What's At Stake in Wyoming Tomorrow

Friday, January 04, 2008

The rundown on tomorrow's Wyoming caucus...

What's at stake: 12 of the state's 14 delegates. AP: Wyoming Republicans have tried to keep Saturday's county conventions relevant by sending all 12 delegates chosen to the national convention. They will hold back all but two that were chosen at the state convention in May.

Usually the state would have 27 delegates to the convention, but the national Republican party punished the state for having their caucus so early by taking away half the state's total.

By comparison, 40 were at stake in Iowa.

Phil Roberts, a history professor at University of Wyoming, declared during an appearance on XM's POTUS08, “It's pretty widely split here. There's no consensus among Wyoming Republicans about who they're going to back… It was an audacious experiment to see if Wyoming would get some attention [in the presidential nominating process] One of the serious problems is we really don't have a media center in this state, and we have a vast amount of area to cover. Retail politics is all that works out here.”

Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and Ron Paul have visited the state in recent months. The most prominent endorsement, that of former governor Jim Geringer, has gone to Huckabee, but Roberts notes, “endorsements don’t count for much here.”

Also note Joe Schloss, chairman of the Teton County Republican Party, said, "I will say that in the state, and particularly in Teton County, we’ve only had two very active campaigns. One has been Mitt Romney’s and one has been Ron Paul’s. We’ve had a small presence involving some of the other candidates, but they don’t appear to have a strong organization here."

01/04 12:30 PM Share