Wyoming state House Speaker Chip Neiman, a Freedom Caucus member and candidate for state Senate. (Credit: Chip Neiman Facebook)
Leading Off
WY State Legislature
Tuesday’s primaries could leave Wyoming’s branch of the Freedom Caucus in position to take control of the state Senate and win a supermajority in the House, which would give it the kind of power that none of the nihilistic group’s other 15 state affiliates have achieved anywhere.
Republicans opposed to the bloc, however, are trying to halt and reverse the Freedom Caucus’ recent gains in what’s long been the reddest state in the nation.
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This week’s nomination battles come two years after several candidates for the state House allied with the Freedom Caucus won primaries against contenders aligned with Gov. Mark Gordon and other members of the old GOP establishment.
That fall’s general election left Freedom Caucus members and other legislators aligned with its aims holding 36 out of the 62 seats in the lower chamber, which made it the first state chapter in the country to hold a majority in a legislative chamber. The House soon made Chip Neiman, whose 2020 primary victory over Majority Whip Tyler Lindholm represented an early breakthrough for the bloc, its new speaker.
But while the Freedom Caucus’ majority in the House gave it influence in state government, it has struggled to accomplish many of its goals.
The faction lacked the two-thirds supermajority necessary to introduce new bills during budget sessions, which take place in even-numbered years, or to override Gordon’s vetoes. The Senate, where more traditional Republicans held sway, has also limited the influence of Neiman and his allies.
The Freedom Caucus’ struggles were on display this winter when it tried to slash funding to many state entities and programs, including the University of Wyoming and the Wyoming Business Council. Those ambitious cuts, though, were abandoned in negotiation or vetoed by Gordon, who will leave office early next year.
“[The Freedom Caucus] went out of their way to cut the budget, and they showed what would happen if they truly got control,” Republican state Sen. Ogden Driskill, a former Senate president who is one of the group’s most ardent critics, told Wyoming Public Media in March. Those comments were part of a story headlined, “Of Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ 10 priorities, only 1 became law.”
Just one day after that piece ran, though, Neiman announced he would challenge Driskill for renomination. Driskill told Clair McFarland of Cowboy State Daily that same day he would seek reelection after initially planning to retire.
The contest between them for the 1st Senate District, a heavily Republican constituency in the northeastern corner of the state, home to Devils Tower, has drawn attention from well outside Wyoming.
“I hate the Freedom Caucus and how they do business,” Driskill informed the New York Times‘ David Chen last week.
The incumbent has used the campaign to attack Neiman over an incident that took place in the state capitol in February when a conservative activist named Rebecca Bextel handed out campaign checks from donor Don Grasso intended for Neiman and nine other Freedom Caucus-aligned candidates.
The episode, which observers quickly dubbed “Checkgate,” dominated the session and led both chambers to approve new ethics rules. A House Special Investigative Committee report said the matter was “undesirable and must never occur again,” but it concluded it didn’t amount to misconduct. The Laramie County Sheriff’s Office, though, launched an unresolved investigation into whether the contributions were bribes.
Neiman himself acknowledged his involvement the next week in a speech where he told his colleagues he’d seen nothing amiss at the time of Bextel hand-delivering a campaign check at his office in the legislature instead of by mail. The speaker, who denied doing anything wrong, groused that unnamed “folks couldn’t trust me to handle this correctly” and “went around that piece and went straight to the media.”
Driskill, though, was unmoved by Neiman’s account.
“For people that claim to be transparent and take the high ground, this scandal is anything but,” the senator told WyoFile’s Maggie Mullen in April.
The contest between Driskill and Neiman is one of many across both chambers that will help determine how much power the Freedom Caucus has in state government next year. A well-funded outside group, though, is giving the far-right contenders a boost.
Campaign finance reports show a group called Make Liberty Win, which aided the Freedom Caucus’ candidates in 2024, has spent about $550,000 through Aug. 10. Mullen writes that this is considerably more than the roughly $290,000 Americans for Prosperity has deployed for the opposite goal.
While McFarland writes that AFP, a major part of the Koch family’s political network, said its opposition to the Freedom Caucus was “merely incidental to its support for business- and energy-friendly policies,” its state director didn’t hide his frustration with the bloc.
Lindholm, who lost his seat to Neiman six years ago, told Chen that the Freedom Caucus’ members “weren’t willing to work with others to find a solution.”
State Sen. Eric Barlow, Degenfelder’s main intraparty opponent, isn’t so well regarded by hardliners.
“[F]or those who know him, he’s a liberal Republican who loves big government,” state Rep. Rachel Williams, the chair of the state Freedom Caucus, told WyoFile last year after Barlow announced his campaign. Williams, who is now running for the open post of secretary of state, continued, “For those who begin to research him, his voting record, and his tenure in the Legislature, they’ll see he is a clone of Governor Gordon.”
While Williams hasn’t taken sides in a gubernatorial primary that also includes Brent Bien, a conservative activist who unsuccessfully challenged Gordon for renomination in 2022, she’s pushing for a dramatic transformation in state government.
“The left tends to be very loud in Wyoming,” Williams told Chen of a state where Democrats hold only a handful of seats in the legislature, “and our supporters tend to be the silent majority.”
Rep. Russell Fry endorsed appointed Sen. Darline Graham on Friday ahead of the Aug. 25 Republican primary runoff, a move that came three days after Fry came in a close third place in the first round.
Graham, who has Donald Trump’s endorsement, led Rep. Ralph Norman 33-25, with Fry finishing with 20%. Another 15% went to former Rep. Mark Sanford, who has yet to take sides in the runoff.
But Sanford, a longtime MAGA foe whose second and final stint in the House ended after he lost renomination to a Trump ally, is now in the unlikely position of having something that Trump wants.
The Washington Post’s Natalie Allison reports that Trump on Tuesday separately called Fry and Sanford, who waged a quixotic campaign to deny him the 2020 presidential nod, to ask them to endorse Graham. While Fry gave Trump what he asked for three days later, Allison writes that Sanford did not commit to anything during the “cordial” talk.
Norman, meanwhile, got a different piece of unwanted news later Friday when a group called Invest In Tomorrow Coalition told Politico it would spend at least $1 million against him. The group, funded by wealthy clean energy investors, made its new plans known the week after it helped deny renomination to Rep. Andy Ogles in Tennessee.
Spokesperson Tom Matzzie said it was now going after Norman, who co-founded the Congressional Solar Caucus in 2018, because he’d spearheaded the successful push to repeal the Biden administration’s tax credits for wind and solar energy.
Matzzie said that, while he didn’t know how Graham feels about such policies, Norman’s “traitorous” actions were what mattered. He declared, “It’s about stopping Norman, but it’s also about sending a message to other members of Congress that if they try to hurt the industry, we’re going to fight back.”
Governors
NE-Gov
Independent Brett Lindstrom failed to make the ballot Friday when Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen’s office announced a “significant” number of the signatures he submitted were fraudulent. But Lindstrom, who denied knowing anything was amiss, is still looking for a way to continue his campaign.
Lindstrom, a former Republican state senator, told the Omaha World-Herald the following day he wanted a third party to nominate him, an option he likened to a “pirate ship.” Lindstrom mentioned the Working People Party, a new group Democrats and the national Working Families Party claim is intended to siphon left-leaning voters, as a possible vehicle.
The WPP’s leaders did not respond to the paper’s inquiries about fielding Lindstrom. The deadline for new parties to pick their nominees is Sept. 1.
Lindstrom would face Republican Gov. Jim Pillen and former state Sen. Lynne Walz, who is hoping to become the first Cornhusker State Democrat to win a bid for governor since 1994.
House
AK-AL, AK-Sen
An obscure group is spending almost $600,000 to promote a little-known Republican and a Libertarian ahead of Tuesday’s top-four primary for Alaska’s sole House seat, but there’s reason to think the move is intended to benefit independent Bill Hill.
Punchbowl News’ Ally Mutnick, who first reported the ads, notes that now-deleted text on Hill’s website from late June encouraged his allies to make sure he “is the top non-incumbent vote getter in the Primary election and moves on to the general with no Democratic candidates.”
He got some welcome news the next month when pastor Matt Schultz, the leading Democrat in the race, announced he was dropping out and endorsing Hill. Schultz, who will still be listed on the ballot, highlighted how the NRCC was encouraging its allies to help boost him over Hill, presumably believing Hill to be the tougher opponent for Begich.
But while Schultz departed the race before any conservative third-party spending could promote him, a group called Cornerstone Founders PAC is up with commercials touting two other candidates: Republican Clay Strickland, whom the ad pledges “will back President Trump,” and Jim McDermott, a Libertarian Cornerstone promotes as someone who will “tell both parties to f*** off.”
Altogether there are three Republicans, four Democrats, and eight unaffiliated candidates on Tuesday’s ballot. The four contenders with the most votes, regardless of party, will move forward to a general election that will be conducted using ranked-choice rules.
While there’s little question both Begich and Hill will move forward, it could matter who else they face in the fall. Hill’s allies almost certainly want the third and fourth options to be conservatives in the hopes that some voters will cast ballots for them while failing to rank Begich, while the congressman’s allies would prefer the opposite.
Cornerstone Founders PAC’s activities come as three other outside groups have spent roughly $2 million combined to promote five different minor candidates for U.S. Senate.
Republicans appear to be acting to get Green Party member Richard Grayson and Democrats Carol Hafner and David Leslie into the general election, while the other side seems to be taking action to boost Republican Jerry Heikes and Skip Southworth of the Alaskan Party.
One of these candidates, though, says he won’t be in the general election no matter what happens.
Grayson, a perennial candidate who lives outside the state, told the Alaska Daily News last week he supports former Rep. Mary Peltola, a Democrat who is Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan’s only serious opponent. Grayson, who declared he was only running “for fun,” said that if he advances, he would take advantage of a law allowing candidates to remove their names from the fall ballot.
FL-19
Donald Trump endorsed Catalina Lauf, who served in his first administration, on Thursday night ahead of this week’s packed Republican primary for Florida’s open 19th District.
Lauf, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in Illinois in 2020 and 2022, is competing in a bizarre primary involving four other candidates who began their political careers in other states. One of these opponents is Jim Oberweis, a former state senator from the Land of Lincoln who beat Lauf in her first primary only to narrowly lose to Democratic Rep. Lauren Underwood in the fall.
OH-07
The House Majority PAC announced Friday it was reserving an additional $6 million in ad time to defeat Rep. Max Miller, an Ohio Republican who has remained in the race despite abuse allegations from his ex-wife.
HMP previously booked about $1 million this spring to target Miller in Ohio’s 7th District, a constituency in the Cleveland area that Donald Trump would have carried 55-44. Miller, who refused to drop out in time to remove his name from the general election ballot, will go up against Democrat Brian Poindexter, an ironworker.
Is there any good reason to be concerned about Peltola firing her campaign staff, or can we chalk it up to the Harris fundraising email snafu or something? At least we should get a good idea where we stand in the jungle primary tomorrow.
MA Senate:
A new UMass Amherst/WCVB poll shows Markey with a commanding lead over Moulton.
By the numbers: The YouGov survey of 445 likely Democratic primary voters, conducted Aug. 5-12, found Markey ahead 60% to 32%, with 7% undecided.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/markey-dominates-moulton-in-new-senate-primary-poll/ar-AA2ahLBE?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=6a82f3e455034f399f83ff6d73ee2887&ei=19
Is there any good reason to be concerned about Peltola firing her campaign staff, or can we chalk it up to the Harris fundraising email snafu or something? At least we should get a good idea where we stand in the jungle primary tomorrow.