As Wyoming gets ready to negotiate a new budget for the next two years, lawmakers have been touring the state to take the temperature on what voters want to see happen in state government.
Wyoming Public Radio’s Kamila Kudelska spoke with three reporters who checked some of these forums to see how these voters are interacting with their elected representatives.
WPR’s Chris Clements covered a town hall put on by the Freedom Caucus.
WPR’s Caitlin Tan covered a community forum in Lander hosted by the Fremont County Democrats, featuring a moderate Republican senator.
Sophia Boyd-Fliegel, our partner at Jackson Hole Community Radio, talked to Democrats who’ve been touring the state for a series of listening sessions.
Editor's Note: This story has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Kamila Kudelska: Chris, let’s start with you and the Freedom Caucus.
Chris Clements: For those who don’t know, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus is a group of conservative state lawmakers. Their website says they back “limited government, individual liberty, and American prosperity.”
The caucus has been officially around for six years, but they finally secured a majority of seats in the House after the 2024 elections. That means leadership in the House is composed entirely of Freedom Caucus members, and their members have quite a few chairs on House committees. All that to say: They’ve got a lot of power in the lower chamber.
Given that, the big question for me is: How will they work with the Senate, which is considered by some to be more moderate? And how successful will the caucus be in pushing their priority legislation through?
KK: What happened at their virtual town hall?
CC: Members of the caucus ticked through each of their goals in the upcoming session. They say they want to require Laramie County to use pen and paper ballots for elections. That county currently uses touch-screen voting machines, the only one in the state that uses that as their default method. The caucus also says they want to make it easier for parents to sue if they think their parental rights have been violated. And they want to ban what they call “obscene pornographic materials” from children’s sections in all public libraries. Plus, they want to make it easier for the public to access judicial opinions and court documents.
KK: What about fiscal goals?
CC: They say they want to return the state to pre-pandemic spending levels, an effort we’ve already started to see in their cuts to the budget.
Rep. John Bear (R-Gillette) talked about that. He co-chairs the Joint Appropriations Committee, or the JAC, which is the Legislature’s budgeting arm.
John Bear: We’ve had a lot of squealing going on in the JAC from the Democrats, and the Republicans that really should be Democrats, because they say that we’re just destroying government. Well, [there were] very few cases where we actually went back and reduced the base budget of these agencies. Most cases were just denying their opportunity to increase the budget.
CC: Just to note, the caucus has a lot of other priorities that we’ll probably also see in the upcoming session, including changing the way state Supreme Court justices are nominated, especially after the state’s highest court struck down two near total abortion bans.
KK: Did the public have a chance to ask questions or comments?
CC: Yes. Folks asked if they were looking into banning Flock security cameras, and what issues there are with the Wyoming Business Council. That’s the state’s economic development agency, which lawmakers recently moved to defund and dismantle.
Some people asked questions that indicated a bit of pushback to the caucus and their goals, like when one person asked in a Facebook comment, “How much money are you people wasting on ‘election integrity’ for a problem that is virtually nonexistent?”
KK: You also tuned in to a different town hall, right?
CC: That’s right, virtually. That one featured House Speaker Rep. Chip Neiman (R-Hulett), a member of the caucus, and Sen. Cheri Steinmetz (R-Lingle), a staunch pro-life advocate.
There’s been talk of passing a constitutional amendment to ban abortion in Wyoming, but Neiman said he’s worried about putting something in front of voters that could fail, and therefore inadvertently enshrine abortion as a form of healthcare in the state Constitution.
He said he’s considering asking voters to ban abortion when there’s a heartbeat. Fetal heartbeats can be detected around 6 weeks. He cited a recent law in Nebraska that bans abortions after 12 weeks.
Chip Neiman: Is that where we need to go as a state? Because right now we can't stop any little baby from being killed. Zero.
KK: What did people ask Neiman and Steinmetz?
CC: The public’s questions ran the gamut. Neiman said at one point that it was a packed room. I heard questions that were defending the business council, asking about K-12 school recalibration, and asking about property tax cuts and their effect on local governments. All of which Wyoming Public Radio has been reporting on.
The morning after the town hall, I called up Emalee Sweet, who had gone to the town hall and who works for the News Letter Journal. She went to the town hall for personal reasons.
Emalee Sweet: The Freedom Caucus wants – they want to cut real jobs, including my neighbor's jobs, my family's jobs, our main street, our university, they're proposing to cut real opportunities for our Wyoming children. They're proposing to cut real support like Wyoming, the Wyoming Business Council for our small businesses in Wyoming. And the people in the small towns like myself don't appreciate it.
KK: Thanks Chris. Now Caitlin, you went to a forum in Lander that featured Sen. Cale Case, a moderate Republican, with a strong presence from the local chapter of the League of Women Voters.
Caitlin Tan: Yes. They spoke to a packed room of about 70 to 80 people, mostly older, and presumably Democrats, as it was hosted by the local Dems.
The theme was “Taxes, voting and the changing political climate in Wyoming.” And basically the entire 90 minutes was spent on concerns about the Freedom Caucus and the importance of the upcoming election, as every seat in the House will be on the ballot this fall.
During the Q&A, one voter asked:
Audience Question: Is there any indication on the ballot that a candidate is a Freedom Caucus Republican rather than a normal person?
CT: The panel admitted it can be tricky. Not all Freedom Caucus lawmakers are forthcoming about being members. But some of the suggestions: Do a little digging online, look at voting records and see if campaign flyers are funded by out of state groups.
KK: What other themes came out of that forum?
CT: Like I said, a lot of emphasis on the upcoming election. Specifically the primary, since that’s where the races between Freedom Caucus and moderate Republicans will be won.
Sen. Case implored the Democrats in the room to switch parties, as Wyoming now has closed primaries.
Cale Case: This is the most important election in our history, since we became a state, and it happens to be after three years of control and election restriction by the Freedom Caucus elements in the far right wing of the Republican Party. And so this is the fight – I'm in it. I'll go to the mat on this. I need your help.
CT: [Here’s] some of the pretty big recent election law changes: If you are changing your party affiliation, that has to happen by May 13 to vote in the summer primary [on Aug. 18]. And if you didn’t vote in the most recent general election, you may no longer be registered.
Case said he’d like to see more moderate Republicans back in state politics, [with] a focus on Wyoming issues, rather than following the Trump and D.C. political agenda.
Cale Case: So when someone is endorsed from outside, that should be a red flag for you. What business does someone from Washington have saying whether someone would be a good secretary of state or governor? What business is that? We've got our own problems.
KK: And last but not least, Sophia, you attended one of the listening sessions Democrats have been holding around the state.
SBF: Yeah, so state Reps. Karlee Provenza of Laramie and Mike Yin, he’s from Jackson, they organized 10 of these all around the state. I went to one in Jackson.
There were a lot of concerns, but they were taking notes at the front and the recurring themes [were] affordable housing, healthcare, brain drain (so, young people leaving the state), mental health access, access to reproductive care and protections for public lands.
KK: You said you were in Jackson, that’s more of a liberal corner of the state.
SBF: Yeah that’s right. But Yin and Provenza say they’ve heard similar issues statewide and across party lines.
Mike Yin: I think one thing you should take away is that everything that's been written here isn't something we haven’t seen before.
KK: Sophia, the meeting you went to happened before the budget bill draft was finalized. And they’re not on the committee that made that bill. How are they considering the upcoming budget session?
SBF: I just saw Provenza again in another packed room at the library here, this time for a workshop on how to sway lawmakers and the public. The Democrats know they have to team up with the more moderate conservatives and they are mostly playing defense.
Karlee Provenza: Wyoming’s most widely held values are freedom, hard work, community, honesty and pride in the land.
SBF: So whether it's the budget or constitutional amendments or personal bills, lawmakers are focused on sharing stories and getting regular folks to share their concerns with lawmakers this session, about preserving those values.
For example, instead of “stop book bans,” their narratives sound more like, “keep freedom of choice in libraries and be honest about what’s in these books,” “protect public school funding for hardworking families,” [or] “protect liberties for voting and women’s reproductive rights.”
KK: There certainly will be a lot to watch for in the session. It starts on Feb. 9.
