Our takeaways from the primary election (plus 2 questions)

Freedom Caucus fiasco

In the aftermath of the state’s Aug. 18 primary election, it seems the main thing people have been talking about is the large number of losses by Wyoming Freedom Caucus legislators and candidates.

We’ll discuss that here, of course, but we have several other takeaways, concerns and hopes as we prepare for the Nov. 3 general election. We also have a couple of questions we hope you’ll help us answer.

We’re not fans of dancing on anyone’s grave, but it’s important to acknowledge the message Wyoming voters statewide sent loud and clear to the Freedom Caucus: “Your way of governing isn’t ‘The Wyoming Way.’”

Voters have diverse reasons for not reelecting Freedom Caucus members. However, we heard many residents express dissatisfaction with the caucus’s efforts to dismantle the only statewide economic development agency, the Wyoming Business Council, and the legislative attempts to cut more than $40 million from the budget of our state’s four-year public university.

Some members of the far-right group of lawmakers will likely try to blame “crossover voting” — the decision by Democrats to register as Republicans in order to subvert the will of the majority party — for this outcome. And there may be some truth to that, even with the requirement that voters declare their party allegiance before candidates have filed to run.

We are aware that some Democrats and Independents, as well as previously unaffiliated voters, registered as Republicans this year before the May 13 deadline so they could influence the direction of state government. However, some Republicans say it was time to take their party back and return to the days of reasonable governance. In the end, we’d argue that the results indicated that these public servants misjudged their constituents’ priorities.

GOP endorsements bust

Along those same lines, it seems that Wyoming Republican Party leaders are out of step with those they claim to represent. For the first time, they chose to endorse a slate of GOP candidates prior to the primary, and most of them lost.

The unsuccessful candidates were: Col. Brent Bien for governor; state Rep. Rachel (Rodriquez-)Williams for secretary of state; state Rep. Scott Smith for treasurer and state Rep. Tom Kelly for superintendent of public instruction.

The two who advanced were U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman for U.S. Senate and Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray for U.S. House. Hageman was basically a shoo-in from the minute she declared her intent to run for the seat being vacated by Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., which is why Mr. Gray chose to run for the state’s lone House seat.

Thanks to nine active candidates on Election Day, Mr. Gray won that race with just under 25% of the votes cast, meaning 93,747 of the 124,969 who cast ballots wanted someone other than him to win.

We hope state party leaders are giving some serious thought to how they can reconnect with the will of their rank-and-file party membership. Because the overall takeaway from this year’s primary for the party should be that voters didn’t reject conservative policies or candidates, just a certain brand of conservatism.

Plethora of newcomers

The ouster of 13 state House members of the Freedom Caucus is one reason the 69th Wyoming Legislature will look much different from the 68th. But there also were several races where the incumbent simply chose not to seek reelection.

Here in Laramie County, at least seven seats will be filled by newcomers to the state Capitol in January. That’s an opportunity that needs to be taken seriously by those who end up winning Nov. 3. Not only will they want to finish off their campaigns strong, they also need to be keeping up with the decisions made by current lawmakers during the ongoing interim period leading up to the 2027 general session.

The same holds true for those who prevail in town, city and county races, including councilors, commissioners, school board members and community college trustees. With just over two months between Election Day and taking office, there’s very little time to get up to speed on the important issues facing their constituents.

Sixth-penny support

As they’ve done for decades, Laramie County voters showed overwhelming support for an additional percentage of sales tax to complete specific projects.

Known as the sixth penny, voters passed 13 of the 14 propositions on the ballot. The closest margin of support was 1,713 on Proposition 11, which will collect a total of $24.2 million for projects for the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office and the county jail.

The one ballot measure that voters rejected was Proposition 5, which would have collected $22 million to remodel the Cheyenne Municipal Building. While some might have voted no because of the way it was worded or they opposed renovating the former senior center into a separate building for City Council members, a possible theory is that it was a statement against the council and mayor’s recent decisions related to data centers, annexation of county pockets, Flock cameras, speed enforcement, downtown parking fees, etc.

Either way, we applaud residents for seeing the need for the vast majority of this work, and for continuing to invest in themselves and their quality of life.

How do we get more people to vote?

Before we wrap up, we need to talk about voter turnout for this year’s primary. According to WyoFile.com, primary turnout statewide was about 54.9%, which was slightly higher than the 54.3% in the 2024 primary, but significantly lower than the 63.5% in 2022 — the year Hageman ousted U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney.

Turnout among all eligible voters, based on Wyoming’s voting-age population — last estimated by the state in 2024 at 454,508 — was closer to 33%. That compares to 27% for the 2024 primary, 40.8% in 2022 and 31.5% in 2020, WyoFile reported.

According to the Pew Research Center, this tracks closely with nationwide trends, and is largely due to partisan hostility. Nearly half of younger adults said in 2022 they “wish there were more parties to choose from.”

So, our first question to you is the broad one: How can we get more people to become informed, consistently active voters? Bring-a-friend initiatives? More reminders that mail-in ballots are available to everyone? More focus on local races and issues, rather than national ones?

Our second question is related: Could voter turnout be improved by moving to a more open primary system? We heard from some people that they weren’t voting because they weren’t registered Republicans, and they didn’t think there was anything to vote for as a result (that wasn’t true, of course, since all Laramie County voters weighed in on the sixth-penny sales tax propositions and city/town council races are nonpartisan).

Wyoming is one of 13 states that currently require closed primaries, where only party members are allowed to vote on candidates from that party, according to Ballotpedia. Ten require semi-closed primaries, where unaffiliated voters are allowed to vote in their party primary of choice. Five require top-two style primaries, where all candidates are listed on the same ballot, regardless of party affiliation, and voters get to choose their favorites from more than one party; the top two in each race then advance.

However, 14 states require open primaries, where all voters are allowed to vote for any candidate, and 11 states let parties decide who gets to participate in their primaries.

We can’t help but believe our closed primary system without a runoff provision is one of the reasons voter participation is so low, plus it can lead to a candidate advancing after receiving just a quarter of the votes cast. With one party so dominantly in control, however, it will take a groundswell of public opposition to change it.

What are your thoughts? Do you have takeaways from this year’s Wyoming primary elections we didn’t highlight here? Please send us an email at opinion@wyomingnews.com or mail a note to P.O. Box 20128, Cheyenne, 82003.

To everyone who voted in this year’s primary, we say, “Thank you.” To everyone else, we say, “Please vote in the general election. Your votes matter much more than you may think.”