National news outlets are calling the recent midterm elections historic after Democrats retook both the House and Senate, a blue wave as some have called it. Here in Wyoming, things are still solidly red. But while the waves may be calm, the winds could be changing in Cheyenne.
Wyoming Public Radio’s state government reporter Jordan Uplinger breaks down what the Equality State’s results mean for Kamila Kudelska.
Kamila Kudelska: The state canvassing board certified the election. That’s made up of the secretary of state, the governor, state auditor and state treasurer. It was a unanimous vote.
Jordan Uplinger: Yeah, the election division reviewed some of the findings from the election, [and] Secretary of State Chuck Gray called it “a success.”
KU: I understand there were two technical difficulties. I actually reported on one day of. Park County was having some phone issues.
JU: Phones used by the county went down for a while, and a high school used as a voting location in Fremont County experienced a short network outage before polls opened. But in both counties, officials found a quick fix and resolved the issues shortly after discovering them.
KK: All 23 counties still need to complete the 5% hand-count audit of ballots. This year, the state legislature passed a law requiring county clerks to conduct this audit during the primary and general elections. How did that process go?
JU: I actually got to watch the hand-count audit, twice now, here in Albany County. Twelve people split across three teams spent hours and hours going over piles of ballots, a little over 600 in Albany. The people, by the way, are a mix of volunteers who are concerned citizens, judges and some veterans as well. They are on both sides of the political spectrum working together to ensure the election was accurate.
Albany County Clerk Kayla White says that it’s definitely extra work, but the practice itself may be worth keeping around.
Kayla White: While it does cost the county money, I also feel like it instills more confidence in our elections, so I think it was a positive.
JU: I should note, unless lawmakers take action, this was the first and last election year for a mandatory 5% hand-count audit.
KK: Some counties still have to get their audit done. When will this whole process be done?
JU: I reached out to all 23 county clerks. Twenty replied. Here’s what I’ve learned.
Everyone who’s finished their audit says their count matched the final count numbers [from machine tabulators] as expected. Of the counties that haven't had a hand count yet, those are happening by the 14th, so expect that full statewide hand count result to be a complete picture by next week.
KK: Let's switch gears and lay out where everything stands now. We won’t go into the details of each race but Jordan, as we all have heard, nationally, Democrats did quite well. How is that going to impact our congressional delegation?
JU: Actually, it does impact one federal seat that was not on the ballot this year, and that’s Sen. John Barrasso. He wasn’t up for reelection this year, but he is – or was –the majority whip. But since the Democratic Party retook the Senate, Barrasso will become the minority whip. And he was actually just reelected to that position by the Republicans.
The whip is a senator or representative that makes sure their party is present for important votes or helps to make sure everyone is voting the same way, things like that. As a majority whip, Barrasso coordinated votes for the Republican agenda. But now as a minority whip, he’ll find himself coordinating votes against a Democratic agenda.
KK: Why does that matter?
JU: University of Wyoming political science professor Ryan Williamson said it pretty well the night of the election on our airwaves.
Ryan Williamson: Come January, there's no Republican majority to whip. His job shifts from passing an agenda to slowing one down, and Wyoming loses its seat at the table where the Senate's agenda gets set.
JU: Besides Barrasso, incoming U.S. House Rep. Chuck Gray and U.S. Sen. Harriet Hageman will be minority freshmen. Again, Williamson explains what that means for them.
RW: Hageman arrives as a freshman senator in the minority, picking committee seats late from a short list. Gray arrives arguably in the weakest spot of all. He's a freshman in the House minority, where the majority controls essentially everything, and so the room for influence is much less. Expect Wyoming's biggest issues to be fought more through executive action [and] the courts rather than through Congress.
JU: We’ll have to see about committee seats. But just a few days ago, Gray was elected by other freshmen Republicans to the House Republican Policy Committee. This is the primary advisory and policy development arm for the House Republican Conference, a kind of internal forum to talk about legislative proposals and develop conservative policy.
KK: Right, these changes come into play in January. So did the blue tsunami, the blue wave, come to Wyoming in any way?
JU: No. Big no. It simply didn’t. [Democrats] gained one seat in the [state] House. Britney Tennant beat a Republican for a House District that represents downtown Cheyenne. It’s worth noting that District 11 was held by a Republican for the past nine years. But before that, it was blue since at least the early ‘90s. Other than that, the few Democrats already holding seats kept them.
KK: Where do the Republicans stand in the state?
JU: For the most part, the big battles for Republicans were in the primaries. So, they retain their overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate.
KK: Now, what about the Freedom Caucus?
JU: Members of the Freedom Caucus are still members of the GOP, but, for example, Rep. Bill Allemand of Midwest is an endorsed member of the caucus, he retained his seat. So the Freedom Caucus still retains active lawmakers. It's just that they lost a chunk of their leadership in the primaries, like John Bear, Rachel Williams and Chip Neiman. And while the caucus no longer holds a majority, they have plenty of bills they worked on over the interim that are heading to Cheyenne, so some of their policy priorities will be discussed and voted on.
KK: We’ll be watching that this coming session. [To] quickly finish off, I understand there was some other election-related news.
JU: For one thing, the people's initiative to reduce primary residence property tax by 50% failed.
But the kind of big news is the Constitution Party. Rebecca Bextel was the Constitution Party candidate for governor. She did not win, but because she got roughly 16% of the ballots cast for governor, the Constitution Party is now a major party in the state.
KK: What does that mean?
JU: The difference between major and minor [party] is basically the amount of votes you get. If you get under 10%, [you’re a] minor party. Getting over means major. But this only applies for the governor’s race, the U.S. House and the secretary of state. The Constitution Party is also now required to field candidates in the primary.
KK: The next primary election in 2028. It won’t only be the Democrats and Republicans choosing their candidates, it will also be the Constitution Party. Has this happened before in the state?
JU: In 2014, both the Constitution and Libertarian parties got major party status. But the next election, the secretary of state and governor were not on the ballot. Only the U.S. House race. The candidates [that] both parties put up for that seat received less than 10% of the vote, so they lost major party status. That’s kind of the catch-22 of major party status. So, while Bextel’s 16% is higher than what the Libertarian and Constitution party received back in 2014, retaining major party status will mean getting 10% or more of the vote in a U.S House race against Chuck Gray come 2028.
