Full disclosure before we start: I’m a conservative. I live in Gillette. I built Evidence Based Wyoming because Wyoming voters deserve data, not narrative, when they try to figure out what their legislators are actually doing in Cheyenne. Bias disclosed, methodology documented, numbers verifiable.
Recently, I published an analysis of the 2026 Wyoming House showing that conservative legislators exercised fiscal discernment on every spending vote — evaluating each appropriation on its merits, voting yes when spending was justified and no when it wasn’t — while the progressive caucus rubber-stamped 85% of appropriations without blinking. The House conservatives held the pencil. They constrained spending. They did the job.
Now here’s the Senate.
The story is different. The story is worse. And it ends with one of the more quietly impressive acts of conservative leadership this session produced — and a clear path toward fixing the problem.
The Same Method, Applied to the Other Chamber
EBW’s bloc scoring system doesn’t care about caucus labels, party registration, or what a legislator says at a Lincoln Day dinner. It reads the votes. All of them. Here is what it does, in five steps.
Step 1 — Build a similarity matrix. Take all 511 recorded Senate roll calls from the 2026 session. For every pair of senators, calculate the percentage of shared votes where they voted identically. No human judgment. Just math.
Step 2 — Run cluster analysis. Let the algorithm identify groups of senators who consistently vote together. In the 2026 Senate, it found three clusters. We labeled them based on their average ideological position: Conservative Core, Moderate Coalition, and Progressive Caucus. The algorithm finds the factions from raw voting behavior, and what it found is structurally identical to the House — three blocs, two poles, and a middle that leans one direction.
Step 3 — Score every senator against both poles. Once the blocs are identified, every member of the chamber gets scored on how often they voted with the majority of the Conservative Core versus the majority of the Progressive Caucus. This is calculated on 105 contested votes — the roll calls where the two poles actually split.
Step 4 — Calculate a net position score. The score runs from 0 to 100. A 100 means you voted with the conservative bloc on every contested vote. A 0 means you voted with the progressive bloc on every contested vote. Purely behavioral — derived from voting patterns, not surveys or donor lists.
Step 5 — Layer in fiscal scoring. EBW’s AI system reads bill text, fiscal notes, and amendments for every roll call and attaches dollar amounts. It assesses the spending direction of each vote and scores legislators on the percentage of fiscally consequential votes they cast in the fiscally conservative direction. The 2026 Senate produced 77 fiscal roll calls.
That five-step process is the same one used in the House analysis. Every number in this article comes out of that system, applied to the official Wyoming Legislature roll call database. You can verify it at evidencebasedwyoming.com.
A note on transparency. “Contested votes” are defined algorithmically: any roll call in which the Conservative Core majority and the Progressive Caucus majority voted in opposite directions. No human selects which votes count. The fiscal AI reads the actual bill text and fiscal notes for each roll call, determines the state-fund dollar amount at stake, and classifies whether an “aye” vote increases or decreases state spending. Confidence scores are attached to every assessment. The full dataset — every roll call, every fiscal classification, every confidence score — is available at evidencebasedwyoming.com. If you think the AI got one wrong, you can check.
What the Algorithm Found: The Establishment Is the Progressive Caucus
Here is the part that should make every conservative voter in Wyoming sit up straight.
The algorithm grouped 31 senators into three blocs. Here’s who landed where.
Conservative Core — 13 members: Laura Pearson (98.9), Bob Ide (96.9), Troy McKeown (91.6), Cheri Steinmetz (89.4), Lynn Hutchings (85.7), Tim Salazar (85.1), Dan Laursen (84.0), Tim French (83.0), Bo Biteman (67.7), John Kolb (60.4), Larry Hicks (55.8), Brian Boner (55.2), Cale Case (44.4)
Moderate Coalition — 6 members: Charles Scott (39.8), Taft Love (39.8), Dan Dockstader (29.6), Stacy Jones (28.0), Jared Olsen (24.5), Tara Nethercott (18.3)
Progressive Caucus — 12 members: Evie Brennan (20.7), Gary Crum (17.0), Chris Rothfuss (14.1), Mike Gierau (14.0), Eric Barlow (10.9), Jim Anderson (10.3), Barry Crago (9.6), Stephan Pappas (8.5), Wendy Schuler (7.4), Bill Landen (6.2), Ogden Driskill (5.6), Ed Cooper (2.1)
The numbers in parentheses are net position scores on contested votes. Higher is more conservative.
Read that progressive caucus list again. Ogden Driskill. Eric Barlow. Barry Crago. Bill Landen. Stephan Pappas. Wendy Schuler. These are not progressive activists. These are Republican senators — most of them senior, most of them establishment, several of them current or former leadership. The algorithm grouped them with the chamber’s two Democrats because that is how they vote.
Driskill, the former Senate President, scored a 5.6. Ed Cooper scored a 2.1 — meaning he voted with the progressive pole on 97.9% of contested votes. Barlow, who is running for governor as a Republican, scored 10.9.
Nobody told the algorithm who was supposed to be conservative. It read the votes and sorted them accordingly.
★ = Senate President
The Rubber Stamp Is Even Tighter Here
In the House, the progressive caucus showed 85% internal cohesion on contested votes. That was already high — a bloc that votes together 85% of the time is disciplined.
The Senate progressive caucus — the establishment Republicans plus the two Democrats — showed 95.8% internal cohesion.
On the votes that actually divided the chamber, the establishment bloc voted as a unit more than 95% of the time. The Conservative Core, by comparison, showed 88.5% cohesion.
The people who present themselves as thoughtful independents making careful judgments are voting in lockstep at a rate that would make a whip proud. The conservative core — the faction that supposedly takes marching orders — actually shows more internal variation.
The Moderate Coalition Leans Blue
In the House, the moderate coalition broke conservative 11-to-2. That mattered. It meant the middle of the chamber leaned right, giving the conservative core enough allies to constrain spending on most votes.
The Senate moderates tell a completely different story. All six of them — Scott, Love, Dockstader, Jones, Olsen, Nethercott — score below 40 on net position. Every single one leans toward the progressive/establishment pole. Nethercott, at 18.3, is barely distinguishable from the progressive caucus itself.
In the House, the moderates broke conservative 11-to-2. In the Senate: 0-to-6.
This is why the Senate is a fiscal problem. The conservative core has 13 members in a 31-seat chamber. The establishment/progressive bloc has 12. And the 6 moderates all lean blue. That gives the spending coalition a built-in supermajority of 18 votes — enough to pass anything, override any procedural objection, and steamroll any conservative resistance.
The Fiscal Numbers Are Damning
A word on what “fiscal conservatism” means in this system, because it matters. EBW’s fiscal score measures one thing: on roll calls where state dollars were at stake, how often did a legislator vote to restrain spending versus vote to increase it? Wyoming is a resource-volatile state. Not every dollar spent is a dollar wasted, and even the three BudgetGuardians voted to increase spending on some roll calls. What the score captures is posture — the difference between a legislator who defaults to yes on spending and one who evaluates each appropriation on its fiscal merits. In a budget session with 77 fiscal roll calls, that posture is clear.
Here is what it shows. Of 31 senators, exactly three earned a BudgetGuardian rating:
- Bob Ide — 67.5% (BudgetGuardian)
- Cheri Steinmetz — 65.1% (BudgetGuardian)
- Troy McKeown — 62.8% (BudgetGuardian)
Three senators in the entire chamber voted the fiscally conservative position on more than 60% of dollar-weighted roll calls.
The rest of the Conservative Core? Mostly Moderate — ranging from 42% to 52%. They voted to increase spending nearly as often as they voted to reduce it. Two of them are worse than that: Cale Case, who sits in the Conservative Core by cluster analysis, scored 17.3% on fiscal votes — a BlankCheck rating. John Kolb scored 32.4% — PorkBarreler.
The progressive/establishment bloc? Every single member rated PorkBarreler or worse. Their fiscal scores range from 27.5% (Evie Brennan) to 44.7% (Jim Anderson). On average, this bloc voted to increase state spending on roughly two-thirds of every fiscal roll call.
The moderate coalition is no better. Five of six moderates rated PorkBarreler. Charles Scott, the most conservative of the group at 43.1%, barely cracked Moderate.
In the House, the conservative core voted the fiscal-conservative position on 73–75% of dollar-weighted roll calls. In the Senate, even the conservative core averages somewhere in the mid-40s. The pencil the House conservatives were holding? In the Senate, almost nobody picked it up.
Dollar-weighted. Higher = voted to restrain spending more often.
To put concrete numbers on the divide: when the Senate voted on a $27.5 million amendment to cut the University of Wyoming’s block grant, the Conservative Core voted to cut. The establishment bloc voted to restore — every one of them. When SF0065, the Wyoming Business Council repeal, came up with $24.2 million in state fund savings on the line, the same split appeared. And on SF0119, the Strategic Investments and Projects Account repeal — $716.8 million — the conservative core voted to save the money while the establishment bloc voted to keep spending authority intact. These aren’t abstractions. These are the specific votes that separate a 67% fiscal score from a 31% fiscal score.
Two Conservative Jerseys, No Conservative Votes
The bloc analysis surfaced two senators who deserve special attention because their placement in the Conservative Core is misleading.
Cale Case (S25) scored a 44.4 net position — meaning he voted with the progressive pole more often than the conservative pole on contested votes. His fiscal score of 17.3% is a BlankCheck rating, the worst fiscal category in EBW’s system. He recorded 12 critical defections. The algorithm placed him in the Conservative Core because his overall voting pattern across all 511 roll calls is slightly closer to that group than to the moderates, but his contested-vote behavior and his fiscal record tell a different story. He is a conservative in name only — the numbers are unambiguous.
John Kolb (S12) scored a 60.4 net position, which is genuinely conservative on contested votes. But his fiscal score is 32.4% — PorkBarreler. He voted to increase spending on two-thirds of dollar-weighted roll calls. He recorded 37 critical defections, the second-highest count in the chamber. Kolb votes conservative on social and procedural issues but breaks hard on spending. For voters who care specifically about fiscal conservatism, Kolb’s record is a problem.
The Senate Floor Told One Story. The Conference Table Told Another.
If this is where the analysis ended, the 2026 Senate would be a straightforward story of conservative defeat. But it isn’t where the story ends.
When the House and Senate passed their respective budget drafts, the gap was $170 million. The House, with its Freedom Caucus majority on the Joint Appropriations Committee, had stuck close to the JAC’s lean draft — landing about $113 million below Governor Gordon’s $11.1 billion recommendation. The Senate, driven by its establishment spending coalition, had amended the same draft upward, landing about $53 million above the governor’s recommendation.
The Senate’s own floor votes said: spend more than even the governor asked for.
Senate President Bo Biteman had already tried to hold the line. When the Senate voted on whether to adopt the governor’s higher draft or the JAC’s leaner version as their starting point, Biteman and Appropriations Chair Tim Salazar voted for the JAC number. They lost. Twenty senators — the establishment supermajority — voted for the governor’s higher draft.
But Biteman had one more card: the Joint Conference Committee. He appointed himself and Salazar — both Conservative Core members — to the negotiating panel. Across the table sat the House’s five negotiators, four of them Freedom Caucus members.
The Senate had entered that room wanting to spend $53 million more than the governor asked for.
Here is the progression, in one table:
| Stage | Amount | Difference from Gov. |
|---|---|---|
| Governor Gordon’s recommendation | ~$11.1B | — |
| JAC draft (FC-controlled) | ~$9.65B | −$480M |
| House floor position | ~$10.0B | −$113M |
| Senate floor position | ~$10.18B | +$53M |
| Conference result | ~$10.1B | −$53M |
The Senate had entered that room wanting to spend $53 million more than the governor asked for. They walked out with a budget $53 million below the governor’s recommendation (using the metric emphasized by Appropriations Chair Tim Salazar and Governor Gordon). In broader all-funds terms reported by the Legislative Service Office, the final number came in as much as $143 million under, or $33.8 million lower, in operational funds versus requests. Either way, the final budget was lower than the Senate floor demanded — and that shift happened almost entirely because of what Biteman and Salazar pulled off at the conference table.
Governor Gordon did the math: the final number was close to 99% of his recommendation. On pure percentages, he’s right. But here’s what that number obscures: the Senate had voted to give him more than 100% of his recommendation. The fact that the final budget landed below the governor’s ask — not above it, as the Senate floor votes demanded — is entirely because of what happened at that conference table.
Biteman was outgunned on the Senate floor, 20-to-whatever-he-could-hold. He didn’t have the votes to constrain spending in his own chamber. But he used the tools he did have — conference committee appointments, his own seat at the table, and a House delegation that shared his fiscal instincts — to pull the final number lower than anyone watching the Senate floor votes would have predicted.
That’s leadership with bad cards. It’s worth recognizing.
But the Senate wanted more than 100%. Landing below is the story.
It’s also not enough.
The Senate Needs Different Senators
The conference result shows what a conservative Senate president can salvage when the floor votes go against him. But salvaging is not governing. The problem isn’t leadership. The problem is the roster.
The 2026 elections offer a rare opportunity to change that roster in a meaningful way. Three races in particular could reshape the Senate’s fiscal character — and the data makes the case for each.
The Path Forward: Three Races That Change the Math
Senate District 1: Chip Neiman vs. Ogden Driskill
House Speaker Chip Neiman is challenging Driskill for the SD 1 seat covering Crook, Weston, and part of Campbell County. The data contrast is stark.
Driskill — the former Senate President — scored a 5.6 net position on contested votes. He voted with the progressive/establishment pole 94.4% of the time. His fiscal score is 31.5%, a PorkBarreler rating. The algorithm placed him in the progressive caucus. He is, by every measure in EBW’s system, one of the most progressive-voting Republicans in the Senate.
Neiman’s 2026 House record: 87.2 position score, VeryConservative by composite ranking, 71.9% fiscal score — BudgetGuardian. He ran the House, keeping spending below the governor’s recommendation. He chaired the chamber where conservatives held the pencil.
Replacing Driskill with Neiman flips a progressive-caucus PorkBarreler seat to a conservative-core BudgetGuardian. That is not a marginal change. That is an 82-point swing on contested votes and a 40-point swing on fiscal scoring.
Senate District 23: Eric Barlow’s Open Seat
Barlow is vacating SD 23 to run for governor. His Senate record: 10.9 net position, 31.5% fiscal score, PorkBarreler. The algorithm placed him in the progressive caucus. He voted with the establishment/progressive pole on nearly 90% of contested votes.
The conservative candidate who should be looking at this seat is Rep. Abby Angelos, who sits in House District 3, which is nested inside SD 23. Her 2026 House record: 88.4 position score, VeryConservative by composite ranking, 74.6% fiscal score — BudgetGuardian. She sits on the House Appropriations Committee. She has served four terms. She knows budgets. She’s from Gillette, in the heart of the district.
Angelos replacing Barlow would flip another progressive-caucus PorkBarreler seat into a conservative-core BudgetGuardian seat. Another 78-point swing on contested votes. Another 43-point swing on fiscal scoring. And — critically — it would put a second Appropriations-experienced fiscal conservative in the Senate chamber, where that expertise is desperately needed.
Yes, the House would lose a BudgetGuardian in HD 3. That’s a real cost — HD 3 is a conservative Campbell County district, but there is no guarantee the replacement matches Angelos’s 74.6% fiscal score or her Appropriations experience. The trade-off is honest: the House might get a slightly weaker fiscal conservative in one seat, while the Senate gains a proven BudgetGuardian in a chamber that has exactly three of them. In a 62-member House where the conservative core already holds the numbers to constrain spending, the marginal value of one BudgetGuardian is lower than in a 31-member Senate where she would be one of five. The math says the Senate is where she’s needed.
The Governor’s Mansion: Megan Degenfelder
If Barlow wins the governorship, Wyoming gets a governor whose Senate fiscal record was 31.5% — PorkBarreler. His net position of 10.9 means he voted with the progressive/establishment pole almost exclusively. A Governor Barlow would be Governor Gordon’s spending instincts with a fresh mandate.
Megan Degenfelder offers a different direction. A conservative governor with the willingness to use line-item vetoes as a fiscal backstop — not just as a negotiating gesture — would add a layer of spending restraint that the Senate’s own floor votes cannot produce. The governor cannot add spending. But a governor who is willing to cut it, line by line, gives the conservative minority in the Senate a backstop that Biteman’s conference maneuvering cannot provide every session.
The Math After the Fix
If Neiman replaces Driskill and Angelos replaces Barlow, here is what happens to the Senate’s fiscal arithmetic:
The progressive/establishment bloc drops from 12 to 10 members. The BudgetGuardian count rises from 3 to 5. The conservative core gains two members with proven fiscal records, both of whom score above 70% on dollar-weighted roll calls. The spending coalition’s automatic supermajority of 18 shrinks. It doesn’t disappear — the moderates still lean blue — but the margin tightens enough that a conservative Senate president would no longer need to rely on conference-table heroics to prevent the chamber from spending more than the governor asks for.
Add a governor who will use the veto pen, and Wyoming has at least the structural possibility of fiscal restraint at every level: a House that holds the pencil, a Senate that’s closer to competitive, and an executive who provides the backstop.
That’s not a guarantee of conservative governance. It’s the minimum viable infrastructure for it. And right now, the Senate doesn’t even have that.
What the 2026 Session Actually Was
The 2026 Wyoming Senate was a chamber where 10 Republican establishment senators voted in 95.8% lockstep with 2 Democrats, where every moderate leaned toward the spending coalition, where only 3 of 31 senators earned a BudgetGuardian rating, and where the conservative Senate President — outgunned on his own floor — had to use conference committee appointments to pull the final budget below the governor’s ask.
The House showed the system working: conservative discernment constraining spending, vote by vote, because the numbers were there.
The Senate showed the system failing: a spending coalition with a built-in supermajority that no amount of conservative leadership could overcome from inside the chamber.
The House held the pencil. The Senate needs more people willing to pick it up.
Neiman. Angelos. Degenfelder. The data says that’s where the fix starts.
BudgetGuardians rise from 3 → 5.
The spending coalition’s automatic supermajority shrinks.
All voting data sourced from the Wyoming Legislature’s official roll call database. Bloc scores derived from a pairwise similarity matrix and cluster analysis across 105 contested Senate votes in the 2026 Budget Session (68th Legislature). “Contested” = any roll call where the Conservative Core majority and Progressive Caucus majority voted opposite ways (algorithmically determined, no human selection). Fiscal scores based on 77 AI-assessed dollar-weighted roll calls using EBW’s fiscal scoring system; each assessment includes a confidence score and one-sentence reasoning, viewable at evidencebasedwyoming.com. House legislator scores (Neiman, Angelos) from 688 House roll calls and 183 House fiscal roll calls in the same session. Full methodology at evidencebasedwyoming.com.