Our election series is back as the Nov. 5 general looms. This week, we’re taking a step back and will look at where Wyoming politics stand after the primary. And special guest Maya Shimizu Harris shares her recent reporting for WyoFile about the rise of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
Kamila Kudelksa: Let’s start with you, Chris. Primary election night was a good one for the Freedom Caucus and not a great one for several longtime incumbents. Chris, can you give us a quick recap of the gains by the Freedom Caucus?
Chris Clements: Right now we can confirm a total of 26 Freedom Caucus-endorsed and -aligned wins. The Freedom Caucus could gain six or seven more seats if all their candidates facing contested general elections all win. They could win a majority in the House, and that would obviously give them a lot more leeway and power to decide what legislation comes up.
KK: To gain some of these seats, there were a couple of upsets in the primary where a Freedom Caucus-endorsed candidate pushed an incumbent out. What does that mean for the next [legislative] session?
CC: We’ve heard from a few different lawmakers that there will be a loss of institutional knowledge of how the House operates after the election. Rep. Dan Zwonitzer (R-Cheyenne) talked to us about that after he learned he’d lost to a Freedom Caucus-endorsed candidate.
Dan Zwonitzer: This is the new normal in Wyoming. We knocked off probably 75 percent of the leaders in the House. The people had been there multiple terms, decades, if not a century of institutional knowledge will be taken out this year.
CC: Another big upset that shocked folks was Speaker of the House Albert Sommers’ (R-Pinedale) loss against Laura Pearson, another Freedom Caucus candidate.
Albert Sommers: I do have concerns, but ultimately we will see how they [the Freedom Caucus] lead, right? That remains to be seen. They haven't been in power before, so you can't say for sure how they will govern, but time will tell.
KK: I guess his point being that governing can be a lot different than being in the minority. What did Freedom Caucus members say about that?
CC: I spoke with Rep. John Bear (R-Gillette), the former chair of the Freedom Caucus, and he told me [he believes] this is the right direction.
John Bear: [There was] almost a century of incumbency removed in this election alone. I think that is monumental and probably worthy of a headline of its own.
KK: Before we turn to Maya to talk about a race that bucked this trend, I do want to point out that the primary had a very low voter turnout. Actually, the lowest since 2016. The secretary of state’s official results show roughly 122,700 votes cast this year in the primary. That was down about 60,000 from the 2022 primary, which had 182,232 votes cast.
CC: That’s a really good point to make, Kamila. But let’s not forget that since the primary, more than 10,000 Wyomingites have registered to vote.
KK: Maya, you spent months focused on one race which showcased a Freedom Caucus incumbent and a more moderate Republican challenger. This is House District 57, which represents part of Casper. Why did you want to do this story? How did it come about?
MSH: Before the primaries, we knew that the main question of this election cycle for Wyoming would be whether or not the hardline Republicans aligned with the Wyoming Freedom Caucus would manage to take a majority in the Legislature. People have described this tension between the Wyoming Freedom Caucus and more traditional or moderate Republicans as a battle for the soul or spirit of Wyoming and for the meaning of conservatism.
We were interested in the House District 57 race because Rep. Jeanette Ward, who was the Republican incumbent and is a member of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, really stands out as a representative of this hardline conservative movement. And then Julie Jarvis, the Republican who challenged her and ultimately beat Ward in the primaries, is a Natrona County School District administrator. Ward has been really active in local school board meetings, so Jarvis got to see the lawmaker’s evolution kind of up close.
KK: I want to ask about Ward and Jarvis’s backgrounds, but first, help me picture these two women. Tell me about the Central Wyoming Fair Parade in Casper.
MSH: In election years, you’ll see a lot of candidates in this parade with their campaign signs and such. And this year, Ward was marching with some other legislative candidates who are aligned with the Freedom Caucus. They were carrying American flags and walking in front of this big military-style truck. Ward’s campaign sign had a GOP elephant that looked like it was about to charge something. It reminded me of something that John Bear, the former chairman of the Freedom Caucus, had once said. He said that he envisioned the caucus being “a military unit that’s ready to fight and stand in the gap for the people of Wyoming.” Ward and the other candidates with her really embodied that.
Jarvis, on the other hand, had this small trailer that her two kids and their friends had decorated with streamers. They had water guns, they were wearing Mardi Gras beads. Her float was playing songs by Miley Cyrus and other music of that genre. It was a very small-town kind of atmosphere.
KK: That’s a big contrast. So who are they, what are their policy goals?
MSH: Ward is from Illinois. She moved to Casper less than a year before she ran for this position. Many people have commented about how tenacious and disciplined she is both personally and as a politician. She’s well educated, she’s a CrossFitter. She had served on a school board in Illinois, and she also unsuccessfully ran for a Senate seat in that state, so she already had some political experience by the time she became a lawmaker here.
Jarvis was born in Wyoming and grew up on a small farm outside of Buffalo. She really emphasized her background as a fourth generation Wyomingite during her campaign, which stood in contrast to Ward’s background as a newcomer to the state. She’s also very well educated and went to school in Connecticut for some time before coming back to Wyoming. Unlike Ward, coming into the campaign, Jarvis didn’t have political experience.
KK: Pretty different. What did the race end up looking like? What happened?
MSH: Jarvis, the challenger, chose to run a pretty unique campaign. Instead of presenting a policy platform that stemmed from her own views, she decided to develop a survey that asked constituents in her district what they thought about a variety of policy issues, and she promised to vote according to the preferences that people show through that survey.
Julie Jarvis: I have found that when you set a goal and allow for people around you to create and define how to get there, amazing things happen. Therefore, my political platform is designed to do just that. It is centered around giving the voice back to the local people.
KK: Interesting. What did voters think about her approach?
MSH: A lot of the voters in her district who I talked to said they liked it, others said they didn’t feel that a survey with a limited number of questions would really capture enough information to inform Jarvis on the hundreds of bills that the Legislature considers each year. So we’ll see how that goes when the idea is actually applied to real legislation and policy decisions.
On the other hand, Ward, being the incumbent, was able to campaign on her voting record.
Jeanette Ward: So last election cycle, I promised voters that I was pro-life, pro-freedom, pro-Second Amendment and pro-family, and that's exactly how I voted.
MSH: She emphasized her endorsements by conservative organizations like Wyoming Right to Life and Gun Owners of America. Her campaigning against Jarvis was pretty aggressive, and some of it was classic Freedom Caucus. She accused Jarvis of being a RINO.
KK: That’s Republican in Name Only.
MSH: Right, and similarly, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ political action committee also sent out mailers accusing Jarvis of being a liberal. Ward also targeted Jarvis in her professional capacity as a school district administrator.
KK: The trend of the primary was Freedom Caucus candidates energizing enough voters to come out that they toppled incumbents. But here, a newcomer took down a well-established Freedom Caucus member. How did Jarvis win?
MSH: Jarvis got a much earlier start than the Republican candidate who opposed Ward in the last election cycle, so her campaign had time to do a lot of door knocking, to send out mailers, to push out advertisements and to raise funds. And on the subject of funds, Jarvis’ campaign raised more than double the amount that Ward’s did, so her campaign had more resources to draw on. Some people have told me that they really liked Jarvis’ approach of polling constituents, so that may have helped her. And people also told me that Ward’s rather aggressive messaging in her mailers was off putting and made them less enthusiastic about her as a candidate.
KK: Let’s take a step back like you did, Maya. The second part of this series is taking a look at how the Wyoming Freedom Caucus rose to power in the last couple of years. Two things stood out to me. Let’s start with the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ partnership with the national organization.
MSH: The Wyoming Freedom Caucus is partnered with the State Freedom Caucus Network, which is a D.C.-based organization that’s trying to establish freedom caucuses in every state across the country. So far the network has done that in a dozen states. Some members of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus told me that they were initially hesitant about partnering with any organization coming out of D.C. But those who ended up supporting the partnership said that they see the network as a useful resource, and they don’t see it as an organization that’s going to tell them what to do and how to vote as critics of this partnership say.
The national network pays the salary of a state director for every Freedom Caucus. In Wyoming, that state director is Jessie Rubino. She was born and raised in Wyoming. She’s the spouse of Joe Rubino, the secretary of state’s chief policy officer, and the nephew of Wyoming’s U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman. Jessie Rubino researches bills and provides analysis and vote recommendations for members of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus and others who sympathize with the caucus.
KK: So maybe less top-down than some have claimed, but also maybe not entirely Wyoming-grown. And then the second thing that stood out to me was the potential future of the caucus. As we’ve discussed, the caucus is poised to gain a majority after the general session. What do they hope to do with this majority?
MSH: If they gain a majority, they will be able to put more of their people in leadership positions in the Legislature. That will give them much more authority to direct the body and focus on the policy issues that the caucus most cares about.
Looking further into the future, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus wants to try to put more allies into the executive branch as well, and most importantly in the office of the governor. That position is especially important because the governor holds veto power. In fact, Gov. Mark Gordon has in the past vetoed legislation that the Wyoming Freedom Caucus championed, so this is a significant obstacle for the Freedom Caucus’ goals.
KK: Thank you so much, Maya, and thanks, Chris. We’ll be back on Oct. 25 to look at the races that will determine control of the state House in the general election.
