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Friday, September 20, 2002
204 Craziness of running for statewide office
“Despite all the important things that were said here today,” Democrat Primary Governor Candidate Paul Hickey said to Dave Freudenthal, “do you suppose that the one thing people will remember was Bill Sniffin throwing a candy bar through the air to Eli Bebout?”
That comment was related to me following a highly informative discussion of economic development by nine Wyoming gubernatorial candidates in Cheyenne last June 10.
As part of my primary gubernatorial campaign, we created something called a “Sniffin Candy Bar.” During my part of the forum, I held up one of my bars and mentioned that “the other candidates keep asking me for these bars when they get low on energy.”
At that, Eli interrupted me, and asked for me to pass one down, which I did, a little like John Elway throwing a touchdown pass to Rod Smith. The pass was good and the catch was probably even better. It brought down the house.
A distraction? Yes, but that is sort of how political campaigning sometimes works out here in Wyoming.
We had a total of nine candidates running and we saw a number of memorable events.
One so-called statewide meeting featured seven candidates and 21 listeners, of which I think seven were from out of state. That meant two listeners per candidate. Another event, which didn’t appear to be that big a deal and only attracted four “goober” candidates, featured an audience of 600!
I made one 580-mile round trip where the candidates were barely introduced and not allowed to speak at all.
Perhaps the craziest forum was the very first one. It occurred during the cocktail party of the Wyoming Press Association’s convention in Casper back in January.
It was loud and there was a wall of background noise. Yet, great questions were asked by members of the press and us candidates needed to be able to think on our feet and fast. WPA Manager Jim Angell caught some heat for that event, but I thought it was great.
Contrast that with one held in a Casper bingo parlor in July with lots of drinking and smoking and conversation and bar noise that truly drowned out the participants.
John Barrasso, the Casper surgeon who ran a statewide race for U. S. Senate six years ago, gave me some tips about running such a race this year. One of them was to get ready for the parades.
I had no idea there were no many parades in Wyoming. We made it to seven of them and I am sure we missed more than we attended.
During Flaming Gorge Days in Green River, my sister Susan, who lives down there, was going to represent my campaign in the parade. She had her old Ford Taurus for sale. She covered up her car with Bill Sniffin for Governor signs but left the “for sale” signs in the back windows.
“I really hoped I might get a nibble on selling my car, “ she said.
Candidate Freudenthal was in that parade and he walked up to my sister and suggested that she might consider removing the “for sale” signs.
When my sis looked at the car again, it was obviously that it looked like Bill Sniffin for governor is definitely FOR SALE. Thanks, Dave.
One of the problems in running in a statewide race is how are you supposed to dress at all the different events and different locales?
We are in Wyoming, after all – does that mean a big hat and cowboy boots all the time?
Since I was running as a businessman, my uniform of choice was a sport coat or suit and a tie. I am not a rancher and just felt it would be phony to dress that way. That was probably a big mistake.
But even I knew that you rarely wear a coat and tie when you go to Jackson.
Oscar-winning song writer Randy Newman has a hilarious song out called “Big Hat, No Cattle.” That pretty well described how I felt in my cowboy get-up.
My wife Nancy and I walked the Memorial Day parade in Jackson and it was a lot of fun. I did wear my western clothes and we pranced along in our vests, boots and hats.
Two parades were done in 100+ temperatures, Casper and Sheridan. We roasted. Three others were in absolutely perfect 70s weather under blue skies, Buffalo, Douglas and Powell. Our hometown Lander parade was hot, but not at the century mark.
We governor candidates all got the chance to address the state GOP convention in Jackson in May. There, we wore suits.
Since Vice-President Dick Cheney was going to be speaking that afternoon, we all were using the same podium that was flown in for the Veep’s speech.
As we got ready to go on stage, a professional handler approached and asked us to hold out our hands. We were then drenched in some sort of antiseptic solution and we were told they would prefer if we didn’t touch the podium and absolutely couldn’t put anything on it, like a bottle of water. Notes were probably okay. We got through that but it was quite an experience and just one more example of the odd events that can occur in a statewide political campaign in our wonderful state.
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