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.
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Comments
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.
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.
The word fiscal seems to have a whole other meaning in the winds of WYO..
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 would like to see the only non-lawyer appointed. We already have too many attornies in congress, we don't need more.
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.