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 for 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’s an outspoken critic of the Biden administration’s policies on immigration, fossil fuel development and air pollution regulations.
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.
The race was low-key compared with Hageman’s trouncing of Cheney by a more than 2-to-1 margin two years ago.
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.
In 2022 he finished a distant third in a three-way Democratic House primary after running as a pro-Trump Democrat.
Democratic candidates with no previous political experience were unopposed at the primary level: Scott Morrow of Laramie, for Senate; and Kyle Cameron of Cheyenne, for the House.
The primary in super-conservative Wyoming — the state that has voted for Donald Trump by a wider margin than any other — 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.”
Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray has said an AI candidate might not be able legally to run in Wyoming but local officials have 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.
