Wyoming Democratic Party | |
|---|---|
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| Chairman | Joe Barbuto |
| Senate Minority Leader | Chris Rothfuss |
| House Minority Leader | Mike Yin |
| Headquarters | Cheyenne, Wyoming |
| Membership(August 27, 2025) | 41,785[1] |
| National affiliation | Democratic Party |
| Colors | Blue |
| Wyoming Senate | 2 / 31 |
| Wyoming House of Representatives | 6 / 62 |
| United States Senate | 0 / 2 |
| United States House Of Representatives | 0 / 1 |
| Statewide Executive Offices | 0 / 5 |
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| wyodems | |
TheWyoming Democratic Party is the affiliate of the state’sDemocratic Party, headquartered inCheyenne, Wyoming. The party was strong during Wyoming'sterritorial days, but suffered a decline in its early statehood. It rose to prominence again from the 1930s to the 1950s before experiencing another decline.
The party is led byChris Rothfuss in thestate senate andMike Yin in thestate house. The party currently has very weak electoral power in the state, and is one of the weakest affiliates of the national Democratic Party. It currently controls none of Wyoming's statewide and/or federal elected offices and very few seats in the Wyoming Legislature.
On September 2, 1869, Wyoming held its firstterritorial elections and the Democratic party won in a landslide winning all nine seats in the Council and all twelve seats in the House of Representatives.[2] In 1889, the party selected fifteen delegates to the Wyoming constitutional convention to draft its constitution to be submitted for statehood that includedHenry S. Elliott,George W. Baxter,Anthony C. Campbell,Henry A. Coffeen,William C. Irvine, James A. Johnston, Edward J. Morris, John M. McCandlish, Caleb P. Organ, Louis J. Palmer, John L. Russell, Charles H. Burritt,Douglas A. Preston,Thomas R. Reid, and Noyes Baldwin.[3]
In the 1920 elections the party was defeated in a landslide by the Republicans withWarren G. Harding flipping the state in thepresidential election after gaining 22.29% fromCharles Evans Hughes' performance in1916, losing seven of their ten senate seats, and losing ten of their eleven house seats withThurman Arnold of Albany county as the only Democratic member of the state house.[4] However, the party improved in the 1922 elections and gained twenty-two seats in the state house.
In the 1934 elections the party won every statewide office for the only time in its history and took control of the state senate for the first time since statehood.[5] However, in the 1938 elections the party lost all three of the five statewide offices and lost control of both legislative chambers and since then has never held a majority in the state senate and only held a majority in the state house for four years.
In 1958, the Democrats regained control of the state house for the first time in twenty years.[6] The Democrats lost the state house in the 1960 election.[7]
On May 11, 1974, delegates to the party's state convention voted to add the impeachment of President Richard Nixon to the state party's platform.[8] In the 1984 state legislative elections the party lost seven seats in the House of Representatives due to GovernorEdgar Herschler's unpopular decision to veto a homeowners tax credit program stating that it would subsidize homeowners who did not need it.[9]
Chuck Graves, who was then the party's chairman, criticized theDemocratic National Committee for including Wyoming as a state that was too Republican and would be written off during the1992 presidential election along with Nevada, Idaho, and Utah.[10]
During the2002 elections the national party gave the party $25,000.[11] During the2006 elections the national party conducted afifty-state strategy under ChairmanHoward Dean's leadership and invested large amounts of money in swing and red states. In 2005 the national committee started sending $10,000 per month for staff support and in 2006 it paid for field and communications directors and invested $100,000 into the party.[12] In the2006 House electionGary Trauner was narrowly defeated by RepresentativeBarbara Cubin and was the closest the party had come to winning Wyoming's federal House seat sinceTeno Roncalio won reelection in 1976.
During the 2020 election, the party reimagined its presidential preference caucus into the state's first ranked choice voting election. Initially planned as a hybrid in-person and mail-in caucus, due to the COVID-19 pandemic the party eventually shifted to mail-in only format.[13] Ultimately, the 2020 Wyoming Democratic caucus voter turnout was more than double than in 2016.[14]
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