The Wyoming Legislature has adjourned until next year. We are now in the season of analysis, so I want to take this opportunity to talk about the session as a whole with a focus on the overall tone our elected representatives displayed and what that might mean going forward.
Former Republican presidential nominee Nikki Haley recently said, “The tone at the top matters.”
She’s exactly right. As any good leader understands, the tone at the top, good or bad, has a trickle down effect on all of those you are leading. In our Legislature, that tone is a reflection of the health and strength of our political and governmental life here in Wyoming.
Our legislators should be emulating statesmanship through good governance practices, continual civility and substantive debate that focuses on issues and not personalities. In short, the ideals they would want to see reflected out across our state in the day-to-day business conducted between neighbors, customers, students, coworkers, etc.
The 2024 Budget Session fell woefully short of this ideal, being devoid of the dulcet tones of statesmanship. Rather, it was filled with the opposite and reflected the sickness we are all watching in our national political life. Rancor, divisiveness and acts of “retribution” were all witnessed at our Capitol this year.
Wyoming Speaker of the House Albert Sommers presciently warned of the things to come.
“As I sat down to write these opening remarks, I realized that the relationships between the factions within this body are more strained than ever,” Sommers warned in February.
Later in March, Senate President Ogden Driskill, who dealt firsthand with this rancor, called his chamber, “a mean, divisive body.”
So what’s going on?
In the spirit of fairness, I will begin by saying this: Divisiveness in politics is not new, and it’s not necessarily bad. Our elected representatives are grappling with distinct and ever-broadening differences in how we see our ourselves, how we see our state and how we see our nation. Of course this can get contentious. The Legislature handles big issues affecting our lives in large and small ways. We all have passionate views on these matters and we all want to win.
But I would argue this session was different from the normal policy debates, because these fights weren’t just about the issues. They are deeper, more personal, uglier and more dangerous for the long-term health of our state. They truly reflected the animosity our nation is in the grips of right now.
So what is causing all of this?
In part, nationalized factions have come into our Legislature and enthroned bitter tribalism that continues to grow and fester year after year.
With the creation of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus several years ago, we see Congress’ Freedom Caucus begin their new mission to take their angry little show on the road across the country.
You need look no further than their State Freedom Caucus Network’s Twitter page to decipher their “mission.”
“We’re bringing the Freedom Caucus to the states to take on the 50 swamps.”
The “we” in that sentence is not anyone who lives, works, raises children, or starts businesses and provides jobs here in Wyoming. The “we” are political operatives in Washington who want to crush local representation in favor of a nationalized system they can control from the hazy hollows of Foggy Bottom.
Conservatism properly understood rejects this kind of plan — one that places the national over the local. Rejects it because this plan does not seek to conserve the customs and manners of individual communities and states, built up over decades and generations. It seeks to tear it all down in place of a popularized national machine easily controlled by national operators and donors in states far from its impact.
The old saying, “all politics is local,” is becoming less and less true across our country, and we are growing less diverse and more polarized because of it.
As an example, conservatism rightly understood doesn’t want a president who has more power over our daily lives than our local mayor, county commissioner or governor. The safest political powers are diffused, and a president who imagines he can single-handedly solve a national problem will ask you to sacrifice precious rights and freedoms to do so. We need more diversity and diffusion of power, not less. Strong-men systems make citizens weak, and weak, vulnerable citizens have a rather bleak historical record.
So what does this mean for the people of Wyoming?
It means the uniqueness, individuality, freedom and sovereignty of our state must be protected against this new intrusion. We all need to push back against the national overlords in D.C. who have big ambitions and even bigger checkbooks for our state. And don’t let their carefully marked “Wyoming” label fool you. The big money, like the real decision makers, all come from outside our state.
This uptick in divisiveness in the workings of our Legislature continues to spill over into our elections, because … tone matters.
I predict the 2024 election cycle will again prove this true in spades.
We will most likely see race after race filled with gotcha politics, personal attacks and slick, national commercials all developed by big-money outside consultants. You will know it when you see it because it won’t feel, well, Wyoming. It won’t feel like home. That’s your tell.
Sommers spoke fine words in the Wyoming House this year when he quoted a letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Dickenson written in July 1801. We should see it as both a prayer and a warning.
“…my dear friend, if we do not learn to sacrifice small differences of opinion, we can never act together. Every man cannot have his way in all things. If his own opinion prevails at some times, he should acquiesce on seeing that of others preponderate at others. Without this mutual disposition we are disjointed individuals, but not a society.”
In a nation that grew even in our founders’ lifetimes, and continues to grow in ours, the task has never truly been completed nationally, and perhaps that is exactly the point. Our society is best when it is most agreed upon locally. Your family, your home, your church, your community center, your school, your friends, your sport, your work, your town, this is your society.
This rancor is not the norm for Wyoming, and it doesn’t have to be so.
We can stop it right now by refusing to support those who would sacrifice our state’s sovereignty on the altar of a centralized political hegemony and elevate instead those who practice good governance, statesmanship and civility.
The tone at the top matters.