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Notes After the 2026 Election

I have written these pieces after elections before. This is the first one I have written without much hope.

Full disclosure, as always: I’m a conservative, I live in Gillette, and I ran against Eric Barlow twice. I lost both times by about 100 votes.

The results are in. Eric Barlow is our next governor with 68.6% [1][2]. Steve Harshman is our next Superintendent of Public Instruction with 75% [3]. Harriet Hageman goes to the U.S. Senate, Chuck Gray to the U.S. House. Republicans have 55 of 62 seats in the state House and 29 of 31 in the Senate [3]. Nationally, it went the other way. Democrats took the U.S. House and Senate, with at least 54 Senate seats [4] and the biggest House majority in about twenty years [5].

None of that is the number I keep coming back to. The number is 105,200 to 80,031 [6]. That was Proposition 1.

Prop 1 would have taken half the assessed value of your house off the property tax rolls. It was not a good bill. It had no cap, so a $5 million house in Jackson got the same break as a $250,000 house in Wright, and renters got nothing. I said so at the time. But it was the only thing left on the ballot that actually took money away from the government instead of asking the government nicely to spend less. It lost in 22 of 23 counties, 58 to 42 [7].

The campaign against it cost $2.1 million [6]. The money came from the Wyoming Education Association, the hospital association, the community college trustees, the realtors, and a few others [8]. The pitch was that if you took the money, the fire truck wouldn’t come, the school would close, and the county road would wash out. Nobody explained why losing $92 million to $125 million a year [8] would sink a state whose revenue went up 64% between fiscal 2019 and fiscal 2025 [9]. Nobody had to. The TV ads showed fire trucks, but the budget numbers didn’t.

Of course, the WEA spent $2.1 million telling you the schools would close and not a dime explaining why 74% of its graduates can’t do college math [6][40].

Barlow was against it [2]. Gordon was against it [10]. I expect everyone now in charge of spending that money was against it.

From the end of 2018 through 2024, Wyoming’s real GDP grew 0.8% a year. The country grew 2.6% [9]. We were dead last. If you remove Laramie County, where the state government sits, the other 22 counties combined grew 2.8% over the full six years [9]. Not per year. Total. Almost half the people in this state live in a county where the economy is shrinking [9].

Over the same six years, state revenue rose 64%, state spending rose 60%, and the state’s savings rose 50% [9].

Your household? Wyoming’s median household income, inflation-adjusted, went from $72,480 in 2010 to $78,680 in 2024 [11]. That’s 8.6% in fourteen years. The national number was 22%. We’re 47th [11]. Our wages are 8% below the U.S. median and falling further behind [9].

State revenue up 64%. Your income is up 8.6%. You don’t need my database to see what is going on there.

Now who is doing the voting? Wyoming has nearly 300 state and local government employees for every 1,000 private-sector workers, more than any state in the country [12]. Out of about 273,000 people working in Wyoming, about 65,700 work for some level of government [13]. Government is the state’s largest industry by share of GDP and its largest employer [14]. The Wyoming Liberty Group reviewed BLS wage data county by county and found state employees make about 23% more than the private sector [12]. Local government is about even with the private sector [12]. That’s wages only. It doesn’t count the pension.

Start with what the government side gets. If you work for the state, a school district, a county, a city, or a town, you’re in the Wyoming Retirement System’s Public Employee Pension Plan with about 41,000 other people from 678 employers [15]. School districts are the largest group, followed by state agencies [15]. It’s a defined benefit plan. Hired before September 2012, it pays 2.125% of your highest three years’ average salary for each of your first 15 years and 2.25% for every year after that [16]: 30 years gets you 65.6% of your pay, 35 years gets you 77%. Hired after that, it’s 2% a year on your best five years [16]: 60% at 30 years, 70% at 35. For life, with Social Security on top [15]. Total contribution is 18.62% of pay, supposedly split down the middle [17], except the State of Wyoming pays 5.57% of its employees’ 9.25% share [18]. So a state employee puts 3.68% of his own paycheck into his pension and the taxpayer puts in about 15%. The plan is 82.5% funded with a $2.15 billion hole [19], and the Legislature raised the rates again in 2024 to fill it [20].

What does that come to? WRS’s own actuary reports it [19]. A member who put in 30 to 34 years and retired in the last five years draws $4,065 a month, or $48,800 a year. Thirty-five years or more: $5,039 a month, $60,500 a year [19]. Add the average Wyoming Social Security check of $24,282 [21] and a career government employee who retires on $73,000 to $85,000 a year with no market risk. To buy that out of a 401(k) at the 4% withdrawal rate everybody’s financial advisor uses, you would need $1.2 million to $1.5 million in the account the day you quit.

Now, the private sector. In Wyoming, 44% of 80,632 private sector workers have no retirement plan at work at all [22]. Nationally, 15% of private-industry workers have access to a defined-benefit pension; 86% of state and local government workers do [23]. About 46% of American households have no retirement account [24]. Among households aged 65 to 74 that do have one, the median balance is $200,000 [24]. At 4%, that’s $8,000 a year. Only 26.3% of Wyoming households report any retirement income besides Social Security, and the ones that do average $32,160 [25]. 42% of Wyomingites over 65 get at least half their income from Social Security. 18% of them, 20,642 people, get 90% or more of it from Social Security [21].

So the private-sector worker who did everything right, saved for a career, and retires with the median account balance gets Social Security plus $8,000, about $32,000 a year. The 44% who never had a plan rely on Social Security and whatever they have in checking. The 30-year state employee down the road has $73,000 to $85,000, guaranteed. You have to save for your retirement, and most of you can’t. They have theirs saved, mostly by you.

Add in spouses, kids, retirees already drawing pensions, and every contractor and vendor whose business is the public budget. You do not need a majority of the population. You need a majority of the people who show up. Primary turnout in Wyoming runs 38% to 44%, and about 70% of the Legislature is settled in August because nobody runs against the winner in November [26]. A quarter of the workforce, organized and voting for its paycheck, doesn’t have to win a general election. It just has to show up to the primary.

That group doesn’t care about the R or the D. It cares whether the money keeps coming. The candidates who will keep it coming win, and every one of them tells you the same thing afterward: it’s for the people, the other guys are extremists, and anybody who objects is a radical.

I don’t have to guess what Barlow will do, because I have 5,545 of his votes [27][28].

Fourteen sessions. He’s been in the Progressive Caucus for twelve of them and the Moderate Coalition for the other two [28]. He has never scored as a conservative, not in a single year [28]. He has voted against his own party’s majority 810 times, and in 145 of those votes, his vote was decisive [28]. Of his 462 co-sponsorships, 214 were with Democrats. His top ten co-sponsorship partners are all Democrats, with Chris Rothfuss, the Senate minority leader, at 60 bills [28]. In 2026, he ranked 23rd of 31 senators [29]. Both Democrats ranked more conservative than he did [28].

On 77 roll calls in 2026 with a dollar figure attached, he voted conservatively about 30% of the time [29]. In 2025, it was 10.4% [28]. One fiscal vote in ten. In 2025 and again in 2026, a budget amendment passed the Senate 16 to 15, with Barlow casting the deciding vote for the spending, against his own party [28][30]. In 2026, he voted for a $30 million housing appropriation the Republican majority opposed, voted for four separate K-12 spending amendments the majority turned down, and voted against charter school authorization, open enrollment, and alternative teacher certification [30]. More money, no reform. That’s one session.

Property tax, which he campaigned on: in fourteen years, he never carried a property tax reduction bill as primary sponsor [31]. In 2019, he voted against a senior exemption (HB0128). In 2021, he voted against a small business exemption that passed anyway (SF0085). In 2022, he was one of eight of sixty members who voted against letting counties run their own refund programs (SF0019) [31]. In 2025, he was excused from the conference vote on the homeowner exemption that actually became law (SF0069), and he didn’t co-sponsor it [31]. Then he came out against Prop 1 [2].

Medicaid expansion: one of his first acts in the House was to work with Democrat Mary Throne to try to slip expansion into the budget session [32]. Since then, he has been for it, against it, for it, against it, for it, and against it. Six positions in a decade [28]. He was never really against it except when a no vote helped it pass the next time. In 2021, as Speaker, he told the House, “I voted no multiple times, and I’m going to vote yes this time, because I haven’t seen any other solution.” It passed the House 32 to 28 and died in the Senate [28]. His campaign website doesn’t mention Medicaid at all [28].

As Speaker, he used the drawer to kill about 52 bills, roughly one House bill in five [28]. Among them: the Human Life Protection Act (HB0235); the Second Amendment Preservation Act (SF0081), after it passed the Senate 24 to 6; the gun-free zones repeal (HB0117); and the women’s sports bill (SF0051), after it passed the Senate 24 to 5 [28]. Every one of those became law later under a different Speaker. The votes were there. He made sure they never got taken.

Harshman: 15.6% fiscal score in the 2026 House [33]. The caucus he votes with voted for spending on 85% of the fiscal roll calls [33]. As Speaker in 2020, he voted with the Democrats 86% of the time [34], and he carried the corporate income tax that year, the one they sold as a tax on out-of-state retailers [35]. It failed. Now he’s one of the top five.

The 2026 budget: Gordon asked for about $11.1 billion. Appropriations cut it by about $480 million [29]. Twenty senators, including Barlow, voted to move back toward Gordon’s number, and the Senate finished $53 million above what the governor asked for, while the House cut $113 million below it [29]. The Senate had the governor on its side in conference. It usually does. Now the Senate’s most reliable vote on spending is the governor.

I ran against him in 2012 and 2014. House District 3. 802 to 712 the first time, 959 to 851 the second [36]. Ninety votes, then 108. No one else has come within 400 of him in a primary, and he’s never had a real general-election opponent in his life [37].

I know why I lost. People told me to my face. I was from New York. I wasn’t one of us.

Here is what one of us looked like on the 2012 campaign finance report [38]. Barlow raised $11,495 from other people that year. $7,100 of it, 62%, came from outside House District 3 or from people tied to the Powder River Basin Resource Council. That’s the environmental group he testified for in 2003, when he told them Wyoming had to “move beyond nonrenewable sources of energy” [39]. Two of the out-of-district checks, $1,000 apiece, were from Mark and Jennie Gordon of Buffalo [38]. The establishment had its man in Campbell County before a single vote was cast, and he told an environmental group that coal country needed to get past coal. I was the outsider.

They were right about where I was from. They were wrong about what it meant. I grew up in Rochester, New York. When I was a kid, it was a working city. Kodak, Xerox, Bausch and Lomb, French’s Mustard (all major employers) and the people who built America’s photographs and copiers lived in neighborhoods they could afford. Then it went. Kodak went bankrupt. To survive, others moved their headquarters out, one by one. Today, the University of Rochester, a nonprofit funded by tuition, grants, and government money, is the biggest employer in the Rochester area. When the biggest employer in town stops selling something and becomes an institution that must be funded, the politics follow. The argument shifts from whether to spend to who gets it. Rochester got more crime, a bluer city hall every election, and thirty years of managing decline while calling it compassion.

Look at the Wyoming numbers again. Government is the biggest industry and the biggest employer [14]. UW’s state appropriation went from $399 million to $557 million in six years, up 40%, while enrollment dropped 12%[14]. The private economy outside Laramie County has barely moved since 2018 [9]. I’ve watched this before. That is why I came here.

I came to Wyoming because it was a place where one person still mattered.   A place where the pioneer spirit and DeTocqueville’s America still existed, where you could actually change something.  A place where responsibility and freedom were the same thing, not opposites. I ran because I had seen how it ends and thought somebody should say so. House District 3 decided a guy from New York couldn’t understand Wyoming. I understood it fine. I had seen what it was turning into, and, well, I hate being right.

Barlow and Harshman hold two of the five statewide offices. The record is the record. Barlow as governor is Gordon’s spending habits on steroids with a fresh mandate, a 68% win, and a Gordon check in the file from day one [38]. Expect Medicaid expansion in the first term, after fifteen years of holding that line. A man who has flipped on it six times and votes conservative on money a miserable 10% to 30% of the time [28][29] is not a hard read.

Harshman has spent his whole career saying school spending is never enough, and now he runs the department that asks for it. Wyoming spends $19,332 per student, 17% over the national average of $16,560, more than almost any state [40]. For that, 26% of the class of 2024 met the ACT college readiness benchmark in math. 74% didn’t [40]. Almost half of our degree-seeking college students, 45.8% statewide and 51.7% at the community colleges, need remedial classes before they can take a college class [40]. The graduation rate is 83.1%, under the national average [40]. The people who built that system will have the same answer they always have. More.

Expect the budget to keep growing faster than the economy, as it has for six years [9]. Expect new fees, new assessments, and a new argument that the savings accounts aren’t really savings. And around year six of a Barlow administration, when the mineral money comes up short and the obligations don’t, expect the first serious talk about a Wyoming income tax. It’ll start with corporations, because that’s where Harshman already tried to start it in 2020 [35]. It won’t stop there. It never does.

Fifteen years from now, many of us will be retiring into 800 square feet we can barely afford, and the folks on the two-thirds pension will look down their noses and wonder why we weren’t smart enough to work for the government. The big landowners, the ones born on third base who have spent their lives telling you they hit a triple, will keep lecturing the rest of us regarding compassion and charity, and there won’t be much of either for anyone who wasn’t born here.

You can’t stop it now. It’s too late. Prop 1 was a bad tool, but it was a tool, and we threw it away by 25,000 votes.

The Wyoming I moved to was a spot where you could lose an argument and still figure the next one was winnable. I’m not sure I believe that tonight. I hope I’m wrong. I’ve been wrong about elections before. I’d really like to be wrong about this one.

I am not.

References

  1. Associated Press. “Republican Eric Barlow wins election for governor in Wyoming.” Nov. 3, 2026. https://www.timesunion.com/news/politics/article/republican-eric-barlow-wins-election-for-governor-22510335.php
  2. MultiState. “Wyoming Governor Election Results 2026.” https://www.multistate.us/elections/governor-race/wyoming-2026
  3. County 17. “Republicans sweep Wyoming’s federal, state and Campbell County elections.” Nov. 4, 2026. https://county17.com/2026/11/04/republicans-sweep-wyomings-federal-state-and-natrona-county-elections/
  4. CBS News. “2026 Senate midterm election results as Democrats win control.” Nov. 3, 2026. https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/senate-election-results-2026/
  5. NBC Washington. “Recap: Democrats retake Congress.” Nov. 4, 2026. https://www.nbcwashington.com/elections/election-day-after-2026-midterms-congress-results-live-updates/4177248/
  6. CPA Practice Advisor. “Wyoming Voters Reject Property Tax Relief After $2.1 Million Opposition Campaign.” Nov. 4, 2026. https://www.cpapracticeadvisor.com/2026/11/04/wyoming-voters-reject-property-tax-relief-after-2-1-million-opposition-campaign/193211/
  7. Cowboy State Daily. “Prop. 1 Only Survived One County, Lincoln, And Niobrara Rejected It The Hardest.” Nov. 4, 2026. https://cowboystatedaily.com/2026/11/04/prop-1-only-survived-one-county-lincoln-and-niobrara-rejected-it-the-hardest/
  8. WyoFile. “No new property tax cut: Wyoming voters defeat Proposition 1.” Nov. 4, 2026. https://wyofile.com/no-new-property-tax-cut-wyoming-voters-defeat-proposition-1/
  9. Evidence Based Wyoming. “Laramie County.” Apr. 11, 2026. https://evidencebasedwyoming.com/2026/04/11/1636/
  10. Cap City News. “Election 2026: Property tax proposition fails.” Nov. 4, 2026. https://capcity.news/community/elections/2026/11/04/election-2026-property-tax-proposition-fails/
  11. Evidence Based Wyoming. “Wyoming Ranks #47.” Mar. 14, 2026. https://evidencebasedwyoming.com/2026/03/14/wyoming-ranks-47/
  12. Wyoming Liberty Group. “A Comparison of State and Local Government Wages to the Private Sector Wages in Wyoming.” https://wyliberty.org/blog/government-programs/a-comparison-of-state-and-local-government-wages-to-the-private-sector-wages-in-wyoming
  13. Evidence Based Wyoming. “Evidence-Based Wyoming’s Voter Guide.” Aug. 11, 2020. https://evidencebasedwyoming.com/2020/08/11/evidence-based-wyomings-voter-guide/
  14. Evidence Based Wyoming (B. Alfred Marshall). “States with No Income Tax… Wyoming is the 2nd Worst State.” May 12, 2026. https://evidencebasedwyoming.com/2026/05/12/states-with-no-income-tax-wyoming-is-the-2nd-worst-state/
  15. Wyoming Retirement System. “Summary Report 2026.” https://retirement.wyo.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026-Summary-Report.pdf
  16. Wyoming Retirement System. “Public Employee Pension Plan Handbook.” https://retirement.wyo.gov/wp-content/uploads/Public-Employee-Handbook.pdf
  17. Wyoming Retirement System. “Pension Contribution Rates.” https://retirement.wyo.gov/employers/contribution-rates/
  18. Wyoming Retirement System. “Wyoming Has It Right: 2017 Overview.” https://retirement.wyo.gov/wp-content/uploads/WRS-2017-Overview-Wyoming-Has-it-Right.pdf
  19. Wyoming Retirement System. “Public Employee Plan Actuarial Valuation as of January 1, 2026,” Tables 15, 18, 27. https://retirement.wyo.gov/wp-content/uploads/WRS_PE_Val-1.pdf
  20. Wyoming Tribune Eagle. “Wyoming lawmakers pass bills in attempt to expedite fully funding retirement plan.” Jan. 2024. https://www.wyomingnews.com/news/local_news/wyoming-lawmakers-pass-bills-in-attempt-to-expedite-fully-funding-retirement-plan/article_8fff2c7e-b5a7-11ee-b617-f32639ab79fd.html
  21. AARP Wyoming. “Social Security Brings $2.9 Billion a Year to Wyoming Communities.” 2025. https://www.aarp.org/states/wyoming/social-security-brings-2-9-billion-a-year-to-wyoming-communities/
  22. Pew Charitable Trusts. “Wyoming Workplace Savings Program Would Help Nearly 81,000 Workers Save.” Aug. 2025. https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheets/2025/08/wyoming-workplace-savings-program-would-help-workers-save
  23. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Retirement plans for workers in private industry and state and local government in 2022.” https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2023/retirement-plans-for-workers-in-private-industry-and-state-and-local-government-in-2022.htm
  24. Federal Reserve Board, Survey of Consumer Finances 2022, as summarized by Transamerica. https://www.transamerica.com/knowledge-place/average-retirement-savings-age-how-do-you-compare
  25. GOBankingRates, from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey. “How Much Americans Rely on Social Security in Every State in 2026.” https://finance.yahoo.com/news/much-americans-rely-social-security-121904860.html
  26. Evidence Based Wyoming. “Bureaucratic Capture in Wyoming.” Aug. 15, 2024. https://evidencebasedwyoming.com/2024/08/15/bureaucratic-capture-in-wyoming-the-influence-of-governor-gordon-and-the-states-political-dynamics/
  27. Evidence Based Wyoming. “Evidence Based Wyoming: The Next Evolution.” Feb. 16, 2026. https://evidencebasedwyoming.com/2026/02/16/evidence-based-wyoming-the-next-evolution/
  28. Evidence Based Wyoming. “Eric Barlow for Governor: Campaign Claims vs. Legislative Record. Comprehensive Analysis: 14 Years of Roll Call Data.” Mar. 10, 2026. Unpublished research report; roll call data 2013-2026.
  29. Evidence Based Wyoming. “The Other Chamber: Why Conservative Fiscal Policy Dies in the Wyoming Senate.” Apr. 11, 2026. https://evidencebasedwyoming.com/2026/04/11/the-other-chamber-why-conservative-fiscal-policy-dies-in-the-wyoming-senate/
  30. Evidence Based Wyoming. “2026 Session Defections, Sen. Eric Barlow.” Mar. 1, 2026. Unpublished working paper.
  31. Evidence Based Wyoming. “Property Tax Record, Sen. Eric Barlow: All Property Tax Votes, 2013-2025.” Mar. 2, 2026. Unpublished working paper.
  32. Evidence Based Wyoming. “The next step for Wyoming?” Nov. 10, 2020. https://evidencebasedwyoming.com/2020/11/10/the-next-step-for-wyoming/
  33. Evidence Based Wyoming. “The Budget Wyoming Actually Got: Conservative Discernment vs. a Progressive Rubber Stamp.” Apr. 8, 2026. https://evidencebasedwyoming.com/2026/04/08/the-budget-wyoming-actually-got-conservative-discernment-vs-a-progressive-rubber-stamp/
  34. Evidence Based Wyoming. “February 13, 2020 Update.” https://evidencebasedwyoming.com/2020/02/13/february-13-2020-update/
  35. Evidence Based Wyoming. “And they’re off…” Feb. 12, 2020. https://evidencebasedwyoming.com/2020/02/12/and-theyre-off/
  36. Ballotpedia. “Doug Gerard.” https://ballotpedia.org/Doug_Gerard
  37. Wikipedia. “Wyoming’s 3rd House of Representatives district,” election results 2012-2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming’s_3rd_House_of_Representatives_district
  38. Wyoming Secretary of State, campaign finance reports, Eric Barlow, 2012 primary and general; compiled by the author.
  39. Statement of Eric Barlow on behalf of the Western Organization of Resource Councils and Powder River Basin Resource Council, Mar. 19, 2003. Author’s files.
  40. Evidence Based Wyoming. “The Wyoming Education Paradox: $19,332 Per Student, 74% Not College-Ready.” Feb. 2, 2026. https://evidencebasedwyoming.com/2026/02/02/the-wyoming-education-paradox-19332-per-student-74-not-college-ready/

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