James Byrd, the lone Democrat running for Wyoming’s open Senate seat, isn’t banking on support from liberal Jackson Hole.
“Teton County has really not shown a lot of interest in my campaign. I’ve got other places that are just breaking their necks to have me come,” he said on a visit last week.
Byrd is driving an average of a thousand miles per week, canvassing the state and its sparse population. Wyoming Republicans outnumber Democrats seven to one. In Teton County, it’s closer to an even split.
Teton County Democratic Chair Annette Osnos pushed back against Byrd’s characterization. He was invited to the party’s April potluck but didn’t come, she said, and was supposed to help serve lunch at the senior center. He is also invited to march in Jackson’s 4th of July parade and ensuing picnic.
“All in all, I would think that constitutes interest!” she said by text.
At a brief and awkward stop at the Senior Center of Jackson Hole, Byrd said he heard about “table issues like gas, the price of food.”
“A couple of veterans there were just horrified at what [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth has done to the military,” he said.
The visit was uncomfortable because of a conversation with the senior center director, who told him not to address people while they were having lunch. Then a text came through from Byrd’s campaign manager, who thought he went to the wrong place.
“My name is probably gonna be mud for the next couple days,” he said. “But oh well.”
The son of Wyoming’s first Black lawmaker, Byrd says his first entry into politics was prompted by friends at a backyard barbecue in Cheyenne.
They were exchanging typical gripes with the government and saying “somebody ought to fix this.”
Byrd was cooking hamburgers when suddenly it got quiet.
“I turned around and they were all looking at me,” he said.
His response: “Oh heck no. No, no, no.”
He worried it would be impossible to live up to the family legacy. Byrd describes his trailblazing mother, Harriet Elizabeth “Liz” Byrd, as a “juggernaut.
“I can never be as good as her,” he told his friends.
But the 72-year-old candidate overcame his reservations, followed his mom’s advice, and followed her footsteps to a Wyoming House seat in 2009. One of his biggest wins as a state lawmaker was tripling the distance protesters are allowed to stand at funerals.
Wyoming’s few Democrats are limited in their power at the statehouse, and even less represented in Congress. The state hasn’t had a blue representative in Washington since the late 1970s. Byrd says that’s because of poor candidates.
“In a nutshell, you’re running candidates that can’t win,” he said.
But it’s not clear that Byrd stands any better of a chance.
He asked friends who were pestering him to run for a gameplan.
“Show me that this can work,” he said, knowing full well that any strategy would hinge on Republican frustration with their own party. The numbers they showed him seemed “close enough” to make it a horse race, he said.
“I’ve got people in five different counties working for me remotely now with that team, and we’re off to the races.”
He said he’d prefer to debate Jackson’s Sam Mead than the Trump-backed U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman.
Many Teton County Democrats have told KHOL they’ll vote for Mead in the primary, though such crossover voting has had limited effect before. It failed to prevent Hageman from beating Liz Cheney in 2022.
