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.
Harriet Hageman is the Republican Party’s nominee running for U.S. Senate. Her campaign website is www.hagemanforwyoming.com. She spoke with WPR’s Hanna Merzbach.
Click here to listen to a special episode of Open Spaces previewing the races for statewide and federal offices.
Hanna Merzbach: Why don't you just start by introducing yourself to Wyoming voters?
Harriet Hageman: I'm Harriet Hageman, and I am Wyoming's lone congressional representative at this point.
HM: Now you're running for the U.S. Senate. Tell me what you think are the two most pressing issues facing the Senate, and how you want to address them.
HH: I think that they're the same issues facing Congress in general, the House and the Senate. Energy security is national security, and Wyoming is one of the most important energy states in the nation. My agenda in the House of Representatives has been to protect our energy industry, make sure that we can continue to produce oil and gas and coal and uranium and those sorts of things. I will continue to do that over there as well.
One of the other things that I'm very interested in in going to the Senate side is being on the Judiciary Committee. As you probably know, I was a trial attorney for many years prior to coming to Congress, and I had a lot of cases in federal court. I often say I know what makes a really good federal district court judge, but I also know what makes bad – not just federal district court, but federal judges – but I also know what can make some bad ones. So I look forward to the opportunity, if I am chosen to be or appointed to be on the Judiciary Committee, to be able to vet judges.
The other aspect of this that is very important from my standpoint is being able to work directly with the administrative agency heads when they are being nominated for particular positions, and making sure that they are going to keep Wyoming's priorities at the forefront of their mind. The agencies that would be the most significant there would obviously be the Department of [the] Interior, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, some of those bodies that have a big impact on Wyoming. I wanna make sure that I have a direct communication with those agency nominees to make sure that their priorities align with Wyoming's priorities.
HM: We're gonna move into a series of rapid fire questions. I'm gonna throw out some topics, and I want you to respond with either a few words or a sentence at most.
HH: Okay.
HM: Your political heroes.
HH: Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump and my father. My father was in the state Legislature for many years, for 24 years. Cynthia Lummis has been one of my one of my heroes ever since I was quite young, 'cause she was in the Legislature with my dad.
HM: Data centers.
HH: Wyoming has a very robust Industrial Siting Act that will ensure that our communities and the state are addressing the site, the location, the needs and the demands of the data centers, and I think that that is a state issue. I think that we have the law in place to make sure that our local communities can properly address this issue.
HM: Flock cameras, or these license plate readers used by law enforcement.
HH: I'm very concerned about them, and I have been for quite some time long before even the most recent controversy. In fact, one of the last law firms that I was with, we challenged a Flock camera. I don't think they were Flock cameras, but challenged cameras down in Florida on the particular issue. They're keeping the data [for] way too long, keeping the information [for] way too long, and basically they're just building a profile of all of us, and I think there's a real concern about the 4th Amendment of the United States Constitution and compliance with that.
HM: Age limits for members of the Senate.
HH: That would be unconstitutional.
HM: The war in Iran.
HH: I think that this is something that has been a long time in the coming. Iran has been one of the top terrorist states in the world for 47 years. I am very concerned about what [Pres. Barack] Obama and [Pres. Joe] Biden both did in terms of their approach to Iran. I think that it is absolutely appropriate that we did what was necessary to take out their nuclear program and to block them from continuing to wreak havoc in the Middle East.
HM: Your negotiation style.
HH: What do you mean, negotiation style?
HM: How you negotiate with perhaps people across the aisle in Congress.
HH: I think that it depends on the particular issue and what we're working with. On some things, I probably have a pretty hard negotiation style, and in others, maybe sugar or honey is the best way to go. I think it just really depends on the issue
HM: We're going to move to some longer form questions. Thanks for sticking with me on that. During a forum this summer put on by Wyoming Public Media, WyoFile and the League of Women Voters, you said you think that executive agencies, these, quote, "nameless, faceless bureaucrats," have taken too much power in the U.S., and the legislative branch has abdicated its role. How are you working to restore balance?
HH: There's many different ways, and, in fact, I've had a pretty strong deregulatory agenda. But one of the things – I'm the chairman of the Article One Task Force for the Republican Study Committee, and so we have been bringing in people to talk about ways in which we can better it and be more effective as legislators. I think that one of the things we need to do is we need to be better at actually writing the legislation and thereby taking away the power of bureaucrats to interpret or misinterpret certain laws. For example, I think that we need to do a better job of using preambles, doing more in terms of definitions when we're writing statutes, make sure that we're being very explicit and unambiguous when we define the terms of art that we're using.
I think that we should use reauthorization requirements or sunset clauses more effectively. For example, if you look at Section 230, that basically gave immunity to the social media companies for taking down content. I think that it would've been a very good idea to have a five-year sunset clause on that so that we, as Congress, could make sure that the social media companies were not abusing that. I think that it would also have made it so they would've been a lot less inclined to censor conservative speech as they had, especially during COVID and during the 2020 election and things like that, had they known that they had to come back to Congress.
The other thing that that does is that ensures, especially in the tech space, that we are staying up to date with technological advances. Right now, we're trying to deal with, as you saw, the [Digital Asset Market] Clarity Act failed last week in the Senate. We're trying to deal with blockchain and Bitcoin and crypto and all of these modern type digital assets using laws that were written 20, 30, 40, 80 years ago. I think by using, again, especially in the tech space, by using sunsets and reauthorization requirements, I think that we would be much more responsible and responsive to the electorate, and we would be able to keep our statutes and our laws more up to date for modern life.
HM: At that forum I was talking about, you also said one of the main issues you want to address is over-regulation of our legacy industries, including the energy sector. In Wyoming, that now includes nuclear energy, which the Trump administration has been working to deregulate. Many, though, are worried that development of microreactors in particular is moving too fast and that it could be unsafe. Are you confident in this growing industry? Why or why not?
HH: Yes, I am confident in this growing industry, and I think that there are a lot of things that are happening very quickly. The fact is, we're going to have to win this race that we're in with China in terms of the tech front, and so it is very important that we do stay up to date.
When I talk about over-regulation, right now the federal regulatory burden in this country is right around $2.1 trillion. It is the second-highest expense for every household, only behind housing costs. So it is a hidden tax that affects every single one of us. It's about $15,000 to $16,000 per household for the financial cost of the regulatory burden.
We were just visiting with someone from the Department of [the] Interior, talking about some of the priorities that we have, including the fact that we have the bonus bid requirements for leasing of our coal, for example, in Wyoming is a very opaque process. It's extremely expensive for our coal companies. The charges and the costs are front-end loaded, so they have to pay these costs even before they are able to operate and generate revenue, and we think that there's some reform that needs to be done to those regulations to make it so that we can continue to produce coal. We haven't had a new coal lease in Wyoming since 2014, and that was really the primary funding that we used for building all of the beautiful schools that we have in the state of Wyoming. It's really impacted the state of Wyoming when you have very onerous and expensive and burdensome rules for us to be able to produce coal, as just one example.
HM: I want to move on to healthcare. You and other congresspeople have been making changes to safety net programs like Medicaid that thousands of Wyomingites rely on. At the same time, Congress, yourself included, created the Rural Health Transformation Program to help fill some of those gaps. But health research group and news outlet KFF says that [the] $50 billion five-year fund will not fully offset Medicaid cuts, which the group estimates at $137 billion in rural areas over the next 10 years. What more, if any, do you think the Senate needs to do to ensure Wyomingites have easy access to quality healthcare?
HH: I'm going to push back a little bit, because just providing federal funds or Medicaid is not necessarily providing quality healthcare. I think you're really mixing different things.
Government programs are not always the solution to providing these resources. But Wyoming received $205 million so far from the Rural Transformation Healthcare Fund, and it is the state of Wyoming, the state Legislature and the governor that worked together to put the framework together of how that money would be used effectively. That was really the intent. We wanted the states to be in charge of this, because every state is different, and the challenges in each state are going to be different depending upon population, the amount of miles they have to travel to get healthcare and that sort of thing. We wanted this to be a robust state-driven program.
Also, in terms of the cuts to Medicaid, we didn't cut Medicaid. We changed eligibility requirements for able-bodied adults with no dependent children. So again, I think that that's an inaccurate statement as to what Congress actually did. If you look at what Medicaid was created for, it was for low-income pregnant women, low-income children, low-income seniors and people with disabilities. Under Obamacare initially, they also expanded the program to include able-bodied adults, and at that time, the federal government was covering 100% of people who are going on Medicaid who are able-bodied adults with no dependent children. In fact, the federal government spends nine times more money on able-bodied adults with no dependent children than we do on the traditional folks that Medicaid was always intended to serve. All that we did is we made requirements that you had to, if you are an able-bodied adult with no dependent children, you have to work or go to school or be looking for a job for 20 hours a week. It's just a part-time requirement. And it did move people off of Medicaid, which was the intent of this, because we want those people working.
Editor's Note: Paragon Health Institute, founded by an advisor under Trump's first administration, released an infographic in May 2025 that claimed Medicaid gives states seven times more for able-bodied adult enrollees than for kids, pregnant women, seniors and the disabled. The graphic cites a Paragon paper titled, "Addressing Medicaid Money Laundering: The Lack of Integrity with Medicaid Financing and the Need for Reform" from March 2025.
We want people in the workforce. By expanding Medicaid the way that they did it, it got people out of the workforce, which was not what we should be doing. But also, in Wyoming, we never expanded Medicaid, so those changes didn't apply to Medicaid in Wyoming anyway, 'cause we never expanded that population. On average, the federal government, I believe, spends about 57 cents for every dollar of Medicaid money, with the states making up the rest. But again, I want to make sure that we're protecting that core population that Medicaid was intended to provide for. Those are the changes. So that wouldn't have been a change that affected us in Wyoming because we didn't expand.
Editor’s Note: The federal government averages 65% of Medicaid costs, with states averaging 35%, according to 2024 data compiled by KFF.
HH: You said that federal programs shouldn't be entirely responsible for providing this quality healthcare. Who is responsible for that?
HM: Well, people buy their own health insurance. Is that what you're referring to?
HH: I guess I'm wondering, do you think states should be stepping in, local governments? It should be entirely on the healthcare systems?
HH: I don't really understand what you're saying. So we have insurance. There's Blue Cross Blue Shield. When I had my own private law firm, I provided health insurance. My firm provided health insurance for all of the employees. So we have employer-provided insurance. Is that what you're referring to?
HM: More filling gaps in our healthcare systems. You know, we have hospitals closing across the rural West.
HH: We do have challenges.
HM: A lot of the Rural Health Transformation Program dollars are going to go to help fill some of those gaps, but there's still going to be gaps.
HH: I don't know of the organization that you referenced. I haven't seen that study that you have provided, and I don't know what areas they were looking at.
We just opened a new hospital last year in Pinedale, as you may know. Beautiful facility up there. I know that Carbon County has had challenges. We have a beautiful facility down in Saratoga. I know that Rawlins has had some challenges. And yes, I think that there's a whole variety of programs, including some through USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture]. I know that we have been able to get some money through USDA for providing medical care in Wyoming.
So there's a whole, there's a variety of different sources that are available. And yes, Medicaid is part of that. No question. And as I said, I want to make sure that we're protecting that program for the traditional people who have used it or the reason that it was set up. So yes, all of those types of things will come together to be providing those services as well. And then private health insurance.
HM: Okay, let's move on past healthcare, because I know we're getting close to time here. Let's talk about public lands.
HH: Okay.
HM: You've gotten a bit of pushback from Wyomingites for supporting Utah Sen. Mike Lee's (R-Utah) proposal to sell some public lands. What do you want constituents to know going forward when it comes to your stance on public land transfers and sales?
HH: I think that there was a lot of misinformation about what Mike Lee's bill did. Again, going back to what I was saying about healthcare, it was very much designed to be focused on local input and state involvement. What he was doing – this never came to the House, we never voted on this bill. It was never before us. It never went through the committee process or anything in the House of Representatives. But it was essentially, I think at the end, it was for BLM [Bureau of Land Management] to identify lands that would be contiguous to communities such as Kemmerer, Wyoming.
Kemmerer, Wyoming, is landlocked with BLM land. The BLM would identify, would work with the local people and probably the state governor's office, to identify lands if they needed it for housing. Kemmerer's one of the areas that we have challenges in Wyoming because of the Natrium reactor that is being built there. They need more housing, but they are landlocked. So really, it was designed to identify specific parcels through a local process that would either be leased or sold specifically for purposes of housing. There were a lot of restrictions on it. I mean, it couldn't be land that was leased for grazing. It couldn't be any land, anything that had any kind of other designation on it. There were lots of restrictions on what kinds of lands would be eligible for that program. It's been quite a while since I've even looked at the bill, because it hasn't come back up for consideration.
One of the things that I hear throughout Wyoming, and even some of the folks that have run against me, they've talked about the need for local control and local involvement, and I very much agree with that. That's why when you look at the way that both BLM lands and Forest Service lands are managed, that's why they have, every 10 years, there's a requirement that they have to do a land management plan or a resource management plan (RMP). The purpose of that is to make sure that there is local input and involvement with the public process associated with determining how to manage a particular national forest, say the Bighorn National Forest, or the Rock Springs RMP that's been in the news for the last several years. That's why they do those plans, and part of that is to make sure that there's local input.
HM: I know you host in-person town halls throughout Wyoming in every county, right?
HH: Yes, I do.
HM: I know there's been some reporting about you facing some hostile crowds. Earlier this year, Wyofile reported that you cut one Casper event off.
HH: I didn't cut that off. I'm just gonna stop you because I didn't cut it off. I started a little bit early, number one, and I answered the questions. Actually, there wasn't really a problem. There were people who came and asked difficult questions, and that's common. That's pretty common. Last year, we had some more raucous town halls than this year. But I try to make sure that I stay and engage with the people and answer questions.
HM: I know there's also been a lot of recent reporting about you declining to participate in Wyoming PBS's debate with your Democratic opponent, James Byrd. That debate has since been canceled. How does this all line up with – your staff describes you as an open and transparent representative. How does this all line up?
HH: Well, I think that it's been very obvious. I've done over 80 town halls since I've been in office in the last three and a half years. I think I've been one of the more accessible politicians in the state of Wyoming. I do do town halls, but not only do I do town halls, I also engage with the community directly. I go to business meetings. I tour businesses. I meet with local officials, county commissioners, mayors, city councils. I'm constantly engaging with chambers of commerce and various organizations. I think if you look at my record, I have been very transparent and very engaging. I attend a lot of things. When I'm home, I travel 1,000 to 1,500 miles a week around the state of Wyoming. I'm all over the state. So yeah, I've got more town halls planned. I think I've done 16 or 17 so far this year, and I will continue doing those. I will have all of them done prior to the November elections. I've really made myself very accessible and my staff as well.
I think I have the very best staff in both Washington, D.C. and Wyoming. They do Congress In Your Community, where they go into various places, and they'll set up meetings, say, at a library or somewhere else, and sit down and meet with people, and talk through and open case files. I have brought almost $17 million back to citizens in the state of Wyoming through our casework. We've solved almost 6,000 cases since I took office. Those are things where the IRS [Internal Revenue Service] or the Medicare Services or VA [Veterans Affairs] was withholding money that was supposed to be paid to Wyoming citizens. We've been very proactive in our casework so that we are addressing the needs of the citizens of Wyoming. And again, I think that I've been very transparent and very accessible, and will continue to be.
HM: Why not debate your opponent?
HH: For the reasons that I just said. I think I've given you a very solid explanation. You go into a debate, and you get asked a very complicated question, and they say, ‘And you have 60 seconds to answer it.’ When I go do a town hall and I engage with people, I'm engaging specifically on the issues that they want to address, and I'm giving them much more detailed information. Typically, my town hall, I do 20, 25 minutes where I go through what's been happening in Washington, what I've been doing, what kind of bills we have introduced, what the status of them are. I give information about the casework that we're doing. And then I open it up for questions, and I do a solid hour in engaging with the people of Wyoming. I think that it's been a very effective way. I also do a newsletter. Every Sunday we have our newsletter. Every once in a while, when there's an issue that seems to be of importance to people in Wyoming, I will do “WY IT MATTERS” and send out that email blast. I work really hard to make sure that people are informed of what we're doing.
HM: Okay, last question.
HH: I think we're gonna have to wrap up, yeah.
HM: Do you mind if I ask you one quick question?
HH: Sure.
HM: This Sept. 20 Reuters poll showed registered voters nationwide are more likely to vote for Democrats over Republicans. It also showed big drops in how voters are feeling about the economy, cost of living, et cetera. To win, you will need Wyomingites to keep faith in the Republican Party. Why should they do that?
HH: I think that part of the issues that we're seeing nationally with, say, gas and diesel prices, is situational because of the conflict with Iran. But it's not a policy. Under both Obama and Biden, the policy was intended to increase the cost of fuel and to really destroy our coal industry, as an example, thereby dramatically increasing the cost of power generation nationwide. So, this is a situational circumstance related to the conflict with Iran, whereas with the Democrats and Biden and Obama both, they intended to increase the cost of energy, which is what is driving a lot of this.
I think that we have demonstrated, the Republican Party, at being in charge back here in Washington, D.C., in the House and the Senate, I think we've had some huge successes for the American people. I do think that the economy is booming. There's no question that the fuel prices are high, but I think that they're going to go down. I also know with what we're trying to do with generating additional coal leasing, for example, in Wyoming, that's going to make everybody's lives better. That's going to improve the economy across the board.
I think just from a policy standpoint, when you've got the Democrats and the approach that they're taking to things is very different than our approach, including the fact that they want to increase and, basically, through a model of scarcity, they want to increase the cost of energy, producing coal and oil and gas, whereas we want to keep that down.
You can find more conversations with Wyoming’s candidates on our How do I vote? page.
