Wyoming's Most Listened to Political Podcast
Every Game Has Rules: The 2023 House Rules Compromise
David Iverson, January 18, 2023
Every game has rules.
The knight is the only piece that can jump others. Only the goalie can touch the ball with his
hands. Pass interference will earn you
half the distance to the goal and three strikes is all you get. Rules exist so that the playing field is
fair—each team must follow the same set of edicts. Try as they might, neither team is allowed to
alter the ground rules half-way through the contest. While there may be few rules in politics,
there are some that do exist. Every
deliberative body must follow parliamentary procedure of one form or
another.
In no small part, procedure accounts for much of the
political maneuvering, wrangling and strategy we so often see in politics; or
at the very least, the procedure sets the rules of the game. Two weeks prior, and in the entire first five
days of the Legislative Session, Representatives were embroiled in a rules fight
that is entirely about power, who wields it or even if it should be employed in
the first place. It all finally came to
a head and was settled Monday in what ended up being over an hour debate, the
result of which was one of the most unlikely and unheard-of compromises. Truthfully, it is a compromise that could
only come from the Cowboy State. The
Wyoming House of Representatives passed and agreed to a leadership rule that
balances power between the two real parties that make up the House.
Most of the media in Wyoming claim that Republicans make up
the vast majority of the legislature.
While this is technically true, it isn’t reality. In most of Wyoming’s twenty-three counties,
it is virtually impossible for a Democrat to get elected. Liberally minded politicians often register
as Republicans so that they have some chance at election. By any quantifiable measure, the Wyoming
House of Representatives is nearly evenly split between conservatives and
liberal, Democrat- leaning politicians.
There are three websites that rate legislators according to how
conservative or liberal they vote. All
three of them indicate that the House has a more liberal majority.
The House rules debate has roots that date far earlier than
just the week or so that the legislature has been in session. Really, this story begins in the 2022
legislative session with a bill called the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. Senator Wendy Schuler’s bill, which passed
the Wyoming Senate, attempted to ban men from competing in women’s high school
and college athletics. Though the bill
passed the Senate, then Majority Floor Leader, Albert Sommers, using his
authority, prevented the bill from being discussed in the House.
Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus attempted
to use a procedural maneuver to override the Majority Floor Leader. In order to bring the bill up for debate a
two-thirds majority was required. That
vote failed, and a bill that is overwhelmingly supported by Wyoming Citizens
was never brought up for discussion.
This single bill became a campaign issue for numerous
candidates running in the 2022 Primary Election. In total, the House Freedom Caucus supported
30 plus conservative candidates, many of whom were challengers to liberal
incumbent legislators. In Democrat-esque
fashion, seated legislators tried repeatedly to downplay the threat to their
power. Rep. Dan Zwonitzer told the Wyoming
Tribune Eagle “Wyoming Legislature can’t afford any more ultraconservative
ideologues who don’t understand the complexities of writing law.”
When all the votes had been counted, seven incumbents were
replaced and the House Freedom Caucus almost doubled in size. This set up a leadership fight between
conservative legislators and their more liberal counterparts. In Wyoming, the party in power is the liberal
wing of the Republican Party. In other
words, the two sides of the aisle in Wyoming are all members of the same party.
The first thing the liberals in the House tried to do was
minimize the many conservative victories.
Even though it was clear that conservatives made major gains in the
election, Zwonitzer told the Tribune Eagle that the House Freedom Caucus may
have gained two or three seats. The
truth, as it usually is, was very different than the Cheyenne lawmaker’s
characterization: conservatives gained 16 seats.
It had been decades, perhaps never, since conservatives had
the numbers to even think about gaining control of a house of the Wyoming legislature. There was not a single Republican at the 1890
Wyoming Constitutional Convention. And
since that time, the legislature has, for all intents and purposes, been run by
liberally minded Republicans. The reason
for this is simple: it is very difficult to get elected in Wyoming if you are a
Democrat. The most conservative state in
the country has historically had a legislature dominated by Democrats who
became Republicans for no other reason than to get elected. That is until this past election.
Jessie Rubino, State
Director for Wyoming for the State Freedom Caucus Network, had this to say,
“Establishment legislators have [become] so comfortable with the status quo
that they have fallen asleep at the wheel.
While they were asleep, the electorate woke up, the conservatives got
organized and our legislature became more reflective of our state.”
The 2022 election set up a leadership fight that neither the
liberals in power nor hardly anyone in the media thought possible. The House Freedom Caucus set up a slate of
candidates for Speaker of the House, Majority Floor Leader and Speaker Pro-Tempore. Rep Mark Jennings, one of the more senior
members of the Wyoming House would run for Speaker. Rep Chip Neiman, a legislator with only two
years of experience, ran for Majority Leader.
Rep Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, who also only had two years of
experience, would run for Speaker Pro-Tempore.
Legislators who had been in power for decades were incensed
at the idea that a group of new, upstart legislators would dare threaten their
grip on power. Prior to the House Republican
Caucus meeting in November, a barrage of media attacks were aimed directly at
Freedom Caucus members. They ranged from
a simple lack of experience to as Rep Dan Zwonitzer told the Wyoming Tribune
Eagle: they’re a threat to democracy.
Sources told Cowboy State Politics that now Speaker of the House Albert
Sommers said if conservatives lose the leadership vote, it will be “scorched
earth on conservatives.”
Given all the rhetoric of the previous 2 months, the stage
was set for a November 19 vote, the stakes of which could be the direction of
the entire state. Behind the scenes,
however, the liberal establishment was already deep into a plan to shore up
their power. After their stunning defeat
in the primary, a power shift became a real possibility. Should Rep Mark Jennings be elected Speaker
of the House, Wyoming’s lower house would take a decisive turn to the right. Spending bills would scrutinized, the size
and scope of government would be reduced and, if you listened to the media,
Wyoming education faced serious cuts.
The plan was simple: change the rules to mute the power of potential
conservative leadership. Legislatures
past required a two-thirds vote to override leadership—that had been the custom
and precedent. It was this procedure
that prevented the Fairness in Women’s Sports act from getting a fair hearing in
last year’s session. A series of changes
to the House rules and the ‘Wyoming Manual of Legislative Procedure” were
proposed shortly after the primary election.
Though the changes were subtle, essentially, they would allow virtually
anything to be overruled by a simple majority.
Potentially, any decision of a conservative Speaker of the House or
conservative Majority Floor Leader could be rendered moot. Five Democrats could push the minority
liberal establishment over the simple majority threshold for any measure. If these changes were approved, it wouldn’t
matter who was elected to House leadership.
On November 19, 2022 the House Republican Caucus met in
Casper to decide which side of the aisle would lead the chamber for the next
two years. Rep Mark Jennings was
narrowly defeated by two votes. For
those who closely watch the legislature, the Speaker’s race was a toss-up. What was a surprise to everyone was the
election of conservative member of the House Freedom Caucus Chip Neiman as
Majority Floor Leader. Usually, whichever
side controls the gavel also has the Majority Floor Leader position. Neiman’s win, by a single vote, left many in
the meeting speechless. The liberals
would control the speaker’s gavel and the conservatives would control the
agenda of the House.
After Neiman’s stunning election, the rules plan became all
the more important for both sides. House
conservatives knew that if the House rules were changed, the Majority Floor
Leader position would become largely symbolic.
For liberal Republicans, whom the Wyoming media euphemistically call
moderates, the stakes were just as high—Neiman, as Majority Floor Leader, could
stall any legislative agenda he wished to. It was at this point that the “non-partisan” Legislative
Service Office found an existing, convenient, previously unknown parliamentary
maneuver. Apparently, given the right
circumstances, any member could change the legislative agenda for the following
day by a simple majority vote.
This came as a complete shock to conservatives. In the previous legislative session, they had
attempted to do that very thing with the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act and
were held to a two-thirds standard. LSO
had given Albert Sommers’ slim majority the answer they had been looking
for. They didn’t need to change the rules
after all; just enshrine a parliamentary procedure from Mason’s Manual into
them. A slight difference to be sure,
but if their new rule was a direct quotation from Mason’s, the likelihood of
passage would be greatly increased.
It was at the point that Chip Neiman and Albert Sommers
began working on a compromise that could possibly satisfy both sides: change
existing rules so that neither the Majority Floor Leader nor the Speaker of the
House could be overridden without a two-thirds vote. It also eliminated the rule forcing the
Speaker of the House to assign a bill to a committee. It could still be done but the deal would
require a motion and a 2/3 vote. When
the House rules committee met, however, this bipartisan deal fell apart in a late-night
meeting.
On Monday, January 16 the House convened for their 5th
day of the legislature—the last day that changes to the rules could be
discussed. The floor debate lasted for
nearly an hour. Speaker Pro Tempore Clark
Stith accused the bringers of the rule change of being authoritarians. Casper Representative Steve Harshman likened
the rule compromise to creating a king and a duke. After the hyperbole subsided, Majority Floor
Leader Neiman and Speaker of the House Albert Sommers emphasized to the entire House
that the rule deal was an attempt at compromise—to create fairness between both
sides of the aisle.
In an overwhelming and unprecedented vote of 36-26, the
Wyoming House of Representatives approved the rule change for the 67th
Wyoming Legislature. What began as an
attempt to subvert any attempt by conservatives to gain ground in the Wyoming legislature
ended with deal that neither side could have seen coming. Two sides of the political aisle from the
same party came to a power-sharing compromise in a time that no one thought
compromise was possible.