After a week of frigid weather the Chinook blows through Cody,
and the temperature is rising. But that low hanging cottonwood limb
banging down on a corner of my roof serves as a reminder that this
is not — in Senator McCain’s words — “a warm Republican breeze.”
That’s because Wyoming is sending a Democrat to the governor’s
mansion for the first time in eight years. This is indeed
paradoxical considering the recent nationwide 2002 Republican
juggernaut.
This year, as usual, only a sprinkling of Democrats were elected
in municipal, county, and legislative races statewide. Thirty-three
Wyoming House and Senate candidates — mostly Republicans — ran
unopposed. We returned the two GOP members of our small
Congressional delegation (Sen. Mike Enzi; Rep. Barbara Cubin) up
for re-election this year to Washington with typically lopsided
margins. The two houses of the Wyoming Legislature both have strong
Republican majorities. Oh, and did I mention that we elected a
Democratic governor?
Because of its low population (492,000 in the 2000 Census),
Wyoming citizens have ready access to politicians, especially in
election years. Like Iowa and New Hampshire during presidential
primary seasons, it sometimes seems we’re tripping over them.
Over the years this more personal campaigning has produced an
electorate that — despite GOP registration numbers trumping
Democrats 2 to 1 statewide — occasionally votes for personality
over party affiliation. A state known historically as a bastion of
Republican conservatism (in 2000 Bush-Cheney won 69% of its vote)
was governed pre-1995 by two Democrats over twenty years, Ed
Herschler and Mike Sullivan. As an aside, those two decades are a
good primer for anyone interested in studying the Wyoming
resource-based, boom-bust economic model. The late '70s-early '80s
saw economic prosperity thanks to a western energy boom, which was
followed by a late '80s bust from which the state has not yet
recovered.
Presently Wyoming is near the bottom in all economic indicators.
As soon as the kids graduate from high school or college, they
leave. The state university and community college system exists to
export brains and talent. The 25-to-44-year-old age group —
working parents — is shrinking as they leave, and conversely so
are school enrollments. The only expanding age group are retirees,
making towns such as Jackson, Cody, Lander, Afton, Pinedale and
Sheridan into Boca Ratons with mountain views.
Republican James Geringer was elected governor in 1994 in the
GOPs last big seismic shift, and promised to bring back the good
old days of huge state mineral royalty revenues and high paying
jobs, but over two terms failed to deliver, and was term limited
this year. Geringer’s tragedy is that he will be remembered as the
governor who failed to take advantage of the booming late '90s
American economy . While neighboring states prospered (especially
Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Idaho) Wyoming languished. For example,
during the '90s, Bozeman, Montana attracted some sixty high tech
companies; Cody, Wyoming none. Jim Geringer must think that
“broadband” refers to wide roads on a map.
It was a contest among Republican Eli Bebout, Democrat Dave
Freudenthal, and Libertarian Dave Dawson (whose final 2% of the
vote in the end hurt Bebout). Both Bebout and Freudenthal scrapped
their way through crowded August primaries. Bebout’s was
particularly ugly as the state GOP apparatus led by retired elder
statesman Alan Simpson launched a negative ad campaign against
Bebout primary rival Ray Hunkins, a rancher-attorney, over
questionable but minor legal-business infractions years old. The
Simpson Faction had tapped Bebout as its golden boy even before the
primary, and the colorful Big Al was only living up to his maxim
that “Politics is a contact sport.” The Wyoming electorate got to
read about the Simpson attacks in the papers everyday last summer.
The underlying feeling was that they found this GOP internecine
mudslinging distasteful.
After the primary, the Republican machine set its sights on Dave
Freudenthal. At question was $12 million in state loans and
contracts that Freudenthal had supposedly funneled in 1987 to
Energy Brothers Technology, a company in which he owned a 10%
interest in a subsidiary company. The Casper Star-Tribune
tells us that at the time Freudenthal was “Vice Chairman of the
Wyoming Economic Development and Stabilization Board, which oversaw
administrative duties of the Wyoming Investment Fund Commission.”
According to the paper, the Democrat had “declared a conflict of
interest and did not participate in the meeting that dealt with the
administrative expenses.” Freudenthal was also investigated by the
FBI prior to his Clinton administration appointment as U.S.
Attorney for Wyoming from 1994-2001, and was cleared of any
improprieties.
The state GOP machine took another black eye in the media over
this new round of negatives, and in the days prior to the election
Bebout’s polling numbers went south. Vice President Cheney (who
must have been cursing his old pal Al Simpson by now) was rushed in
for a Bebout resuscitation rally in Cheyenne on the Sunday before
Election Day. That the popular Cheney would have to fly into his
home state on behalf of its Republican gubernatorial candidate was
a sure sign of how deeply in trouble Bebout was. Freudenthal spent
those last days jocularly opening his speeches with the statement,
“I’ve been Hunkinized!” — referring to another of the
Simpson-Bebout team’s August primary targets. (Hunkins “wouldn’t
know the truth if it bit him on the fanny,” Al had said.)
Meanwhile, Democrat Freudenthal (who as a perennial judicial
appointee had never held elective office) seemed to have
orchestrated a masterful grassroots campaign where he spent much
time knocking on doors and conducting townhall meetings and doing
media interviews in Wyoming’s most Republican counties,
particularly in the northern part of the state (I heard him on talk
radio in Cody at least twice in the closing weeks).
On election day the crossover vote was about 20%. For instance,
in Sheridan County, with a 5-2 GOP registration advantage, Bebout
beat Freudenthal by only 60 votes of 11,000 cast. In my home, Park
County (also Alan Simpson’s homebase), Bebout won 58% to 39%, a
rather poor showing considering overpowering 6-1 GOP registration
strength. Freudenthal picked up 56% of Natrona County (Casper)
voters, who are registered 2-1 Republican. And Freudenthal easily
carried the Interstate 80 corridor counties on Wyoming’s southern
tier home to Cheyenne, Laramie, Rawlins and Rock Springs, and where
the electorate is usually more sympathetic to Democrats. In the end
it was Freudenthal 50%, Bebout 48%, and Dawson 2%.
Eli Bebout would have made a fine governor (I voted for him).
His fourteen years’ experience in the state legislature would have
served Wyoming’s citizens well in Cheyenne. It can be argued that
Dave Dawson was a Nader-like figure who blocked a Bebout victory
(Dawson, though remaining on the ballot, was so disgusted with GOP
attack ads, that he endorsed Freudenthal in the last days). But it
mostly seems that the Freudenthal triumph was a referendum on Jim
Geringer’s abysmal economic record. Indeed Freudenthal seemed to
win two statewide TV debates by focusing on that record. In seeking
to defend it the Simpson Faction ran a desperate negative campaign
(it remains to be seen whether Bebout even had much to do with it).
Three days before election day, Casper TV station KTWO pulled the
GOP ads for fear they’d leave the station vulnerable to a lawsuit.
In the end (please excuse the pun), to quote another well-known
Simpsonism, Al & Co. had stuck their heads up “the old
gazoo.”
Dave Freudenthal must still have his hands packed in ice after
shaking thousands of Republican hands.
Bill Croke is a writer in Cody,
Wyoming.
