Some of the candidates for U.S. House said Wyoming needs a louder voice in Congress and more independence from the wills of Washington as basic affordability and public lands remain under threat.
Republican Chuck Gray did not respond to several interview requests. His three opponents want to show voters there are alternatives, even in a state that's put Republicans in Congress for the past half century.
The four nominees are campaigning for Wyoming’s lone U.S. House seat vacated by Harriet Hageman, who is running for U.S. Senate.
Lisa Kinney, the Democratic nominee, said even if she loses, she wants voters to have “different information” than what they might see on Fox News.
“We’re normal Wyomingites,” she said of Democrats in the state. “Having been brought up here, I'm conservative, I'm moderate, I get along with all sorts of people.”
Constitution Party nominee Jeff Haggit said his party of historical values is on the rise, with candidates also on the ballot for governor and secretary of state.
“I always thought we needed to get back to the basics,” he said.
Libertarian Shawn Johnson said he wants to change the rhetoric in Congress to build a coalition that can achieve action rather than dysfunction.
“We don't need a political culture warrior in there worrying about things that don't matter,” Johnson said.
All three challengers criticized Gray as a puppet for the Trump administration, whose loyalty will mean he fails to represent the people of Wyoming. Gray is currently the Wyoming secretary of state.
While he failed to win Trump’s endorsement, Gray’s mailers featured the pair side-by-side. Despite earning outside derision for his record as an election denier, Gray beat out conservative activist Steve Friess and military veteran Kevin Christensen in the crowded nine-candidate Republican primary.
Excerpts of the general election candidates’ interviews are below. They’ve been edited for clarity and brevity.
Constitution Party nominee Jeff Haggit spoke to KHOL for 20 minutes on Sept. 17, 2026.
Evan Robinson-Johnson: To start, could you just 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 [in 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?
JH: The Constitution Party, since 2010, it's been around, and it kind of comes and goes. We were 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 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: We're getting more attention this year. I'm running against Chuck Gray, and the Libertarian candidate 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 [Oct.15]. 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 ‘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.
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 healthcare.
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. It's going to be a process. It's just going to have to work itself out. I don't have the magic answer for it.
ERJ: How about data centers?
JH: I see the bigger picture as what are they going to be used for? We’ve already got more than China. They're going to be used for Flock cameras that are necessary for a surveillance state. Cloud computing, 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.
ERJ: And how about property taxes?
JH: If you go back to the original founders, they were very against this concept. Owning the land and private property is paramount to being a free man. It's just a core, unalienable right to own land. And so if you're paying taxes on anything, it's not really yours, is it?
Democratic Party nominee Lisa Kinney spoke to KHOL for 20 minutes on Sept. 17, 2026.
Evan Robinson-Johnson: You're the Democratic nominee for the Wyoming U.S. House seat. Could you just give listeners a quick introduction?
Lisa Kinney: I'm a Wyoming native. I was born in Laramie. I'm still there. I spent 10 years in the Wyoming state Senate, and I had two years of those as the minority leader. I was on the Judiciary and Education committee[s]. I am an attorney. I'm a librarian. I was in financial advising for many years. As chamber director in Laramie, I worked with all three governors, [Dave] Freudenthal, Michael Sullivan and also [Jim] Geringer. Do you want my top priorities?
ERJ: Sure, why not?
LK: I woke up kind of mad this morning, and I'll tell you why – not mad in a bad way, but mad because there's so much going on in Congress, in our lives, and we're not really addressing them.
I want to go after public lands. They started in January 2025 with a declaration that mining is number one over tourism and everything else. Our Congress has gone over and over and over again to try and put bills into taking our lands away. Our lands are being taken away. It's very important. This is how we play, this is tourism, this agriculture, this ranching. So it's very important that we keep our public lands and they don't quickly take them away.
We don't have enough money to eat. The majority of people out there are having a hard time paying for everything. That makes me mad, and I have a lot of ideas about that, especially when it comes to healthcare and especially when it comes to rural healthcare. These are important issues.
The final one is we need to look at a global treaty with China and Russia and every country that's dealing with AI, and we've got to slow it down. Because right now, we're headed in a terrible direction. I have a bill ready to go that would put a moratorium on them, but we need experts in the area to tell us how we will not get to the point where right now the AI is not in our best interest. We have to work with all the other countries to make sure that we do what's right for us.
ERJ: It's been a half century since Wyoming elected a Democrat to Congress. Why do you think that is?
LK: I think it's because the majority of the voters are Republican. I was thinking about that this morning, too. What do the people of Wyoming want? Because I've heard several people say to me, ‘I won't vote for a D,’ which is a Democrat. ‘I'm only going to vote for an R.’ They've done it all of that time. My question to them is: ‘Do you want life to go on in Congress as it has been going on, where the Republicans aren't talking to the Democrats, the Democrats aren't talking to Republicans, our issues aren't being dealt with because you don't have anyone working together?’
I will be a moderating voice for all the people in in Wyoming, and if there's something that I disagree with my party about, that's fine. I will not vote that way. I will vote for what's in the best interest of the people of Wyoming. And maybe they haven't had people who have done this for a while.
I have thoughts about creating industry for Wyoming so we can hire people and keep our kids here in the state. I'm looking at everything, and I'm hoping that they'll say, ‘Yeah, give her a chance.’ Why not? Put me in for two years. What's the worst thing that can happen? Nothing. What's the best thing that can happen? A whole lot.
One final thing: I'm working with 40 states right now to get several bills passed, including term limits, getting rid of Citizens United, getting an ethical standard for the U.S. Supreme Court and other things that are Republican and Democrat. These are things that are going to help us and that's what I want to do.
I want to help the state of Wyoming, look after the state of Wyoming, stand up for them, and I think we don't have that now. We have silence. We have total silence.
Libertarian Party nominee Shawn Johnson spoke to KHOL for 20 minutes on Sept. 16, 2026.
Evan Robinson-Johnson: I wondered if to start, we could just have you introduce yourself.
Shawn Johnson: So I'm a Libertarian candidate for Congress. I was born in Casper. I grew up during my teenage years in the Denver area. I came back. Got a good job as a deputy sheriff in Casper for Natrona County.
I was a member of the Army National Guard. I was a combat medic. I joined my junior year of high school. I have one combat deployment to Iraq during the invasion. I decided that I didn't want to do law enforcement anymore, so I went to college. The Army paid for my college. I got my associate and bachelor's degrees in business, and then I went to law school, and I've been practicing law in Wyoming ever since.
ERJ: Why are you running for the U.S. House seat?
SJ: Several reasons. One, we need to have an adult in that position. Someone who can get along with others and form coalitions and get things done for Wyoming. We don't need a political culture warrior in there worrying about things that don't matter. We need somebody in there who's gonna work for Wyoming and for the American people. I think that the federal government has gotten to a point where it's become too large and overpowering, mostly in the executive branch, and I feel like Congress really hasn't done a whole lot to stop it.
Usually it's, ‘When my team's in power, I do what they want,’ and that's not going to be me. Especially if Congress is evenly split, where Democrats and Republicans are going to come to the Wyoming seat and ask what they can do to earn Wyoming's vote on whatever it is that they're voting on, that puts Wyoming in a position where we can get things that Wyoming needs.
ERJ: Why are you running with the Libertarian Party?
SJ: I was a Republican for a long time. I left sometime between 2016 and 2018 or ‘19, I think. I was an independent for a while and then joined the Libertarian Party. I just felt like the Republican Party abandoned their traditional values and went even further to the right. I feel like Democrats did something similar where they're abandoning the middle ground, the middle people, the moderates, and swung further to the left. And so it left me in a position where I'm like, I don't know where I belong politically. So I joined the Libertarian Party.
ERJ: What do you think are the greatest risks facing Wyoming right now?
SJ: Economy, the cost of living. With Congress' ineptness here, the last two years especially, we find ourselves in another unnecessary Middle Eastern war, which has directly caused the cost of oil and fuel to increase, which is now causing the cost to food to increase, which is causing inflation to increase. The war needs to end first before we can address anything else.
The other issues I think that Wyoming faces are high health care costs and also a lack of access to health care. You know, the Republicans went into Congress, and they said they wanted to gut the Affordable Care Act. They did that, but they had nothing to replace it with, and then it just spiked insurance premiums again. Now we're seeing lost funding for rural hospitals and rural medical care, which directly affect the people of Wyoming. And so I want to make sure, if I'm elected, that our rural hospitals are properly funded, and then we need to come up with something to replace the Affordable Care Act and to bring insurance costs down, because what's happening now isn't working, and it's just robbing more money out of the pockets of Americans.
You can find more information about Wyoming’s 2026 general election on our How Do I Vote? page.
