Welcome. Welcome, everyone. It is great to have
you with us today. Really great to be here. Whether
you are prepping for a big meeting, maybe catching
up on some history, or you're just insanely curious
about how the wheels of government actually turn,
you are exactly in the right place. Absolutely.
Today, we are taking a deep dive into a topic
that, well, it might seem a little niche at first
glance. It might, yeah. But I promise you, it
is packed with some incredible stories. Today's
single source is a Wikipedia article titled,
List of United States Senators from Wyoming.
And that is exactly the kind of deep dive I love,
because when we examine the historical ledger
of a state's congressional delegation, we aren't
just looking at, you know, a list of names and
dates. Right. It's not just a spreadsheet. No,
not at all. We are essentially reading a living
record about state's history. I mean, Wyoming
has been a state for. well over 130 years. That's
a long time. It is. And in all that time, across
all those decades and shifting political eras,
only 21 individuals have ever served as a United
States senator from the state. Just 21. Yeah,
just 21. And by looking closely at the timelines
of those 21 people, we can learn a tremendous
amount about how political power is built, how
it gets interrupted by unforeseen events, and
how it's strategically transferred from one generation
to the next. Okay, let's unpack this. Because
if you... just glance at the raw data, you see
columns of dates and political affiliation. Right.
But our mission today is to look past those dry
tables. We want to uncover the fascinating human
drama hiding inside that timeline. There's a
lot of it. We're talking about raw ambition,
completely unpredictable tragedies, brilliant
political maneuvers, and even a few multi -generational
political dynasties. Quite the mix. 21 people
over more than a century. That is a highly exclusive
club. It really is. And the drama of this particular
club starts literally on the very first day of
statehood. Or, well. Or a bit after. Right. It
starts a few months after day one, to be precise.
Yes. I was looking at the timeline of the early
days, and there is this bizarre historical quirk
right at the top. Oh, the gap. Yeah, the gap.
So Wyoming officially became a state on July
10th, 1890. They are admitted to the Union. There
are celebrations. It is a huge milestone for
them. A massive deal. But they didn't. actually
elect their senators for whole months, four whole
months. The seats were just marked vacant from
July to November of 1890. It's like showing up
to a party but refusing to come inside for hours.
What exactly was going on there? It is a striking
detail of early American statehood. You have
to remember that in 1890, the logistics of standing
up a brand new state government were just immense.
I can imagine. They had to transition from a
territorial legislature to a state legislature.
organize the new political apparatus, and then
actually hold the votes. And people didn't vote
for senators back then. Exactly. Until 1913,
U .S. senators were not elected by the general
public. They were chosen by the state legislature.
Wow. Okay. So that four -month gap was essentially
the time it took for the newly minted state of
Wyoming to get its administrative house in order,
convene its newly elected state lawmakers, and
hash out who they were going to send to Washington.
That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. So once they
finally got their act together in November of
1890, they sent two men to Washington. Joseph
M. Carey took what is called the Class II seat,
and a man named Francis E. Warren took the Class
I seat. Right. Actually, before we get into Warren,
because his story is wild, can you clarify what
these different classes mean? Why are they split
into Class I and Class II? It is a crucial piece
of the puzzle for understanding how the Senate
works. The framers of the Constitution didn't
want the entire Senate turned over in a single
election year. That would be chaotic. Total chaos.
They wanted stability. So they divided all Senate
seats into three classes. Every two years, only
one class, which is roughly one third of the
Senate, is up for reelection. OK. When a brand
new state like Wyoming joins the union, their
first two senators are randomly assigned to two
different classes. So random. Yes, to ensure
that their term. will always be staggered moving
forward. That way, the state will never have
both of its Senate seats up for regular election
at the exact same time. Got it. So Kerry gets
the class two seat and Warren gets the class
one seat. And Francis E. Warren is a name that
just dominates this entire historical timeline.
Without a doubt. What's fascinating here is if
you trace Warren's electoral history, it is a
total roller coaster right out of the gate. Yeah.
He is elected in 1890. But because of that staggered
class system we just talked about, his initial
term is incredibly short. He serves until March
of 1893, and then he actually loses his reelection
bid in the state legislature. So he is just out.
He's out. And from what the timeline shows, his
seat just sits empty after he loses. Yes, his
seat sits vacant for another two years. Two years.
Which is another incredible quirk of this era.
The state legislature literally could not agree
on a candidate to replace him, so they just left
the seat empty. That is wild. But Warren does
not let that be the end of his political career.
He waits out the deadlock. He comes back two
years later in 1895, and this time he manages
to win the other Senate seat, the Class II seat.
He switches seats? And once he gets that second
chance in Washington, he absolutely refuses to
let go. He really does not. From the moment he
reenters the Senate on March 4th, 1895, he stays
there until his death on November 24th, 1929.
Incredible. He wins reelection in 1899, 1905,
1911, and then continues winning even after the
rules change in 1913 and the public starts voting
directly. Oh, right. The 17th Amendment. Exactly.
He wins popular elections in 1918, 1924, and
1928. He is the longest serving senator in Wyoming's
history, spanning nearly four decades of early
statehood. Just think about the sheer endurance
required for that kind of run. I mean, to you
listening right now, imagine holding on to a
singular high pressure leadership role for that
long. It's exhausting just to think about. Right.
Warren starts in the rugged early days of 1890s
statehood. He serves through the turn of the
20th century. He is there for the entirety of
World War I. He navigates the booming economy
of the Roaring Twenties. And he stays in office
right up to the edge of the Great Depression
in late 1929. The world completely changed around
him. The entire world. The horse and buggy gave
way to the automobile. The nation became a global
superpower. And yet his name remained a constant
on the ballot. It is a level of political survival
that is hard to fathom today. He outlasted shifting
demographics, changing political tides and an
entirely new century. He became a fixture of
the federal government. But while Warren's story
is one of incredible longevity, the historical
record also shows us the complete opposite end
of the spectrum. It shows us the extreme fragility
of the office. That is a really great point,
because for every Iron Man who serves for 40
years. There are these stark reminders of how
unpredictable these Senate seats actually were.
If you track the dates in office, you see a surprisingly
high number of senators who simply died while
serving. It completely disrupts the timeline.
The historical narrative is punctuated by these
sudden, permanent interruptions. And every time
it happens, it sends a massive shockwave through
the state's political ecosystem. We just mentioned
Francis E. Warren, who died in office in 1929.
But you keep reading down the list and it happens
again and again. It does. Just a few years later,
in 1933, Senator John B. Kendrick dies in office.
Move forward to 1954 and Senator Lester C. Hunt.
dies in office. Jump all the way to the modern
era in 2007, and Senator Craig Thomas dies in
office. Whenever a sitting senator passes away,
the political landscape is thrown into immediate
chaos. The balance of power in Washington can
shift overnight. Suddenly, the governor of the
state has the immense power to appoint someone
to fill the void until a special election can
be held. It is a massive responsibility and it
can alter the trajectory of federal legislation.
And perhaps the most dramatic or maybe the most
tragic example of this fragility involves a man
named Keith Thompson. This part of the timeline
really stopped me in my tracks. It is a very
somber footnote in the congressional records.
Keith Thompson was a Republican who ran a successful
campaign for the Senate in 1960. He went through
the grueling primary process. He won the general
election in November and he was officially slated
to take office. But he never did. No. He suffered
a heart attack and died in December before the
new Congress even began. He never actually got
to take his seat and serve the term he had just
won. That is just heartbreaking. You campaign,
you win the trust of the state, and then you
are gone before you can cast a single vote on
the Senate floor. And the political ripple effect
of that specific tragedy is wild. Because Thompson
was a Republican, the voters had clearly chosen
a Republican to represent them for the next six
years. Right. But his sudden death created a
vacancy. The governor at the time was a Democrat,
and so he appointed a Democrat, Joe Hickey. To
begin the term in 1961. It is a massive swing
in representation, completely decided by a twist
of fate. And I want to be very clear here for
our listeners. We are just tracking the historical
pendulum swings of voter preference as recorded
in the source. Exactly. We are totally impartial
here. Right. Without taking any side, we are
just looking at the facts. And it's fascinating
to watch that pendulum swing throughout the middle
of the 20th century. You see the state seamlessly
hand power between Democratic control with figures
like Joe Hickey, Lester C. Hunt and Gail W. McGee
and Republican control. The voters are clearly
evaluating the individuals and the historical
moment rather than just voting along strict party
lines. And speaking of individuals, here's where
it gets really interesting. We have to talk about
Joseph C. O'Mahony. Oh, O'Mahony. Yes. Because
when these sudden vacancies happen, it triggers
a high stakes game of political musical chairs.
And no one navigated that chaos quite like Oma
Honey. His timeline reads like a movie script.
It really is a remarkable career arc. Let's break
down how he navigated the system. Oma Honey enters
the picture in late 1933. Remember Senator John
B. Kendrick, who died in office? Right, in 1933.
O'Mahony, a Democrat, is appointed by the governor
to continue Kendrick's term. Then the following
year, in 1934, the voters officially elect him
to finish that term and simultaneously elect
him to a full six -year term of his own. So he
uses that initial appointment to launch a massive
career. Exactly. He serves as a Democratic senator
for merely 20 years. He wins reelection in 1940
and again in 1946. He becomes an absolute fixture
in the class one seat. Deeply entrenched. Very
deeply entrenched in Washington politics. shaping
legislation through the end of the Great Depression
and the entirety of World War II. But then, after
20 years of stability, the political winds shift.
In the 1952 election, O'Mahony loses his re -election
bid to a Republican challenger, Frank A. Barrett.
So his term ends in early 1953. After two decades
of power, he is out. He is out. Normally, when
a politician loses after 20 years, you assume
their career in Washington is over. They pack
up their desk, head back home, and enjoy retirement.
That is the standard expectation, yeah. But the
historical timeline shows us something entirely
different. In June of 1954, just a year and a
half after O'Mahony leaves office, the state's
other senator, Lester C. Hunt, who holds the
class two seat, tragically dies in office. There's
that fragility again. Right. An interim senator
is appointed for a few months, but a special
election is quickly scheduled for November of
1954 to officially finish out Hunt's term. And
who decides to step out of retirement and run
in that special election? Joseph C. O'Mahony.
He is the ultimate political survivor. He loses
his class one seat in 1952, waits in the wings
for less than two years, and then jumps right
back into the Senate by winning the class two
seat in 1954. He just hops over to the other
side of the delegation. He does. And to convince
the voters to send you right back to Washington
after they just voted you out requires an incredible
amount of political capital and resilience. It
really shows how deeply ingrained some of these
figures were in the state's political identity.
And that brings up another fascinating pattern.
In a state with a smaller population, certain
familiar names tend to resurface over the decades.
You start to see the formation of actual political
dynasties. If we connect this to the bigger picture,
clear familial dynasties emerge from the historical
record. Early on in the state's history, we see
the Kerry family. Right. Joseph M. Carey was
the very first person to hold the class two seat,
serving from 1890 to 1895. Decades later, his
son, Robert D. Carey, is elected to that exact
same class two seat, serving from 1930 to 1937.
The name recognition alone carries a tremendous
amount of weight with the voters. And the Simpson
family is arguably an even more prominent example
of this. Millward Simpson serves a term in the
Senate in the 1960s, from 1962 to 1967. And then
a little over a decade later... his son, Alan
Simpson, arrives on the scene. He does. Alan
Simpson serves from 1979 all the way to 1997.
It is wild to see how political influence can
be passed down like a family heirloom. Which
brings us to one of the most brilliant pieces
of political strategy in this entire history.
It involves Alan Simpson's initial entry into
the Senate in the late 1970s, and it reveals
how deeply these politicians understood the unwritten
rules and mechanics of Washington power. Yes.
I was so excited to get to this part. I was looking
at the dates for Alan Simpson and I noticed something
strange about when his term actually started.
Usually a new senator takes office in early January,
right? But the timeline for his predecessor is
completely misaligned. Walk me through what happened
there. It is a masterful maneuver. Here is the
setup. It is the late 1970s. The incumbent Republican
senator, Clifford Hansen, has decided he is going
to retire. He was elected in 1966, reelected
in 1970, and by 1978, he is ready to step down.
Okay. Alan Simpson runs for the open seat in
the 1978 election, and he wins comfortably. Now,
under normal circumstances, Simpson would wait
until January 3rd, 1979, to be sworn in alongside
all the other newly elected freshman senators
from across the country. Right. January 3rd is
when the new Congress officially begins. That
is the standard procedure. But they don't wait
for the standard procedure. Instead, Clifford
Hansen retires and officially resigns from his
seat a few days early. He steps down on December
31st, 1978. Wait, so Hansen just quits a few
days before his term is naturally over. Is that
even allowed? It is entirely legal, and it was
a highly calculated move. By resigning on December
31st, Hansen created a brief technical vacancy
in the Senate seat. Because Alan Simpson had
already been elected by the voters to serve the
next full term, the governor simply appointed
Simpson to fill that tiny three -day vacancy
starting on January 1st, 1979. Okay, so Simpson
gets sworn in on January 1st instead of January
3rd. That is only a two -day difference. I mean,
listener, imagine finding a loophole to get in
line a day before everyone else. Why go through
all that administrative hassle just to start
48 hours early? Because in the United States
Senate, Seniority dictates absolutely everything.
It is the currency of their own. Really? Just
those two days? Yes. Seniority determines which
committees you are assigned to, whether you get
to chair those committees, the physical office
space you are given in Washington, and your overall
ability to move legislation forward. By stepping
down early, Hansen essentially allowed Simpson
to jump the seniority queue. When the rest of
the freshman class of 1979 arrived on January
3rd to be sworn in, Alan Simpson was already
a sitting U .S. senator. Oh, wow. So he technically
had more seniority than every single other new
senator who was elected that year. Exactly. He
was legally placed ahead of all of them in the
Senate hierarchy. And that tiny head start pays
massive dividends over the course of an 18 -year
career. It gave Wyoming a disproportionate advantage
in committee assignments and legislative leverage.
That is just brilliant gamesmanship. You secure
the seat at the ballot box, but you secure the
power by knowing how to manipulate the calendar.
It shows that political success isn't just about
winning the election. It's about understanding
the rulebook. Absolutely and that kind of strategic
thinking really sets the stage for the modern
era of Wyoming's representation. If we pull the
timeline all the way up to the present day, as
we look at the political landscape in 2026, the
delegation looks very stable, but it is actually
on the verge of a major historical shift. The
current representation consists entirely of Republicans.
You have Representative Harriet Hageman holding
the state's single seat in the House of Representatives.
And over in the Senate, the two seats are held
by John Barrasso and Cynthia Loomis. John Barrasso
has been there quite a while now. He is the senior
senator serving since 2007. And it is interesting.
His origin story in the Senate directly echoes
the history of sudden vacancies we were just
talking about. It does. He wasn't initially elected
to the seat. He was appointed by the governor
to continue the term of Senator Craig Thomas,
who passed away in office. Barrasso then won
a special election in 2008 to finish that term.
And he has successfully defended the seat ever
since winning in 2012, 2018, and most recently
in 2024. He is firmly locked into that class
one seat. But the shifting horizon is happening
over in the class two seat. Cynthia Lemus was
elected in 2020 and took office in early 2021.
However, as noted in the source, she is retiring
at the end of her current term. Which means that
class two seat is going to be wide open for the
first time in years. Precisely. Her term concludes
at the end of the current cycle, meaning the
seat will be heavily contested in the 2026 election.
And what is remarkable from a historical perspective
is that whoever wins that race. will become only
the 22nd person in history to hold a Senate seat
for Wyoming. That is incredible to think about.
After over 130 years of statehood, through world
wars, economic collapses, and massive societal
shifts, we're only just now looking for person
number 22 to join the club. This raises an important
question, one that goes to the heart of why we
examine these historical timelines in the first
place. It is so easy to look at a list of dates
and view them as abstract facts. Yeah, just dry
data. But this unbroken chain of 21 people represents
the entire federal legislative history of a sovereign
state. Every single time one of those early vacancies
happened in the 1890s, every time a governor
had to make a sudden appointment after a tragic
midterm death, every time a senator like Clifford
Hansen resigned three days early to manipulate
the seniority system, All of those moments profoundly
shaped the laws of the United States. They determined
who sat on powerful committees, who cast the
deciding vote on critical pieces of legislation,
and how federal resources were allocated across
the entire country. So what does this all mean?
If we look back at the journey we have taken
in this deep dive, we started with a bizarre
four -month delay where a brand new state did
not even send anyone to Washington. We saw Francis
E. Warren establish a nearly four -decade reign
of political endurance. bridging the gap between
the Gilded Age and the Great Depression. A true
Iron Man. We navigated a maze of tragic, sudden
vacancies that repeatedly threw the balance of
power into chaos. We watched Joseph C .L. Mahoney
lose his job after 20 years, only to orchestrate
an unbelievable comeback by winning the state's
other Senate seat just two years later. The comeback
kid. We saw the Kerry and Simpson families build
generational influence that spanned decades.
We uncovered the cunning strategy of a three
-day early resignation to cheat the seniority
system. And now we're looking right at the impending
retirement of Cynthia Loomis, knowing that the
next chapter of this history is about to be written.
It is a remarkable narrative of human ambition
and strategic survival. It really is. And to
you, our listener, I hope this deep dive reminds
you that historical data is never just numbers
on a page. Behind every rigid table and perfectly
aligned column, there is a vibrant highlight
reel of human drama. There are people strategizing.
failing, making incredible comebacks, and leaving
their permanent mark on the direction of the
country. And I will leave you with a final thought
to mull over as you go about your day. Think
about the representatives for your own state
or region. We usually just see the names on the
ballot, but how many of those seats hold secret
histories of strategic early resignations, incredible
comebacks, or dynastic families just waiting
to be uncovered? That is a fantastic question
to end on. How much human drama is hiding in
your own state's history? Thank you so much for
joining us on this deep dive. We love unpacking
these complex histories with you, and we cannot
wait to do it again next time. Take care, everyone.