WY-Gov: Statewide Recruitment Thread

The toughest hold? Democrat Dave Freudenthal is term-limited out of the Governor’s office in Wyoming after the 2010 elections, and Republicans will be licking their chops to run for the open seat. For our sakes, hopefully that means a bloody and contentious primary, but that’s only good for us if we have a strong candidate in place to take advantage of the aftermath. Gary Trauner, coming off two losses in a row, could give the Governor’s race a go, but there might be some less obvious choices worth looking at further down the totem pole. What have we got?

18 thoughts on “WY-Gov: Statewide Recruitment Thread”

  3. Freudenthal, former U.S. Attorney

    Mike Sullivan, attorney

    Edgar Herschler, city attorney and county prosecutor

    Jack Gage, secretary of state (replaced incumbent governor)

    John Hickey, county attorney

    Of the last 5 Democratic governors, 4 came from legal backgrounds.

    The Democratic governor before these 5 seems somewhat intriguing.  Poor guy had a sad ending. From Wikipedia:

    In July 1953, Hunt’s twenty-year-old son was arrested for soliciting prostitution from a male undercover police officer in Lafayette Square. Republicans learned of this, and in early 1954, Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire delivered a blackmail demand. Hunt was to retire from the Senate, and not run for re-election. Furthermore, he was to resign from the Senate immediately, so the Republican governor could appoint a Republican to run as an incumbent. If Hunt refused, Wyoming voters would be informed of the arrest of Hunt’s son. After some vacillation, Hunt announced on June 8, 1954, that he would not seek reelection. Eleven days later, he shot himself in his Senate office.

    Republican Edward D. Crippa was appointed to fill the remainder of Hunt’s Senate term. Democrat Joseph C. O’Mahoney won the seat in the general election of November 1954, which also tipped the Senate to a one vote Democratic majority.

    This blackmail and eventual suicide in a Senator’s office was fictionalized by Allen Drury in his best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Advise and Consent. Drury transferred the homosexual incident from a Senator’s son to a Senator, with the blackmailing Senator, Fred Van Ackerman, in Wyoming, not the victim, who was Senator Brigham Anderson from Utah.

    Hunt’s anti-McCarthyism and his son’s homosexuality are mentioned in Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel “Fellow Travelers.” That novels examines the government’s attitude towards homosexuality in the 1950s. Mallon uses Hunt’s suicide to reflect the damage that could result from the persecutions.

  4. I know Cecil Andrus of Idaho came back in the 1980’s and got elected 2 more terms as governor after being elected governor twice in the 1970’s. I think Mike Sullivan could do the same

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