Cowboy State Politics

"In a room full of RINOs, it's better to be a bear."  Rep John Bear announces his re-election campaign.  If successful, this will be his 4th term in the Wyoming House.  During our discussion, I asked him about some of the bigger issues he and the Freedom Caucus have faced.  I pressed him on the issues that he's specifically going to do.  We also discussed some of the criticism he's faced from the...

March 31st Governor Gordon issued an "Arab-American Heritage Month" proclamation.  Don't feel bad if you didn't know about it.  Nobody did.  The proclamation doesn't show up on his website and no announcement email was sent out.  At first, I thought the image I found on social media was a hoax.  After calling the Governor's Office, I confirmed that indeed he did sign it. I don't have a problem wit...

Earlier this week I made a screaming trip across the state to attend a Democrat sponsored legislative town-hall.  It was billed as "Come Hear the Full Story: Cheyenne, Checkgate and What's Next."  Granted, things would have turned out different had I not walked through the door; but, there was very little of the Democrats' "full story." What did happen though is Liz Storer encouraging the room to...

As it always does, the crowd at a political event tells the story.  At the Republican Convention this past weekend, one gubernatorial candidate didn't bother to step onto the stage.  He recorded a video WHILE AT THE CONVENTION and ask that it be played during his time-slot.  Another, gave a speech that was just as canned as if were given at a whistle stop. And, Brent Bien received a raucous respon...

Chuck Gray joined me in the studio a couple of days ago.  He had just finished a town-hall in Sheridan that, at times, got a little feisty.  We had a wide ranging discussion of the race for the U.S. House and several other Wyoming centric issues.  

While Sommers was Wyoming Speaker of the House he sat on the board of the State Legislative Leadership Foundation--a group with longstanding ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Albert denied it and the Wyoming media tried to explain it away.   Now that Sommers is running for House District 20, it's important to bring it up again.

The Wyoming left continues to push the narrative that there were "cuts" to the budget in the 2026 Budget Session.  Really, there is almost a half a billion dollar increase.  Politicians like Chi-Comm Som are using the lie that there were as a campaign issue.  Was there money moved around?  Yes, but there wasn't a cut. Interestingly, after getting schooled on this point by Rep Pendergraft, Jake in...

Luke Reiner was the WYDOT Director.  Now he's running for the Wyoming House in District 8.  While at WYDOT, Reiner championed a plan to build EV charging stations every 50 miles of Wyoming's Interstate Highways.  He was told no.  A fawning puff piece in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle fails to bring up how Reiner spent months trying to convince Wyoming Citizens to go along with the EV push.

Legislators gathered for a town hall April 14 in Sheridan.  Most of the evening was a question and answer about what happened during the session.  There were, however, two exchanges in which senators were asked why a list of bills did not get heard.  The stories shifted the more the evening wore on.  First, they ran out of time; then, it was blamed on the Majority Floor Leader and finally, the bil...

Before the filing period, no one really knows anything about the election--who's in, who's out or anything.  The only thing we can do is speculate.  However, there are a few candidates who do have voting records.  Those we can be critical of--and there's a stark difference.  In an election with a lot of candidates, they'll all be desperate for your attention.  The important part is to do your home...

Sen Ed Cooper can't seem to keep his story straight.  Before the session, he told a newspaper the Freedom Caucus is given $30,000 donations if they vote right.  After I interviewed State Freedom Caucus President Andy Roth, he retracted it.  He then told our journalist that he made a mistake.  Now he's back claiming that what he said there's money spent on Freedom Caucus candidates.  During that sa...

Everything seems pretty normal even though there's technically a government shutdown.  I asked Rep Hageman if this is just evidence that the government is too big.  Harriet took a few minutes to address the criticism coming from the media about Iran.  We also briefly discussed her endorsement of Megan Degenfelder.

At a recent appearance in Cody, Eric Barlow said, "I was born Eric and I'll die Eric."  A truer thing could not be said.  Barlow is the same politician he has always been--one that votes with the Democrats over 80% of the time.  But he's also the same activist that he's always been. In a 2002 transcript from his testimony to Congress Barlow said that energy development is creating "destroyed soils...

Governor Gordon and Chuck Gray had another dust-up in the SLIB meeting.  This time The Gov told Secretary Gray to "Shut up!"  It was all over an amendment that would have mandated a citizenship check for taxpayer dollars--a reasonable proposal. The rest of the Republicans on the board tried to obfuscate the issue and kept bringing up reasons why the amendment wouldn't work.  What ensued was pretty...

The Freedom Caucus has unveiled a plan to bridge the political divide in Wyoming.  Unbeknownst to most political observers, it's been going on for a while.  They term it, "Radical Transparency."

Secretary of State Chuck Gray is running for the United States House of Representatives.  He's in a field with eight other candidates.  In a race like this, policy positions matter because that's about the only way a candidate can distinguish themselves from everyone else. We talked about what he's campaigning on and we had some time to talk some more Wyoming-centric issues.

Gubernatorial candidate Brent Bien sat down with me in the studio for the better part of an hour.  We dug into his lengthy military career.  Now, he's a retired "full-bird" colonel in the U.S. Marines.  We spoke at length about his plans should he be successful in his run.  Of course, we also discussed whether endorsements matter or not.  It's a great interview that gives you some rare insight int...

David Giralt is one of the many candidates running for the U.S. House of Representatives.  He's an Army Ranger, used to work at the Pentagon and spent time in U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis' office. Though it took us a few days to find a time to visit, he joined me on Tuesday's live program.  It's a great interview.

Sheridan County held its County Convention on Saturday.  WYGOP Chair Bryan Miller introduced a bylaw change that would bar any member of the press from holding any leadership position in the party.  As you can imagine, that didn't sit very well with me.  The measure was soundly defeated--so much so that the state version of it wasn't even brought up. Teton County tried a bylaw change that tried to...

Today, the Sheridan County Republican Party is holding its county convention.  There isn't anything too controversial being proposed (unlike some other counties).  But nonetheless it is a Republican event so you never know what's going to happen. Yesterday's live program ended up being a heck of a lot of fun.  Here's a replay of it.  

Agent 29 appeared on the Cowboy State Daily morning show this morning.  It was masterpiece theater.  There was a discussion about the budget, recalibration and a few others.  But the fireworks started when Jake tried to cast budget reductions as "drastic."  It just went down hill from there. Ken's response?  Words mean things.  

Rep Hageman held several town halls across the eastern half of Wyoming this past week.  I caught up with her in Wheatland. Wyoming is in the middle of a Winter drought.  Snow packs are down and most of the state has seen more of 60 degrees than 6.  This summer, there's going to be a huge problem with water--not just for Wyoming but the surrounding states.  I asked Harriet what we can expect. A big...

Many journalists have a problem reporting facts accurately.  The biggest problem though is their own political activism in their reporting.  That often happens in Wyoming media.  There's no better example than how the media behaved this legislative session.  It didn't matter if they had verified their facts, often they just ran with it. In one example, the author decided to misquote me, take me ou...

Security footage of the entrance to the Legislative Service Office during the time of the "check incident" has been deleted.  The Wyoming Highway Patrol, in response to an open records request by The Open Range Record, said the videos had "timed out of the system" and are no longer available. This is a shocking development considering that a criminal investigation is ongoing.  It also raises serio...

Over the weekend, two resolutions of censure showed up in county GOP meetings.  Both of them failed miserably.  The reasons they were brought have nothing to do with anything Republican and everything to do with personal squabbles.  All political organizations have to have money to operate; so it doesn't make sense to try to prevent anyone from raising money. But that is exactly what the Teton Cou...