – you become a senator or a congressperson, you got to sign an oath to be an officer. They never signed it. It's supposed to be notarized and signed, and the Biden administration, people never signed it. Why is that? I mean, you can't, how does this even happen? There's so many problems in the country, but specifically to Wyoming now. It just has to be worked out in the state.
Editor’s Note: Factcheck.org looked into claims by conservative commentator Ann Vandersteel that members of Pres. Joe Biden’s administration were “acting as elected officials without swearing an allegiance to the Constitution.” These officials were appointed, not elected, and those whose nominations were confirmed took their oaths, which can be seen in videos of their swearing-in ceremonies or reported in press releases and news articles.
ERJ: Why is it that you want to serve in Congress?
JH: Because I want to be that voice. Like [Rep. Thomas] Massey (R-Kentucky), he's got a lot of the right ideas. I'm for states’ rights, 10th Amendment, big time. I think federal government's got too big, and I think that they need to give the states back the power that they're supposed to have. It says in the Constitution that anything not specifically delegated to the federal government is reserved to the states. And they seem to [have] got too big for their britches in Washington, D.C. I'd like to be a part of trying to reverse that.
ERJ: What have you made of state leadership, while I have you? If you're talking about bringing things back and giving more power to Wyoming. This past primary [election], we saw kind of a referendum on the Freedom Caucus, and that was after they made some pretty big proposals on how to scale back government funding here. If you're elected to Congress and working with the new state House as it takes shape, how do you think that would play out? How do you want to see it play out?
JH: That was interesting. I know somebody personally that was in that Freedom Caucus, and they didn't get re-elected. That's a real interesting situation. I would never belong to a caucus, but they had some of the right ideas. They just probably went too fast, too soon, too fast, and so it was too much of a shock.
Sometimes, if you have the right idea, you can put the cart in front of the horse and not get things set up in the background to allow change. I think that, a little bit, that’s what happened. The people were – there's a lot of PAC money that came in, too. Really, who knows who these people are? There was a lot of outside money that came in, too, to cause that to happen. That was an interesting situation. So it was kind of a referendum and maybe is an eye-opener for a lot of people.
ERJ: When you say that you think they had some right ideas, what stands out to you there?
JH: They have the right idea as far as scaling back. I don't agree with everything that they were proposing, but the property tax thing. It's gotta be done right, though. It's gotta done in a way that's – people have gotten used to the money, and the counties use that. But specifically, theoretically speaking, property taxes are just not the way to go. So I agree with them, probably more on that than some of the other things.
ERJ: Any lessons that you took from being at the same company for all those years and working in the state and your commitment there that would serve you well as a member of Congress?
JH: Yeah, it was in the minerals extraction industry, trona specifically. We got to see how that worked. We've lost some of our coal contracts. We were getting our coal from Kemmerer, and now we're getting it from the Thunder Basin area. I think the clean-burned coal technology, with that technology, you can burn coal and not pollute the atmosphere. That was part of my job, was stack monitoring and stuff. That was amazing. We put the technology into that going up the stack, it made an amazing difference. So it can be done. I’d hate to see coal go away because it's provided a lot of good jobs, so I'd like to see that continue.
We need to build another oil refinery. They haven't built a new oil refinery in a long time, and that's part of why gas prices are so high. Fuel prices are kind of scary. Then diesel, diesel is really scary. There's a lot of trucks that can't afford to run because they can't afford the diesel, and everything's run by trucks. That's going to be an interesting thing to watch in the next few months.
ERJ: We have about a minute left. Is there anything else, Jeff, that you want to leave voters with?
JH: Thank you, first, for inviting me to this. I appreciate it. I just like to end with a couple quotes.
In 1801, Thomas Jefferson was quoted as saying, “Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
George Washington similarly warned in 1796, “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances, with any portion of the foreign world.”
We need to trade, but not be in these military alliances with what they're talking about with Israel right now through the NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act]. I'm totally against that. And we need to kick the United Nations out of this country. They don't have our best interests at heart. Watch out for Agenda 30. That's bad.
I just want to thank you for having me. If anybody wants to reach out to me, you can go to my website, haggitforhouse.com, or my Facebook page is Haggit for Freedom.
You can find more conversations with Wyoming’s candidates on our How do I vote? page.
