All Politics Is Local in Wyoming, No Matter Which Way the Wind Blows

ROCK SPRINGS, Wyo.—The late-afternoon thunderstorm barreled down the chalky face of White Mountain and rolled east into the Red Desert, where it would dissipate and disappear in the expanse of the Great Divide Basin’s sagebrush steppe.

In the blow’s wake returned the sun and the wind—the flag-snapping, bush-bending winds of Wyoming that scrape the land clear of snow in winter and can blow litter along I-80 from Utah 400 miles across the state to Nebraska.

What’s happening in Washington, DC, on the cable news networks, in affairs elsewhere, is figuratively a million miles away from southwest Wyoming’s Sweetwater County, but the people here know which way the wind is blowing.

The Aug. 8 FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s Florida home is “definitely going to help turnout” for the state’s Aug. 16 primaries, said state Sen. John Kolb (R-Rock Springs) during a candidate meet-and-greet at the Rock Springs Chamber of Commerce on Aug. 11.

“I don’t think they like the FBI to be used as a political tool,” said Kolb, who is not up for reelection until 2024. “Wyoming is hyper-Republican. Obviously, people like Trump here.”

More so than any other state. Trump won 70 percent of the vote in Wyoming in 2020, one percentage point more than the state’s lone congressional rep, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), got in winning her second term in 2020.

Wyoming state Rep. Chad Banks (D-Rock Springs) said during an Aug. 11 meet-and-greet in Rock Springs, Wyo., that he hears “a lot” of Democrats will cross over to vote as Republicans for Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) in her Aug. 16 GOP primary battle against challenger Harriet Hageman. (John Haughey/The Epoch Times)

Cheney is up for reelection, but her odds of returning to Washington appear dim after voting to impeach Trump, serving as co-chair of

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