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CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Republicans dominate the Wyoming Legislature without relying on the old political trick of gerrymandering, or adjusting political boundaries to gain an unfair advantage in elections, an analysis by The Associated Press found.
The GOP controls 78 of the 90 seats in the Wyoming Legislature for the largest statehouse majority in the country. But there's no statistical evidence Republicans have gained an advantage in Wyoming by clustering or dividing groups of voters.
Rather, the number of statehouse seats occupied by Republicans and Democrats closely tracks with the ratio of voters choosing Republican and Democratic statehouse candidates statewide in the 2016 election, taking into account candidates who ran unopposed last year.
Newly elected Wyoming Republican Party Chairman Ryan Mulholland of Sheridan credited his party's values for the GOP's overwhelming dominance. "The GOP is strong in Wyoming because of the common interest among Wyomingites in the long-standing conservative principles that make up the heart of the Wyoming Republican Party," Mulholland said.
The Wyoming Democratic Party, meanwhile, is more organized than ever before and doing a better job getting its message across to voters, Democratic Chairman Joe Barbuto said.
"For too long we've allowed Republicans and conservatives to define who we are," Barbuto said. "We do have ground to make up, there's no doubt about it, but the energy and momentum are on our side."
Barbuto was a state representative from Rock Springs from 2008 to 2013 when he was ousted by Republican Rep. Mark Baker. Barbuto was in the Legislature the last time lawmakers redrew political boundaries in response to the 2010 census.
"There is concern around the state about, I don't know if it's so much about gerrymandering, but about disenfranchised voters," he said.
Lawmakers in 2012 approved a redistricting plan in response to a 14 percent increase in Wyoming's population. The new boundaries allocated more political representation to the central and western parts of the state and less to sparsely populated eastern counties, where the changes met resistance.
An independent commission could liberate lawmakers to spend more time on other issues and remove any impression of conflict of interest, Barbuto said.
Gerrymandering in congressional redistricting is not an issue in Wyoming, which has a single at-large U.S. House district won last year by Republican Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
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