• At contentious town hall, Trump, Hageman supporters want improved healthcare, financial restraint.

By Charley Sutherland
Jackson Hole News&Guide
Via- Wyoming News Exchange

JACKSON — Jesse Wade, 40, a lifelong Lincoln County resident, had come to see his congressional representative with a specific concern in mind, a concern that had nothing to do with federal layoffs.

Wade’s wife, a disabled veteran, gets treatment at the Afton clinic run by the Department of Veterans Affairs. He wanted to ask Harriet Hageman, a Republican and Wyoming’s only voice in the U.S. House of Representatives, what she could do to improve the quality of that care. But Wade never asked his question.

Another veteran beat him to the punch at Hageman’s contentious town hall meeting on Thursday at the Afton Civic Center. That person asked Hageman a similar question about veterans’ care, saying he often pays for expensive medication out of pocket.

Hageman acknowledged the VA underperforms in rural areas and pledged to bring attention to the issue in Washington. She also said she’d try to bring her friend, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, on a trip to Wyoming to learn about serving veterans in remote places.

Wade was impressed by Hageman’s response.

“The fact that she’s willing to look into it and talk with the representatives that she needs to to get these things accomplished is great,” Wade said after Hageman finished speaking and tangling with constituents.

As the Department of Government Efficiency, spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk, cuts the federal workforce, impacting employees ranging from nuclear scientists to forest technicians, American citizens in western Wyoming and beyond have rallied against the cuts and in support of federal workers. In Washington, D.C., Republican leaders are urging elected officials to avoid public town halls, fearing constituent pushback and bad press.

Hageman defied that advice, and her town halls have, indeed, been acrimonious. 

A cohort of Jackson Hole residents — some organized by the Teton County Democratic Party — made the hour-plus trip south, leaving Wyoming’s only reliably blue county to speak up in the more conservative Star Valley. 

In Afton, attendees exchanged loud and harsh remarks both with each other and with Hageman. True to Republican leadership’s predictions, the town halls even attracted coverage in the New York Times.

But in Lincoln County, people like Wade were happy she was there, and with what’s happening in D.C.

Wade, who worked at the Lincoln County landfill before starting his own vehicle upholstery business, generally thinks government is too large and should be slimmed. But his view is nuanced.

“There’s too many three-letter, four-letter government agencies that don’t need to be there,” he said in a conference room after Hageman finished speaking. “There’s way too much government spending.”

Wade has friends who work for the U.S. Forest Service, and he hopes long-standing employees are spared. People with hard-won knowledge on how to manage western Wyoming’s forests should stick around, in his mind. 

But he’s okay trimming the Forest Service of new arrivals. Longtimers understand Lincoln County residents rely on firewood from the forest to heat their homes and hunting to feed their families, he said.

Wade was disappointed that the town hall meeting slowly devolved into a shouting match.

“I don’t appreciate people being super disrespectful,” Wade said. “The way I grew up, you’d be respectful to everybody.”

But he was impressed with Hageman’s ability to keep her cool.

“I was very impressed with her professionalism,” he said, “and her ability to say things in a way that everybody can understand.”

Sitting in the front row of the town hall, Linda and Gordon Shumate and Terry Gould and Ann Renee Desrochers, two couples, felt the town hall was hijacked by Teton County residents. 

The Shumates, Gould and Desrochers all moved away from northern California about five years ago, unhappy with the state’s liberal leadership. The four carpooled to see Hageman from their homes in Smoot, south of Afton.

“That doesn’t represent Lincoln County,” Desrochers said of frustrated crowd members’ behavior.

Hageman’s apparent close working relationship with President Donald Trump stands out to Gould, rather than her stance on specific policies affecting Lincoln County residents.

“Harriet and Trump, they work well together. He confides in her and vice versa,” Gould said.

Hageman, boosted by a Trump endorsement, defeated Wilson homeowner and three-term representative Liz Cheney in the 2022 Republican primary. Cheney had defied the national GOP, criticized and rebuked Trump’s unsubstantiated claims the 2020 election was stolen. She voted to impeach the president for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, and served as vice chair on a committee investigating the attack.

The Smoot residents found Hageman’s statements about federal layoffs compelling, particularly when she described cutting “waste, fraud and abuse.” 

U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service employees who have gotten used to “getting a free lunch” and “not doing anything to deserve it” should be terminated, Gordon Shumate said. He sees those workers as part of a “bloated” federal government.

“I’ve lost jobs. I’ve been fired. It’s not fun. You pick yourself up and you go do something else,” Gordon Shumate said. “If Trump is successful in growing the economy in the long run, they’re going to be better off. Prices will be down. They can get a job that’s meaningful.”

In western Wyoming, federal employees with the Forest Service, Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management clear trails, remove trash, clean toilets, study and manage wildlife and permit development.

Pulling a note from his pocket, Gould read a quote from Calvin Coolidge, America’s 30th president: “There is no dignity quite so impressive and no independence quite so important as living within your means.”

Gould felt the quote fit the times.

In Teton County, voters opposed to the policies of Rep. Harriet Hageman and Donald Trump — and initiatives like Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — tend to hold sway. But there are at least two sides to every political debate, especially in Wyoming.