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Liz Cheney’s fight to keep her U.S. House seat is supposed to be a slugfest. How could it not be? There’s so much inherent drama: Cheney, the fallen GOP princess, locked in a duel against her party’s once (and perhaps still) king, Donald Trump. His hand-picked surrogate is a former friend and ally, Harriet Hageman, who claims Cheney betrayed their leader. If Wyoming votes out Cheney, can she still someday make it to the White House? Folks, it’s Survivor: Politicos of the Plains! Except this showdown for the heart and soul of the Republican Part...
Gov. Mark Gordon and the Legislature apparently believe Wyoming’s electricity customers are all chumps.What other conclusion is possible, given their push to prop up the dying coal industry by retrofitting the state’s coal-fired power plants with wildly expensive, efficiency-killing carbon-capture systems by 2030? PacifiCorp, which operates as Rocky Mountain Power in Wyoming, said last month it would cost between $400 million and $1 billion for each coal power plant unit to add carbon capture utilization and storage technology. A law pas...
By Kerry Drake Wyofile.com I’ve been a Wyoming Democrat for my entire adult life. I certainly can’t speak for all members of my party, but some elections are easier on my psyche than others. It helps when I know our candidates are going to be competitive in some races. Registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 150,000. Even if every unaffiliated voter decided to back a Democratic candidate, it would only cut that advantage by 35,000. Yet it’s not impossible for Democrats to beat those lopsided odds. Three of Wyoming’s past si...
Wyoming officials can rant and cuss about the federal government’s coal policies as loudly and as angrily as they want, but it won’t change one fundamental fact: They have failed our coal communities and their woe-is-us, innocent-victim act is a load of rubbish. I could use the Western equivalent of that assessment, something that’s found in abundance in horse pastures. But you get the idea. Gov. Mark Gordon said he’s “furious” because none of the state’s applications to a federal coal community assistance program were selected as a finalist...
What does it say about a special legislative session when the most memorable moment of the first week was a former House speaker dropping a couple F-bombs to disparage another lawmaker? Perhaps it’s a sign that everyone involved in this lame effort to show the federal government it can’t push Wyoming around should just go home before the state wastes any more money. This special session to fight a federal COVID-19 “vaccine mandate” has already cost taxpayers at least $100,000. Lawmakers who demanded a public forum in which to grandst...
I’m not going to invest in Bill Gates’ and Warren Buffett’s plan to bring a nuclear power plant to Wyoming. I’d also prefer to not see taxpayers like myself forced to shell out hard-earned money on such an environmentally risky venture. No, I plan to spend any surplus cash I can muster on cornering the red flag market. Demand is about to skyrocket. As residents consider what it means to have an experimental nuclear reactor in their backyards, they’ll be waving them in droves. In fact, I’m raising a half-dozen red flags in this column alon...
By Kerry Drake Wyofile.com Wyoming officials knew something was seriously wrong with the state’s juvenile justice system in 1970, when a governor’s committee examined the issue and came to the startling conclusion that no system actually existed. “It is clear that there is no uniformity in the disposition of matters involving juveniles at the local level,” the panel’s report concluded. “Change has been slow to come.” The ink from that document could be fresh today. The Legislature has undertaken piecemeal attempts at juvenile justice refor...
When House-Senate negotiations on a school finance bill - one of the most crucial issues facing Wyoming - collapsed on the final day of the session, it became clear any long-term funding solution must be brokered by the governor. In his comments the following day, Gov. Mark Gordon announced he will take up the issue. But his response was so lukewarm, it inspired no confidence that what he does will be either timely or impactful. "I have to say I was disappointed that we were not able to come to...
One of the most perplexing mysteries about Wyoming’s 2021 legislative session is how the House could kill a suicide prevention bill. Then, when lawmakers got a chance to reconsider the matter, they rejected a second measure, too. Trying to keep people from killing themselves shouldn’t be a controversial issue in Wyoming, which has the highest suicide rate in the country. But apparently it is, at least for lawmakers who decided against mandating school programs that train students how to recognize suicide warning signs from their peers and obt...
Wyoming’s public schools have long been a subject of derision for many Republican state lawmakers who claim they underperform. If such scrutiny leads to the constant improvement of our K-12 system, then I’m all for it. But that’s not the solution the Legislature is considering. Instead, a committee charged with determining how much the state spends on education wants to cut funding by an estimated $250 million over the next three years. That’s like complaining of a headache and then “solving” the problem by cutting off your head. If the topi...
The response of two Wyoming officials to President Donald Trump inciting a riot at the Capitol last Wednesday is delusional, dishonest and disturbing. As security escorted her out after violent Trump backers stormed the building, Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) questioned who was responsible for the attack. “I hope it’s not Trump supporters that are involved in the mayhem,” she reportedly told a Capitol Hill reporter. “In my previous experience with these Trump supporters, they have been peaceful demonstrators, happy people, very patriot...
By KERRY DRAKE Wyofile.com I don’t know what mystifies me more: Wyomingites who don’t care enough about their neighbors to wear a mask during a surging pandemic, or Gov. Mark Gordon not requiring people to cover their faces in public. Both, however, anger me. Enough with the endless hand-wringing and excuse-making, all in the name of pandering to those who think they have constitutional rights to selfishness and stupidity. Is that too blunt? Sorry, tell it to the daughter whose parent is dying alone on a ventilator because someone decided not...
Lumpy, a walking, talking lump of coal wearing a miner’s hat and gloves, serves as the Energy Policy Network’s mascot. “Affordable and plentiful, I keep America’s lights on and economy moving,” Lumpy says in a speech bubble on EPN’s website. To be charitable, I won’t offer what else Lumpy resembles. I will offer a rewrite of his speech, though. He should be saying, “Thanks for the handouts, Wyoming taxpayers!” Because while coal is still plentiful, it’s no longer affordable, either in economic or environmental terms. But that hasn’t stopped...
I usually don’t share conspiracy theories, but one recently appeared in my inbox that was so wild it stopped me in my tracks. Cheyenne, according to the sender, is extremely vulnerable to an attack by Colorado socialists who would likely stop at nothing to blow up the city’s refinery, a chemical plant and even Warren Air Force Base. “What the nation is putting up with now are armed miscreants supported by big money and backed by leftists from Hollywood to Silicon Valley and Democrat leaders,” warned the writer. Good grief — how will Cheyenne be...
There’s nothing like knocking off a few bruised and battered “Republican in name only” incumbents in a Wyoming primary election to make self-proclaimed “real conservatives” whoop and holler. Four-term moderate Sen. Michael Von Flatern (R-Gillette) had the biggest target on his back, with several groups and well-heeled conservative donors out to end his political career. They helped Troy McKeown trounce Von Flatern by more than 1,000 votes last Tuesday. He wasn’t the only high-profile GOP legislator to fall out of favor with voters. House Majori...
It wasn’t exactly a secret that Josh Egle wanted to grow hemp in Wyoming. He and his mother Debra Palm-Egle stood next to Gov. Mark Gordon in March 2019 for the signing of a bill legalizing hemp production in the state. During the previous three years, mother and son both lobbied for the legislation and promoted the industry as a way for struggling Wyoming farmers to grow a potentially lucrative new crop. In November, Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation agents swarmed their farm near Albin, where Egle was curing a small test crop of h...
By Kerry Drake Wyofile.com The Wyoming Republican Party’s recent convention in Gillette demonstrated that the radical right’s takeover of the GOP is now complete. It wasn’t just that officials ramrodded through wholesale bylaw changes that punish county organizations and candidates who don’t follow the orders of the party’s central committee. Or even that the party’s last-minute Senate-race straw poll — taken after many delegates walked out in disgust following the bylaws fiasco — selected a little-known, far-right candidate over a staunchl...
Kanye West isn’t your typical musical genius/billionaire entrepreneur/fashion designer/Wyoming rancher/presidential candidate. There will never be anyone else like him. If West didn’t exist, someone would have to invent him, and the only person with enough talent, creativity and unparalleled self-promotional ability to pull that off is West himself. Trying to keep up with his exploits in just the past week has been dizzying. First, the rap artist announced a 10-year mega-partnership with The Gap to sell his Yeezy streetwear line. By the end...
More than a century ago, Wyoming residents lived through a flu pandemic much the same way people deal with the coronavirus today: restricting business activity and keeping their distance from others. However, there is one notable difference: Wyomingites in 1918 reportedly didn’t protest the state or county’s efforts to keep them alive or grouse about their constitutional rights being violated. Survival mode had kicked in. I wish the Equality State had more of that spirit in 2020 and fewer amateur legal experts refusing to wear masks. It’s a sim...
Republicans used to vastly outnumber Democrats in the Wyoming Legislature. Their 77-12 super-majority seemed destined to last forever. But if you ask a shadowy political group organized last year, the margin has suddenly narrowed to 21-12 — without the Democrats picking up a single seat. “WyoRINO” has proclaimed that only 14 House members and seven state senators actually have real Republican values. The group has branded all the others “Republicans in Name Only,” claiming they’re just fakes. Sound crazy? That’s because it is. Scary, too, i...
I didn’t expect to see Spiderman at the Wyoming Senate, but I’m sure glad he showed up. He helped save the day. He didn’t look the same as he does in his superhero costume. In fact, in civilian clothes, the fellow on my computer monitor looked a lot like Senate President Drew Perkins (R-Casper). “There’s not many times that something screams at me to be careful, careful, careful on these things,” he said. “And this — my Spidey-senses are tingling dramatically on this one.” The issue was an amendment to a bill during the May 15-16 virtual spe...
Observers have long dreaded the arrival of an economic perfect storm in Wyoming, but not even the most pessimistic of the bunch imagined the epic collapse that a recent Legislative Service Office memo says is in store for the state. Its “optimistic” scenario shows a loss of $556 million through the 2021-22 biennium. On the other end of the scale, where no one in state government wants to stare, the “pessimistic” forecast is a $2.8 billion deficit. House Revenue Committee Chairman Dan Zwonitzer (R-Cheyenne) told WyoFile reporter Andrew Graham, w...
Observers have long dreaded the arrival of an economic perfect storm in Wyoming, but not even the most pessimistic of the bunch imagined the epic collapse that a recent Legislative Service Office memo says is in store for the state. Its “optimistic” scenario shows a loss of $556 million through the 2021-22 biennium. On the other end of the scale, where no one in state government wants to stare, the “pessimistic” forecast is a $2.8 billion deficit. House Revenue Committee Chairman Dan Zwonitzer (R-Cheyenne) told WyoFile reporter Andrew Graham, w...
I never expected to be writing about anything as terrible as coronavirus, let alone the strange question that has been on so many people’s minds since the pandemic started: Where can I find some toilet paper? Frequent readers of this column likely believe this is the subject I am most qualified to report about. I will try not to disappoint. So why is toilet paper flying off the shelves of Wyoming stores and throughout the country? I asked several people to give me their theories, including a psychologist. My favorite response was from Joanne Ca...
In less than three years, President Donald Trump’s administration — aided and abetted by Wyoming’s congressional delegation and state leaders — has rolled back 58 environmental rules and regulations and has another 37 such changes on the drawing board. That tally is according to a New York Times analysis. These “gifts” to the fossil fuels industry and other polluters, according to a report by the New York University Law School, could significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions and cause thousands of deaths from poor air quality every year....
