Wyoming incumbents Barrasso and Hageman win GOP primaries for US Senate and House

Wyoming Republican primary voters opted Tuesday to stick with long-serving U.S. Sen. John Barrasso and U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, the first-term congresswoman who ousted Liz Cheney two years ago.

Barrasso beat Reid Rasner, a financial adviser from the Casper area, and is now heavily favored to win the general election and a third full term in the Republican-dominated state.

An orthopedic surgeon and former state lawmaker from Casper, Barrasso was first appointed to the Senate in 2007 after the death of Sen. Craig Thomas. He was elected to finish Thomas’ term the following year.

Barrasso has risen to prominence as chair of the Senate Republican Conference, the third-ranking GOP position in the chamber, and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

He has been an outspoken critic of the Biden administration’s policies on immigration and, especially, fossil fuel development and air pollution regulations that affect Wyoming, a major producer of coal, oil and natural gas.

“It’s the Wyoming economy. It’s preserving our jobs, our economy, protecting our resources, our values, representing the folks of Wyoming,” Barrasso said by phone after AP called the race. “There is a war out of Washington against the hidden America, the people that put the food on the table and the energy that turns on the lights and puts fuel in your vehicle.”

Rasner ran on similar positions but as a proponent of term limits. He called Barrasso “bad for Wyoming and out of touch with reality.”

Hageman, a natural resources attorney from a ranching family who currently serves on the House Natural Resources and Judiciary committees, beat Steven Helling, a little-known attorney who ran as a Democrat in the last election and finished a distant third.

The race was low-key compared with Hageman’s trouncing of Cheney by a more than 2-to-1 margin two years ago.

Even so, Hageman said she campaigned hard up to the last moment, including a public event that went late Monday in her home region of east-central Wyoming.

“You never take anything for granted,” Hageman said by phone. “We worked very hard for this over the last eight months. Over the last actually year and a half, from the standpoint of doing what I believe the people of Wyoming wanted me to do.”

Recent successes, Hageman said, have included adding language to an appropriations bill to remove Yellowstone-area grizzly bears from protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Hageman has had the support of former President Donald Trump, the target of fierce criticism from Cheney. The daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney lost support in Wyoming as a result of her criticism of Trump.

Helling campaigned in part as an opponent of new nuclear power amid plans for a sodium-cooled reactor outside Kemmerer in western Wyoming.

Democratic candidates with no previous political experience were unopposed Tuesday at the primary level: Scott Morrow of Laramie, for Senate; and Kyle Cameron of Cheyenne, for the House.

The primary in super-conservative Wyoming — which has voted for Trump by a wider margin than any other state — was the first time Democrats were barred from switching party registration at the last minute to participate in the livelier Republican contest. A new law banned “crossover” registration at the polls and for three months before primary day — potentially cementing the Republican dominance that has rendered Democrats nearly extinct.

The Republican-dominated Legislature passed the law in 2023 amid GOP grumbling that Democrats changing parties skewed GOP primary outcomes.

Local races of note included Cheyenne’s mayoral primary, where among the five candidates challenging Mayor Patrick Collins was local library employee Victor Miller, who calls himself the “meat avatar” for a ChatGPT-based artificial intelligence chatbot he says he created and calls “VIC.”

Early returns showed Miller in fourth place, far behind the commanding lead of the incumbent and a runner-up. In an emailed statement, Miller conceded.

“While we didn’t win the election, we’ve achieved something remarkable: We’ve introduced the world to a new paradigm of governance and sparked crucial discussions about the role of AI in public administration. The seeds of a revolution in governance have been planted,” it said.

Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray has said an AI candidate might not be able legally to run in Wyoming but local officials allowed VIC, in essence, to appear on the ballot as Miller.

The top two vote-getters in the mayoral primary will face each other in the general election.

Mead Gruver, The Associated Press