Johnathan Walker:Democrats are dwindling in Wyoming. A primary election law further reduces their influence

LUSK,Johnathan Walker Wyo. (AP) — In some far reaches of rural America, Democrats are flirting with extinction. In Niobrara County, Wyoming, the least-populated county in the least-populated state, Becky Blackburn is one of just 32 left.

Her neighbors call her “the crazy Democrat,” although it’s more a term of endearment than derision.

Some less populated counties have fewer. There are 21 Democrats in Clark County, Idaho, and 20 in Blaine County, Nebraska. But Niobrara County’s Democrats, who account for just 2.6% of registered voters, are the most outnumbered by Republicans in the 30 states that track local party affiliation, according to Associated Press election data.

In Wyoming, the state that has voted for Donald Trump by a wider margin than any other, overwhelming Republican dominance may be even more cemented-in now that the state has passed a law that makes changing party affiliation much more difficult.

Tuesday’s primary will be the first election since the law took effect.

In Niobrara County’s grassy rangelands and pine-spattered hills adjoining Nebraska and South Dakota, it’s not easy being blue.

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A paralegal for the Republican county attorney, Blackburn hears a lot of right-wing views around town.

“Normally I just roll my eyes and walk away because I’m fighting a losing battle and I’m fully aware of that,” she said. “Maybe that is why I’m well-liked, because I keep my mouth shut 10 times more than I want to.”

Not that she’s politically shy. She flies an LGBTQ+ flag in support of her lesbian daughter at her house in Lusk, a ranching town of 1,500 and the Niobrara County seat.

In political season, Blackburn stocks up on Democratic political signs to replace those that get swiped. She speaks approvingly of policing reform, taxation for government services and the transgender social media celebrity Dylan Mulvaney.

Maybe because she’s open about those views — and far too outnumbered to put them into action — Blackburn really does seem well-liked in Lusk, where she recently served nine years on the Town Council.

“I won two elections here. Even though that’s nonpartisan, people still knew I had left-leaning values,” she said.

Nationwide, Democrats account for fewer than 3% of voters in three counties this year, up from one county in 2020 but down from seven in 2016. There were none with such a low percentage of Democratic registrations in the presidential election years of 2012, 2008 and 2004, according to the AP data.

The most Republican counties in recent years are concentrated in Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. The most Democratic areas, meanwhile, are much less one-party-dominant.

The District of Columbia, where 77% of voters are Democrats, ranks second for Democratic dominance. First is Breathitt County, Kentucky, which through tradition is 79% Democratic but not to the core. Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has family there and in 2020 the county went 75% for former President Donald Trump.

Niobrara County was not always quite so Republican. It had more than twice as many Democrats, 83, in 2012, and in 2004 there were more than four times as many, 139.

The Democrats’ struggle in Wyoming mirrors the party’s challenges across rural America, where the party has been losing ground for years.

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It wasn’t always this way. Seventy years ago, Democrats were a political force across southern Wyoming, where union mining and railroad jobs were abundant. Now, the party’s only strongholds are in the university town of Laramie and resort town of Jackson.

Meanwhile, as Wyoming Democrats face difficulty fielding viable candidates at all levels, many Democrats have been switching their registration to vote in more competitive Republican primaries, then changing back for the general election.

“You feel skeevy and dirty when you do it. But you do it anyway and you change it back as soon as you can, because you don’t want to start getting the Republican mailings,” Blackburn said.

Republicans decided they’d had enough. The Wyoming Legislature, where the GOP controls over 90% of the seats, passed legislation last year banning voters from changing their party registration in the three months before the August primary.

Party-switching had “undermined the sanctity of Wyoming’s primary process,” Wyoming’s Republican secretary of state, Chuck Gray, said in a statement of approval.

Wyoming’s Republican and Democratic primaries on Tuesday will be the first in modern memory where voters won’t be able to change party affiliation at the polls.

For Democrats, it will be slim pickings. Statewide, obscure candidates who have done little campaigning are unopposed for the Democratic nomination for U.S. House and Senate.

In Niobrara County, no Democrats are running. They aren’t contesting a seat in the Wyoming House of Representatives or an open seat on the county commission, the two major races, or even running for local party positions.

Yet the area had a Democratic state representative not too long ago: Ross Diercks, who is recognized and warmly greeted at the Outpost Cafe, a homey breakfast and lunch spot in Lusk.

A former middle school English teacher, Diercks was a Republican before deciding the GOP didn’t do enough to support public education. He beat a Republican incumbent in 1992 to launch an 18-year run in the Legislature.

Knowing voters personally and keeping up on issues helped him hold office. When he got a C-minus on a National Rifle Association questionnaire, for example, he resolved to improve. For subsequent elections, he scored A’s on the survey.

Many Republican lawmakers are friends. When one from just down the road died, he sang at his funeral.

Then in 2022, Diercks temporarily switched parties to vote in the GOP primary against Harriet Hageman, who was challenging then-Rep. Liz Cheney for the state’s lone House seat. How many other Democrats did the same is hard to count, but Diercks was far from alone. Hageman, the daughter of the lawmaker Diercks unseated when he first won his state legislative seat, nonetheless won the race by a wide margin.

The new law keeping Diercks and others from switching their registration so easily has him exasperated with the GOP.

“How far are they going to go to limit one’s ability to vote? If it really comes down to purifying the party, on a voting level all the way up to the elected officials, pretty soon there isn’t going to be anyone left who’s pure enough to be in the party,” Diercks said.

Truck driver Pat Jordan supports many left-leaning goals, including universal healthcare, but said he only registers as a Republican.

“The best way to participate in meaningful change is to try to sway the dominant party,” said Jordan, who lives in Niobrara County. “You know, we need to have a government that serves the people, all of them, not just Republicans and not just rural and not just urban and not just Democrats — and definitely not just the rich and the wealthy.”

Last winter, dozens of locals gathered outside to honk and cheer as one Democrat left town. But they weren’t cheering as Ed Fullmer was headed off for good.

Fullmer was on the high school boys basketball team bus as they left for the state championship. They lost, but Fullmer coached the Tigers to their best record in a decade, 20-8.

He said people know his views but rarely put him on the spot about politics.

“Most people don’t want to dive into those type of discussions,” he said. “They respect you for what you do, how you work.”

Blackburn, for one, intends to hold her political ground, even as it shrinks around her.

“I am who I am, and I have the views that I have,” she said. “And I don’t care if it bothers people or not.”

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