The takeover: How Wyoming’s ‘tireless minority’ took control

FROM WYOFILE: 

In only a few years, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus went from a loose collection of several lawmakers to the group now poised to control the statehouse. The transformation came as the group aligned with a national organization.

By Maya Shimizu Harris, WyoFile.com

The State Freedom Caucus Network, a national right-wing political organization that aims to establish hard-line majorities in every statehouse in the U.S., invoked founding father Samuel Adams to lead off an email newsletter: “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.” 

The quote is telling of the ethos of at least one network member — the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, which has been particularly aggressive in the past few years, holding town halls, posting on social media, disseminating press releases, generating headlines, establishing its own political action committee and earning a reputation for bare-knuckled campaign tactics. 

Confrontational campaign mailers funded by the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ political action committee, WY Freedom PAC, bent the truth far enough to elicit a defamation lawsuit. The postcards claimed traditionalist Republican primary opponents had voted to remove former President Donald Trump from the ballot when, in fact, there has never been such a vote. 

The caucus has similarly needled Gov. Mark Gordon. In October, for example, after Gordon gave a speech at Harvard University touting his carbon-negative energy plan, members of the caucus accused the governor of sharing a “drastic change in policy” with a “pro-Hamas, pro-China” audience, “but not his own neighbors.” Gordon had, in fact, readdressed the already years-old initiative with lawmakers months earlier during his 2023 State of the State speech.

This approach has proven politically effective, and in short order. Once making up a small minority, the cadre of far-right Republican lawmakers who are either members of WFC or sympathetic to its cause now appear poised to install a majority in the Wyoming Legislature following the November general elections. “The State Legislature — that’s the prize,” Wyoming GOP Chairman Frank Eathorne, a Freedom Caucus ally, told a like-minded crowd at a political rally prior to the primaries. As the dust settled on Aug. 20, it became clear that the WFC was much closer to claiming that prize.

Lawmakers associated with the Wyoming Freedom Caucus have successfully put into law restrictions on crossover voting. They pushed through a sweeping abortion ban, though the ban is currently tied up in court, and led the effort to bar the University of Wyoming from spending state dollars on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. But many of the caucus’ legislative initiatives have stalled because of its minority status in the Legislature. That will likely change come the next legislative session. What the group will do with its newfound power and what mark it will leave on Wyoming politics and policy remain to be seen.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, nothing blue

Caucuses are nothing new to the Wyoming Legislature or American politics writ large. By joining forces, they allow lawmakers sharing a common interest to leverage their numbers in a unified voting bloc, giving them more power than they would have individually.

In the Wyoming Legislature, the Republican and Democratic parties have caucused longer than anyone can remember. Caucuses meet — more often than not behind closed doors — to plan strategy, disseminate marching orders, choose candidates or decide on policy matters. Legislative leadership is picked during party caucus meetings, typically in December after the general elections and before the legislative session.

Given the Republicans’ supermajority status, however, the most consequential conflicts in the Wyoming Legislature arise not between the two major parties, but within the GOP itself. Before the formation of the WFC, such intra-party power struggles were typically organic, disorganized affairs characterized more by a broad-ranging collection of individual views and interests than by organized movements employing sophisticated tactics. They also used to take place mostly behind the scenes.

In recent years, clashes between traditional and hard-line Republicans have at times risen to a level that people compare to silver-screen melodrama. “This whole experience has been very high school-esque,” Cheyenne Republican Rep. Daniel Singh, a freshman lawmaker and WFC member, told WyoFile. “You could seriously make a movie akin to Mean Girls about the Legislature.” The WFC has thrived in the “high school-esque” halls of the Capitol. 

The movement dates to late 2015, when nine congressional Republicans formed the U.S. House Freedom Caucus to oppose the Obama administration. The group quickly drew attention for bucking the traditions of cooperation and compromise in which newer representatives defer to senior lawmakers. It has threatened to kill measures of its own party, pressuring Republican leadership to change bills and legislative rules to its liking.

In January 2023 the U.S. House Freedom Caucus’ disdain for convention made international news as the bloc strung out the vote for speaker of the House, requiring 15-ballots to elect Kevin McCarthy. Through the process, the caucus, which was the primary stumbling block to McCarthy’s ascent, squeezed all sorts of concessions out of the California Republican, such as changes to House rules that empower the caucus and promises of seats on panels and committees that determine committee assignments and set the floor agenda. The group was also responsible for McCarthy’s subsequent ouster in October 2023. 

Some have described the Freedom Caucus as an outgrowth of the conservative populist Tea Party movement that gained momentum during the Obama administration. Many of the ideologies and constituencies certainly overlap, but others argue that the Tea Party movement was more diffuse and lacked specific drivers, whereas the Freedom Caucus originated from concentrations of political power in Washington. “What we see with the Freedom Caucus is driven by lawmakers, not voters,” said Matthew Green, a political science professor at the Catholic University of America who has studied the U.S. House Freedom Caucus and its state-level offshoots. “I would argue the Tea Party is really a grassroots movement whereas Freedom Caucuses are more lawmaker driven.” 

Tea Party sympathizers in the Wyoming Legislature were also loosely organized, Gerald Gay, a former lawmaker who served during the height of the movement, told WyoFile. “The Freedom Caucus, I would say, has more of an agenda.” 

Following the 2016 presidential election, some Wyoming Republicans began employing methods similar to their congressional counterparts, creating a loose group that steadily grew its ranks.

In its early days, this group numbered about six lawmakers. In September 2020, it became more formalized at a meeting in Story when sympathetic legislators came together under the banner of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus to better negotiate with House leadership, which they often described as unacceptably liberal and labeled as RINOs — Republicans in name only. “We found that a number of us were in agreement on most of the budget issues that were before the Legislature, and we found also that we weren’t getting anywhere,” Tim Hallinan, a former Republican state representative from Gillette and an original member of this group, told WyoFile. “So we decided to get together and form this Freedom Caucus. We had the example that the House Republicans had in Washington, so that was kind of our model.” By that time, the group reliably commanded between 18-20 votes in the House. 

The group met for potluck dinners, primarily at churches, throughout the 2021 legislative session. These gatherings were open to non-members. Even former Rep. Marshall Burt, at the time the Legislature’s lone libertarian, was invited, though he told WyoFile that members eventually gave him “the silent treatment” and stopped inviting him after he failed to vote with the group on a number of social issues.

The new caucus didn’t initially draw much attention. It was still very much a fledgling group, and the session was conducted largely online in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lawmakers had plenty of other issues to worry about. But observers and members of the caucus say the pandemic helped solidify the group’s identity. It gave the group high-profile issues like mask and vaccine mandates to criticize and organize around. The pandemic also centered fears of government overreach in the public discourse, making the Freedom Caucus’ anti-big-government messaging more relevant.  

“COVID gave them a platform,” Casper Republican Rep. Tom Walters told WyoFile. “Without it, I don’t know that they would have gained the steam that they did.” (Walters lost his race in August to Wyoming Freedom Caucus-endorsed political newcomer Jayme Lien.) 

It also opened wider the doors of the Legislature to the public — a change that some believe boosted the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ cause by allowing people to more easily observe what goes on in the body. Before the pandemic, legislative meetings were rarely streamed, and people couldn’t give public comment online. “I think that COVID brought something that was very interesting. That was transparency,” Wheatland Republican Rep. Jeremy Haroldson, former vice chair of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, told WyoFile.

National resources, training and tactics

The WFC gained 10 legislative seats in the 2022 election. By a single vote, it also managed to install one of its allies, Hulett Republican Rep. Chip Neiman as the House majority floor leader. With these gains, the caucus reached a certain critical mass. It had 26 reliable votes in the House (the number of official caucus members, which remains secret, is at least half that) — enough to block bills from introduction during budget sessions. 

The bloc wielded that newfound power to dramatic effect right out of the gate in the 2024 legislative session — the first budget session of the 67th Legislature — by promptly killing 13 committee-sponsored bills. As the products of months of off-season work and investment that typically reflect leaderships’ top priorities, committee bills are traditionally handled with care in the session.

Many saw the procedural maneuver as both a thrown gauntlet and a foretaste of future tactics. It came roughly a year after the WFC announced its partnership with the State Freedom Caucus Network. 

Though lawmakers frequently interact with national organizations on a more informal, ad hoc basis, this was the first time that a group of Wyoming elected officials officially joined forces with a national organization that would help direct and support its overall strategy. 

The network formed in late 2021 under the auspices of the Conservative Partnership Institute, a juggernaut of the national hardline movement that has helped launch several right-wing groups in recent years. Trump’s one-time White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, a senior partner at CPI, helped found the caucus network, and is one of the organization’s directors. Meadows was also a founding member of the U.S. House Freedom Caucus. The Conservative Partnership Institute and the State Freedom Caucus Network share headquarters at 300 Independence Avenue in Washington, D.C.

Gillette Republican Rep. John Bear, until recently WFC’s chairman, first met and started talking about a partnership with the caucus network’s president, Andrew Roth, in 2021 at the organization’s launch in Atlanta, Georgia. Roth previously worked for the Club for Growth and the Club for Growth Foundation — conservative economic advocacy organizations.

A year-long courtship followed. In December 2022, Bear and several other Wyoming lawmakers traveled to Washington and visited the network’s headquarters for a two-day intensive training. They learned about branding, reading and writing legislation, using procedural tactics to push their policy priorities and interacting with journalists. They practiced making videos of themselves for social media in the organization’s basement recording studio. The caucus’ role as an underdog fighting against the establishment was emphasized in the program. 

“In training, we try to show them this unlevel situation that they’re in, and we try to provide them with support,” Roth told WyoFile. “We just want to do what we can to help level the playing field so that they can more effectively fight.” 

The founding members of Wyoming’s Freedom Caucus voted to enter a partnership with the network during this trip. They also attended a Christmas party at the network’s headquarters, where state Freedom Caucus legislators from across the country and U.S. House Freedom Caucus luminaries like U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio mingled. 

“Washington was kind of eye-opening in the fact that it’s refreshing to have a group that says, ‘We don’t want to run your state. We don’t want to tell you how to do anything, we simply want to give you the tools that you want,’” Haroldson, who initially had reservations about partnering with the organization, told WyoFile.

Not everyone aligned with the Freedom Caucus agreed with the decision. Sheridan Republican Rep. Mark Jennings, one of the original ringleaders of Wyoming’s Freedom Caucus, told WyoFile that he chose not to become an official WFC member following the partnership because of the national network’s involvement. “There are perspectives that might come from people in D.C. who might have different perspectives than people in Wyoming,” he said. (Though he was invited, Jennings opted not to visit the network headquarters with other Wyoming lawmakers in 2022.) 

Others shared his skepticism. Green River Rep. and WFC member Scott Heiner, who traveled to D.C. that December, recalled spending hours researching Roth and his organization prior to the trip. “They seemed to have the same kind of core values as I did,” he told WyoFile. “But still, this is Washington, D.C., so I was very dubious about the whole thing.” 

He was particularly concerned about the network’s financial backing. “I wanted to follow the money,” Heiner said. He and other Wyoming lawmakers requested to see a list of donors, which Roth provided. Heiner described these donors to WyoFile as “freedom-fighting organizations” that came from “all across the country.” (He declined to share the list with WyoFile, as did Roth.)  “I can just say that our donors are just ideologically driven,” Roth told WyoFile. “They’re the same sorts of people that give to the House Freedom Caucus in D.C. They believe in our mission and they share our values.” 

As part of the partnership, the national network pays the salary of Wyoming State Director for the State Freedom Caucus Network Jessie Rubino. As an undergraduate at the University of Wyoming, Rubino founded the school’s chapter of Turning Point U.S.A., a national pro-Trump youth organization. She later attended law school at UW, graduating in 2021. For a time afterward, she worked as a high school history teacher in Casper. She is married to Joe Rubino, Secretary of State Chuck Gray’s chief policy officer and the nephew of U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman. 

“Typically, when we want to work with lawmakers to help them set up a Freedom Caucus, we’ll talk to them and see who they recommend,” Roth told WyoFile. “I believe that was the situation here. We met with Jessie. We agreed that she was principled and competent and frankly overqualified, and so we hired her.” 

Rubino researches bills and provides vote recommendations for members of the WFC and its allies — sometimes in real time, via text, as votes are being held in the Legislature. During the off-season, she monitors what  executive agencies and departments, local governments and interim legislative committees are up to. “For decades, Wyoming bureaucrats have been radicalized by complacency, entertaining the idea of allowing men into the women’s prison in Lusk, funding lewd and alcohol-fueled drag shows and worse, because nobody was watching them,” she wrote in an email to WyoFile: “Now, we are watching.” (Rubino declined to share how much the network pays her to do this work, as did Roth.)  

Tapping team Trump 

The national organization has also given Wyoming Freedom Caucus members greater access to high-profile, and sometimes powerful national figures. 

Throughout the fall of 2023, the network organized a series of Zoom calls between state Freedom Caucus members and presidential candidates Vivek Ramaswamy, Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump. Heiner, the Green River Republican, recalled Ramaswamy taking the call in an airport. The Wyoming lawmaker asked Ramaswamy if he would pardon Trump if he became the Republican nominee. Ramaswamy said he would.

“That [level of access] brings a lot of value to us,” Heiner told WyoFile. “I mean, we’re just a small group of legislators from little Wyoming and we get to have a one-on-one conversation with presidential candidates. That’s huge.”

The WFC supported Trump, who eventually became the Republican nominee for president. There were, however, reservations. “A sizable part of the Freedom Caucus thought that Trump had become part of the swamp,” Singh, the Cheyenne Republican, told WyoFile. (At the end of the interview, Singh leaned toward the recorder and added: “For the record, I don’t think Trump has become part of the swamp.”) 

“The first thing I’d say is that we’re not electing Jesus,” Bear, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus chairman, told WyoFile. 

“Nobody’s going to be perfect. Republicans and conservatives for the first time really said, ‘You know what, we’re not going to hold our leader to the same standard or some higher standard than our opponents do their leaders.’ It has frustrated the left because they attack Trump in ways that the Evangelicals and conservatives typically would abandon a candidate, and it hasn’t worked because we’re beyond that. We feel like our country’s at such a position where we got to get something done, or it’s going to be lost. We’re not looking for somebody perfect. We’re just looking for somebody that’s willing to turn it around. And Trump, Trump has something that very few people have, and that’s a desire to fight.” 

The WFC isn’t waging that fight alone, but rather as one strand in a broader web of self-described conservative organizations with national ties operating in Wyoming. Moms for Liberty, a national organization that fights what members describe as the “woke indoctrination” of school kids, has several chapters in Wyoming. Members of these groups have pushed to remove certain books from school libraries and won seats on local school boards. At a 2023 Wyoming Freedom Caucus town hall in Casper, Dan Sabrosky, a member of the Natrona County GOP, pointed to Mary Schmidt and Jennifer Hopkins, two Natrona County School Board trustees who had been Moms for Liberty members before being elected, and said: “That’s our Freedom Caucus on the school board.”

In April, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus endorsed students Gabe Saint and J.W.  Rzeszut for the presidency and vice presidency of the Associated Students of the University of Wyoming — the school’s student government. Saint is president of the school’s Turning Point chapter. The two students ultimately lost their races.

“I don’t know what level you call student government. Local, I guess. But it’s another thing that distinguishes the Wyoming Freedom Caucus. They’re being very active in a lot of different spheres,” said Green, the academic who has studied the group.  

A new brand of politics

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus gained at least three seats in the Aug. 20 primary, boding well for its desire to control the House — an outcome which will be determined by November’s general election. 

“I wasn’t surprised at all,” Roth, the national network’s president, told WyoFile regarding the election results. “We had similar results in every single one of our states across the country.” 

The national network wasn’t involved in any of the caucus’ campaigns before the primaries, according to Roth: “We reserve the right to get involved, but right now, we are not,” he told WyoFile in July. “We typically don’t. All of the state Freedom Caucuses that we work with have their own PAC, and they are in charge of their own political efforts.” 

Shortly after the primaries, however, Roth told WyoFile that the network gave the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ political action committee $20,000. “It’s just when the money was available,” he said.

Before the primaries, the WY Freedom PAC spent about $152,000 with Nevada-based media consultant McShane LLC, whose motto is “Take it by the Horns,” largely on consulting, digital advertising and mailers. Bear, then WFC Chairman, took to Facebook following the primary to thank McShane for bringing “data and their trademark aggressive tactics” to Wyoming, but rejected the characterization of the PAC’s campaigning as negative. 

“Voting records being shared with the voters is not negative campaigning, it’s just sharing the facts,” Bear told WyoFile. Some of those voting record descriptions, however, were factually inaccurate.

McShane has operated in Wyoming before. In 2022, WFC ally and then Rep. Chuck Gray paid McShane nearly $200,000 in his successful bid for secretary of state. That campaign also turned heads for its use of “blatantly false” claims in text messages. 

The WFC was not without organized opposition in the primaries. In 2023, traditional Wyoming conservatives in the House created the Wyoming Caucus to counterbalance their hard-line colleagues. 

“The Wyoming Caucus was just created on its own, out of its own grassroots energy there in the House as we were faced with obstructionist tactics by people associating themselves to the Freedom Caucus,” Rep. Clark Stith, a Rock Springs Republican and the chairman of the Wyoming Caucus, told WyoFile. The traditionalist Republican group isn’t currently partnered with any national or state organizations, nor does it have bylaws or a membership list, Stith said. 

The creation of a parallel caucus to oppose the Freedom Caucus is unique to Wyoming, Green, the political scientist, told WyoFile. “What you see other leaders do is nothing, they just ignore them, they end up either co-opting or being co-opted by the caucus, if it’s big enough, or they do things like punish individual members.” 

The Wyoming Caucus spent about $45,000 to hire the campaign consultants En Pointe Strategies of Colorado and PR 213 LLC of Wyoming to support candidates in the primary elections. 

“I’m really bullish on how we’re going to do on Aug. 20,” Stith told WyoFile before the primaries. “I’m thinking we’re going to come out with better numbers than we had this last session. I expect us to pick up a few seats.”

That, of course, was not ultimately the case. Stith himself will no longer be in the Legislature come the session in January — he was defeated in the primaries by Darin McCann, a physician assistant who was endorsed by the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.

Outsiders on the inside

If the Wyoming Freedom Caucus gains a majority, it will have the power to elect legislative leadership. “I think ultimately, we desperately need to see a shift to the point where leadership can be taken,” Haroldson, the former Wyoming Freedom Caucus vice chairman, said. “If the Freedom Caucus has the leadership seat, then at that point, you get to change the narrative or control the narrative in a way.” 

Bear told WyoFile in June that it’s a “foregone conclusion” that Neiman, the House majority floor leader, will run for speaker of the House. Beyond this, Bear said he hadn’t personally thought through who should run for any particular leadership role. “We have to fill a lot of leadership positions if we take the majority, and so we’ll have to determine who fits best.”

Bear, whom the State Freedom Caucus Network recently bestowed with its best state lawmaker award at the organization’s annual event in Dallas, is no longer the Wyoming Freedom Caucus chairman. Following the primaries, the caucus elected Cody Republican Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams to be its new chairman. Rodriguez-Williams had previously been the group’s secretary and communications director. Gillette Republican Rep. Christopher Knapp was elected vice chair and Douglas Republican Rep. Tomi Strock is the new secretary.

The WFC has ambitions beyond the Legislature. Next election cycle, the group aims to gain seats in the executive branch, particularly the governor’s. The governor has veto power that can only be overwritten by a two-thirds majority vote. This power has frequently been an obstacle for the caucus’ policy priorities, including earlier this year when Gordon vetoed several bills the group had prioritized, including a ban on gun-free zones in Wyoming and additional abortion restrictions. 

There are already about half a dozen names floating around for potential gubernatorial candidates aligned with the WFC. Bear pointed to Neiman, Lingle Republican Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, Ranchester Republican Sen. Bo Biteman, Secretary of State Gray and State Treasurer Curt Meier as possible contestants for the 2026 race.

This could be a problem for those Republicans looking to prevent a moderate from taking office. Bear told WyoFile that, if it were up to him, he would conduct a statewide poll to see which candidate constituents most supported, then have the caucus back that candidate. But even backing one candidate won’t necessarily prevent others from jumping into the race anyway. 

“Unless I can convince all those people that are interested in running for governor that the conservative movement is more important than their political career, it’ll be problematic, and it’ll probably hand it to the left,” Bear said. “The Freedom Caucus is more aligned with the cause than with an individual, I can tell you that. Chuck [Gray] was one of the very founding members long before I was part of the Freedom Caucus. He was there and he’s proven himself to be about the conservative movement. Is he electable? I don’t know. I think that Chip Neiman has a great deal of gravitas that people are drawn to. People want to follow him, myself included. I mentioned Cheri Steinmetz’s ability to build coalitions. So those are just a few examples of what I think makes it difficult to decide who it should be. So I don’t want to be the one to even try.”

Counterintuitively, the groups’ gains may contain a threat to its future. If it does take a majority in the Legislature and install Freedom Caucus-aligned leadership, then, of course, it will lose its position as the outside critic and be obligated to bear the burden of leadership. The words of Samuel Adams would no longer apply to the group: It wouldn’t be the insurgency — the “irate, tireless minority” — but the new establishment. 

“That is one of the big questions that Freedom Caucuses face, as any caucus does: Once you’ve established yourself and you flex your muscles, do you try to pursue the more traditional avenues of influence?” Green said. Sometimes, he explained, insurgencies prefer to stay outside of the leadership structure if they believe there is something to be gained electorally by saying they aren’t part of the establishment. 

“That’s a potentially valuable brand that could be watered down if you become a part of the leadership structure in a legislature.”

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

This story was posted on September 23, 2024.