NewWest.Net/Politics
Republicans Pick Final Three for Vacant Wyoming Senate Seat
By Brodie Farquhar, 6-19-07
Update: Freudenthal on Friday, June 22, appointed Dr. John Barrasso to fill Thomas’ seat.
Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal has three choices to pick from in filling Wyoming’s U.S. Senate seat left vacant this month by the death of Republican Sen. Craig Thomas.
The three, selected during a day-long Tuesday meeting of the Wyoming Republican Party Central Committee, are:
Tom Sansonetti of Cheyenne
Dr. John Barrasso of Casper
Cynthia Lummis of Cheyenne
Sansonetti was the chief of staff for Thomas 18 years ago, when Thomas was tapped to fill Dick Cheney’s seat in the House of Representatives. Sansonetti consistently won the most votes during the day, finishing with 58 votes, among those cast by the 71-member central committee. He was recently an assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice, and has served as party chairman in Wyoming.
Barrasso, a Casper-based orthopedic surgeon and senator in the Wyoming Legislature, finished with 56 votes. He was the number-two vote getter during earlier votes.
Lummis, a former Wyoming state treasurer and state legislator, finished with 44 votes.
The three names will be forwarded to Gov. Freudenthal, a Democrat, who has five days to select one of the three to replace the late Sen. Thomas, until a special election in November 2008. The winner of that election will serve out the remaining four years of Thomas’ six year term, after he won reelection last November.
The final three were winnowed from a final five that included former Wyoming U.S. Attorney Matt Mead and former Wyoming Department of Agriculture Director Ron Micheli, who finished with 30 and 25 votes respectively.
Sansonetti joked that since he and Barrasso were of Italian descent, they’d change Lummis’ name to Lummisi. All three praised the field of three candidates and vowed support for whoever was selected by the Democratic governor.
Last Thursday, 31 candidates had been registered by the Republican Party headquarters in Casper. The number dropped to 30 by Tuesday morning, then 28 as the meeting got started at 8 a.m.
In the first round of voting, a field of 10 emerged, which in addition to the final five above, included former legislator Frank Moore of Douglas, former House Speaker Randall Luthi of Star Valley, State House Majority Leader Colin Simpson – Cody, natural resources attorney Paul Kruse and retired brigadier general Bruce Asay.
[End of article]Can you opine a bit more on their relative politics? Are they all far right to extremely far right or can you see one or another being more progressive on the environment or on national park issues? Would any of them be somewhat more independent or, as an appointed replacement for Thomas and eager to get party support for their first election, will they all tow the VP's line in lockstep? How about on energy issues; all dig it up and burn it or... I know that you can only speculate, but...
Comment By Marion, 6-20-07mike, if you are a Wyomingite, I would think you would be well enough informed to have some idea about these folks, if you are not, it really doesn't matter to you.
But to help you in case you are from our state, Sansonetti is definately a part of the Republican party machine in Cheyenne, Lummis pretty much, John Barrasso is a physician and understands working for a living, seems a very sensible guy, and would be my choice.
Every Wyoming Republican is going to be pretty conservative, that is the way we are. I'm not sure what you mean by towing the Vice President Cheney's line, that sounds more like a dislike of the present administration than anything substantive.
The three finalists are all classic conservatives in the Wyoming mold. They have vowed to follow Sen. Thomas' lead on protecting some wild and scenic places in Wyoming (Wyoming Range, Snake River), but quickly reaffirm multiple use on public lands and doing everything possible develop energy resources here, rather than be dependent upon foreign energy sources where we're not too popular now.
Lummis did surprise me when she said she admired trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt, "who defied his own party." Not sure what that means.
The final three all follow the basic mantra of state rights, immigration border control, support troops and the war on terrorism, lower taxes, fewer regulations, extensive reform of Endangered Species Act, protect Wyoming interests in the energy/global warming debate, anti-abortion and pro-male/female marriage.
No one spoke of Bush (or Cheney). If anyone was signaling a willingness to be independent, a maverick, a moderate -- it was fairly obscure and masked in standard GOP platform rhetoric. What I saw was general uniformity on all the fiscal and social topics.
Brodi ( of the C-Star) says : "what I saw was general uniformity on all fiscal and social topics". Strange, Sansonetti, who is an attorney with Holland and Hart, a firm that works to defend those who cheat on royalites on federal lands, revolved into the Bush Admin(near top of DOJ in D. C.), and then wrote a letter appealing for a Ex DOI honcho to get a light sentence for lying to Congress, after the plea to a felony, which requires jail time. Some fiscal conformity --was that... But, the Governor can signal he was appreciative with all the big Oil PAC $$$$ he got in the last election by plucking out the CHEY Holland and Hart Esquire, since they both are on the same wave length, part of that CHEY birds of a feather thing that is so apart of WYO conformity politics.
The word fiscal seems to have a whole other meaning in the winds of WYO..
Marion: It's pretty obnoxious to snidely criticize a Wyomingite for not knowing three not-yet-prime-time politicians (does every Woymingits really know every state senator or former treasurer? if so, WY would be by far the most politically informed population in... well, in human history). And to say "if you are not [from WY], it really doesn't matter to you" is amazingly ignorant (especially for someone so pretentiously criticizing people who aren't super-informe about politics): in such a closely divided US Senate, you really think it doesn't matter to the other 300 million Americans who the new WY Senator is???
Comment By Inky, 6-20-07In a perverse way, Freudenthal might appoint Sansonetti as a way to damage GOP prospects for hanging onto Craig Thomas' seat in '08.
Sansonetti has had many, many more opportunities to get caught up in national controversies and scandals, than Barrasso and Lummis. If he gets shoved into the limelight at a national level, who knows what'll surface as the media start poking around?
Certainly, there'll be congressional committees and investigators under the Democratic chairmen, who'll launch fishing expeditions with FOIAs and sworn testimony, not to mention all the conservationist and progressive outfits who've crossed swords with Sansonetti in the past, either as an H&H;lawyer or attorney in various GOP administrations.
I'm sure that "Gov Dave" as he likes to be called is going to try to pick the least popular, and least known of the three, and since Sansonetti is from Cheyenne those two things would indicate him. I expect him to make a run for the office next year.
I would like to see the only non-lawyer appointed. We already have too many attornies in congress, we don't need more.
If Tom Sansonetti has anything less than a clear conscience over his work at the Department of Justice, this development could give him pause:
The Democratic powers in Congress have a website soliciting whistleblowers to say what dirty dealings there might have been done by political appointees, such as Wyoming's own Sansonetti.
Right here: http://judiciary.house.gov/WriteCongressToRightJustice.aspx
Or he may not have anything to worry about.
I don't know that he has done anything wrong, actually I hadn't heard of him before this. I don't believe he has ever held an elective office.
Comment By Siouxzee, 6-20-07An interesting perspective on all this is at the Wheaterville site at http://www.wheaterville.com It looks like "grass roots" grow on both sides of the aisle. I'm hoping for some details in Part Two of this installment on the Picking of the Wyoming Senator, and also some photos.
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