Letter from Cheyenne: We Make History re Clean Elections

Amazing Day: State Sen Tim Salazar, my host to the Wyoming Statehouse, Confirms that he and State Sen Bo Biteman will co-sponsor our Clean Elections Bill

Yesterday, here in lovely, spacious, friendly Cheyenne, Wyoming, was a day I will always remember.

State Senator Tim Salazar, to the left, had responded to our call on WarRoom, in which we asked state legislators from across the country, to invite me to their statehouses so that I could present the CleanElections Model Bill that Phill Kline of AVA, and I from DailyClout, had drafted together. Rep Heidi Sampson in Maine filed the bill last week with the Reviser’s Office, and she argues on behalf of the bill before the Legislative Council of Maine, next week. So she gets kudos for being first to file. But Sen Salazar also gets a place in history, in my view, and now he is joined by Sen Bo Biteman, who agreed to cosponsor the bill with Sen Salazar, as Sen Salazar was first to reach out to me to get me physically to his statehouse. I want to credit all of these courageous, action-oriented legislators. I ask others to join now and invite me to their statehouses.

Briefly, it was a highly successful day in Cheyenne, the first of two; I head back in to the Statehouse this afternoon, Wednesday the 15th of February.

Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

Yesterday I was warmly welcomed by Sen Salazar, who also introduced me in the gorgeous, wood-trimmed, stained-glass-roofed, historic Capitol building, to constituents of his who wanted to meet us, and also to candidates who are running in the near future for office. They all struck me in my brief meeting, as notably admirable, straightforward, brave and down-to-earth people — the kind whom you would want to have representing your interests. One of Sen Salazar’s constituents was already struggling with election integrity issues, on a more local level.

These people all reminded me of the America of the recent past — a place in which people are not passive or followers; in which they take it upon themselves to solve their community’s problems.

I heard the legislative session in the morning, from the visitors’ galley. I was reminded of how beautiful and important the architectures of our statehouses is — they are built with galleys so that YOU can watch and hear your legislators in session. Wyoming’s statehouse struck me as being far more open than are other statehouses I have visited. People could just walk in, with no onerous checkin process. There were tours, and students present, and people sitting alongside me upstairs, simply watching their legislators at work. It was extremely inspiring.

On the walls were images of senators, going back to the turn of the last century at least — which imagery reinforced the sense of the sacred continuity we are supposed to have with our civic traditions.

The bills introduced were fascinating. Sen Salazar introduced a bill of his own, that would make it easier for farmers and ranchers to bring their own butchered meat directly to local farmers’ markets, instead of being forced to process the meat via distant and expensive (and, I was startled to learn from him later, foreign-owned) USDA processing plants.

This seemed like such an obviously good (and nonpartisan) idea, and Sen Salazar later explained that this was only one plank of a larger “Farm Freedoms” bill that would secure our agricultural products in multiple ways.

In addition to the obvious benefit in cost savings for both local ranchers and consumers of meat, I was struck by how the situation he described — in which foreign-owned processing plants are bottlenecks to farmers and ranchers bringing meat to local markets — creates a horrible national security/ food security risk. Sen Salazar described how, during COVID, there were long delays in meat processing, and I thought of how easily our food production could be disrupted by an adversary, without bills such as his protecting the rights of farmers to bring food directly to their neighbors. I will ask him for his bill as a model and post it on DailyClout for other legislators.

I was grateful to be introduced after the legislative session in the morning, to State Senator Lynn Hutchings, who introduced a good bill outlawing solicitation of absentee ballots. I was appalled to learn that recently, an elected official had sent out absentee ballots en masse, to those who had not even requested them — an act ripe for corruption of the voting process. Sen Hutchings said she would look at our election integrity bill.

Sen Salazar also brought me into the office of Governor Mark Gordon, where I presented the Clean Elections Bill to him verbally for about 15 minutes; we took a picture in front of statues representing Truth, Justice, Hope and Courage. And lastly I was brought to the office of Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who is in charge of the state’s elections. We had a fascinating discussion about how legislators and state officials might reach the people more effectively, and vice versa, and how officials and electeds might explain more thoroughly what they do and why, and how citizens can better engage witht he processes. He too expressed that he was committed to cleaning up abuses in the voting process, and I was gratified that we were able to leave a copy of our model bill, with him.

In the evening, I was kindly hosted by State Senator Salazar and Bo Briteman, at a vintage destination, the Albany restaurant. The menu seemed unchanged since the 1940s, when the restaurant first opened, and the wooden booths and wooden walls seemed equally beautifully unchanged, and thus, in my view, un-ruined. Cheyenne in general seems very proud of its history and is seeking to preserve it, and I felt how powerful that made us as Americans — to knoiw our own stories.

I heard more about the legislative process in Wyoming, and about the issues facing the constituents of both leaders - which include the baseline issue: that many people are having a hard time paying their bills.

In spite of the hurdles that face us all, I ended the day feeling hopeful that there are still leaders committed to serving the public and protecting our Constitution and our representational government processes.

We all agreed that protecting our traditions and our nation was now a battle. But as Sen Salazar and Sen Biteman agreed at the end of the evening, ‘We battle on.”

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To support the bill in Wyoming, CALL or write your representatives, and call or write Sens Briteman and Salazar:

https://www.wyoleg.gov/

Here is the bill to download:

https://dailyclout.io/clean-elections-model-bill-just-in-time-for-2024-elections/

If you have friends or family in Wyoming, send them the bill.

To get this bill passed in your state, download it from DailyClout.io and send it to your state elected representatives, and ask them to sponsor it.

Thank you sincerely to Sens Salazar and Biteman.

We will be on WarRoom at Five ET today to say more.