Rod Miller: Wyoming Freedom Caucus wins some …

When voters dealt the river card in Tuesday's primary, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus hit some inside straights and walked away with plenty of chips. All the bluffs and tells in the game were over.

The voters have spoken and Wyoming can do nothing but listen.

There are still more cards to be dealt in November, but the Republican Party/Freedom Caucus has a big pile of chips in front of them in this game. However, they knocked out some key intra-party players during the primaries, and it will take a shocking turn of events for them to not win the final pot – control of the Wyoming House of Representatives.

Individual races are summarized on other pages of the Cowboy State Daily, and if I try to analyze each individual race, I will exceed my word limit for this column.

Suffice it to say that, with one or two very notable exceptions, the Freedom Caucus won almost every round it played.

I spent election night with a panel of colleagues from the Cowboy State Daily as the results were announced. Wyoming's congressional delegation joined us throughout the evening, as did former governors Mike Sullivan and Dave Freudenthal. I think we did a good job of meeting expectations for a panel of political commentators.

As expected, the chatter around this campfire centered on individual races, but there was also cursing and discussion of the whys and hows of the primaries in general.

We speculated about the flood of negative mail that took up so much space in people's mailboxes and the impact this campaign tactic had on the final election results.

No one came forward to say, “Hey, I think that tons of negative emails, many of which are vague or completely ignore the truth, are a great thing. We need more of that.”

But it really doesn't matter what politicians and pundits think about the personal attacks and extremely negative emails. We may turn up our noses and clutch our pearls, but that means nothing compared to how Wyoming voters responded.

If they worked this year, we can all expect them to be even stronger in the next election. Voters are the final judges of what works for them and what doesn't. They think for themselves.

And money! Quite a lot of it was spent in the primaries. It will be interesting to follow, as Deep Throat suggested.

We'll have to wait until all the numbers are in to say for sure, but it looks like voter turnout in the primaries was worryingly low.

There are already about 150,000 eligible Wyoming voters who don't even register to vote. As voter fatigue and negative politics keep more and more of our neighbors away from the polls, decisions affecting the great void will be made by fewer and fewer people.

However, if this tactic is used to elect candidates who appeal to only a small segment of the electorate, we can expect it to be used more frequently in the future. This trend should worry us all.

It appears that Wyoming voters have chosen candidates whose ethos is smaller government and fewer government services. That is surely the voters' prerogative.

It remains to be seen whether voters will be happy with a smaller government and fewer services in two or four years' time. After all, their voice is the only one that counts.

Finally, should the winners of the primary win the general election, they will gather in Cheyenne on the first day of the next session for their swearing-in ceremony. They will raise their right hand and take an oath. This oath will be to the Constitution and laws of the State of Wyoming, not to the Republican Party or the Freedom Caucus.

Let us hope that this will not change despite all the changes that this primary election will bring.

Rod Miller can be reached at: [email protected]