SALON

Tuesday, Mar 6, 2012 8:09 AM UTC

Picking Delegates In Wyoming Is Not A Simple Task

By

Topics: From the Wires,

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Wyoming is one Super Tuesday state that won’t settle on a Republican candidate for president until well after Tuesday’s voting.

Choosing GOP presidential delegates in Wyoming is a complex and protracted affair involving 20 days of straw polling, as well as five days of caucusing that begins Tuesday.

“I know it’s confusing for people if they’re not in Wyoming. Or if they’re from Wyoming,” said Tammy Hooper, the state party chairwoman.

The state GOP left it up to local party officials to schedule their county conventions, where caucusing for 12 national delegates will occur, as they saw fit any time between Tuesday and Saturday. As a result, five national Republican delegates will be selected by five Wyoming counties on Super Tuesday. Seven Wyoming counties will choose seven more national delegates on Wednesday and Saturday.

Some didn’t mind caucusing during the work week. Others decided Saturday would be more convenient for working people, Hooper said.

“It’s local control,” said Jack Mueller, a retiree and longtime Republican caucus- and convention-goer from Cheyenne. “The government is best that governs the least.”

Only county convention delegates chosen at Republican precinct caucuses in February can vote.

Straw polls at those local precinct caucuses from Feb. 9-29 gave Mitt Romney 39 percent, Rick Santorum 32 percent, Ron Paul 21 percent and Newt Gingrich 8 percent. Romney declared victory last week, saying in a statement, “It’s a thrill to have taken first place in Wyoming.”

The straw poll was nonbinding, however. The real process begins Tuesday — one reason, perhaps, why no candidate has run television or radio ads to speak of in Wyoming, much less campaigned in the state.

The county conventions will choose fewer than half of Wyoming’s delegates to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., in August. Wyoming’s status as a thoroughly Republican state with a Republican governor, Republican congressional delegation and Republican legislative majorities gives it an unusually hefty 14 at-large national delegates.

The at-large delegates will be chosen at the Republican state convention in mid-April.

Wyoming’s two Republican national committee members and Hooper, the state party chair, are automatic national delegates. That brings Wyoming’s total delegate count this year to 29 — more than some states with much larger populations, including Connecticut, Oregon and Nevada.

Yet the state hardly looms large in the overall delegate process. “Not only the media, but the campaigns, the national campaigns, don’t seem to pay a lot of attention to Wyoming,” Mueller said.

That was true in 2008 when Romney won the state. The Republican National Committee docked Wyoming half its 28 national convention votes because it moved its caucuses to a single day in early January, breaking national party rules in a bid to have more say in the selection of a nominee.

This year, not only did Wyoming Republicans decide against jostling ahead of other states, they returned to their old tradition of multiple days of county caucusing.

“We just don’t hear anything about little old Wyoming,” Mueller said. “But we’re here.”

More Mead Gruver.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
171 points172 points | 124 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
161 points162 points | 111 comments
vote
Ted Cruz against the world - How the Junior Senator is igniting the GOP civil war
82 points83 points | 21 comments
vote
Judge tells lesbian couple to separate or lose kids: "unmarried sexual relationships -- including straight ones – can be grounds for losing child custody"
33 points34 points | 2 comments
vote
Anonymous rallies behind Kaitlyn Hunt
24 points25 points | 21 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations