EDITORIAL: Matt Mead the obvious choice for Republicans

Posted 8/12/14

Hill does not strike us as someone who should be given more power and responsibility. She disrupted the Department of Education and caused a great deal of turmoil, in part due to her quirky, off-putting manner and ideas.

She also seems to be …

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EDITORIAL: Matt Mead the obvious choice for Republicans

Posted

There are three candidates for governor on the Republican primary ballot in the Aug. 19 election, but it’s not a difficult choice.

Gov. Matt Mead deserves to be nominated for a second term by the Wyoming GOP. His first three-plus years in office have been largely successful, and Mead has earned a second chance at the job.

Hill does not strike us as someone who should be given more power and responsibility. She disrupted the Department of Education and caused a great deal of turmoil, in part due to her quirky, off-putting manner and ideas.

She also seems to be running at least in part out of spite because Mead was one of the leaders in the effort to strip her of most of her duties. While we can understand her feelings, it’s nothing to build a campaign for governor on.

Haynes has offered some, well, unique ideas during this campaign, including nullifying federal law, arresting federal employees and allowing logging and mining in Yellowstone National Park.

However, Haynes has since said he was just seeking attention and didn’t really mean that. It’s a poor way to run a campaign, and others agree — his campaign manager recently resigned.

With the Wyoming Republican Party in a tug of war over the party’s core beliefs and future, this election will be a measuring rod for how its members perceive what it stands for and who should represent it. We feel Mead offers the sensible choice.

During his administration, Wyoming’s economy has grown and diversified. Poverty levels in the state had declined. High-speed Internet access is increasing as the Wyoming economy embraces more tech-related businesses.

At the same time, Mead has worked to keep the state budget from growing and has even managed to reduce state employment numbers. He has also championed sending more money to local governments, saying they are closer to the issues and have a better concept of how and where to spend the cash. We strongly agree with that practice.

Mead has been faced with changes in how Wyoming extracts and sells the mineral wealth that has, for decades, been the mainstay of the state’s economy. Coal is threatened by ever-tightening federal policies as well as environmental concerns.

While the governor has publicly opposed the Affordable Care Act and is playing up his anti-President Barack Obama feelings during this primary, he has also moved toward allowing an expansion of Medicaid. We feel providing health care for as many Wyoming residents as possible should trump politics and hope Mead moves in that direction.

Mead has proven to be a supporter of conservation and preservation. The grizzly bear population is growing, and wolves also are on the increase. These symbols of the West must be preserved, but we also support controlling their numbers.

Mead, 52, has spent a good deal of his life in public service, a family trait, since his grandfather Clifford Hansen was both a Wyoming governor and senator, and his mother Mary Elisabeth Hansen Mead was the GOP nominee for governor in 1990.

Matt Mead spent six years as Wyoming’s U.S. attorney after serving as a county and federal prosecutor. He departed from that work to seek a career in politics, seeking the appointment as a U.S. senator after the death of Sen. Craig Thomas in 2007.

That effort failed, and Mead was a longshot candidate for governor in 2010. But his relaxed, approachable manner — not to mention the more than $1 million he contributed to his campaign — helped him overcome the odds and win the job.

Since he assumed the reins of state government in 2011, Mead has shown a steady hand, although he mishandled the Hill matter. In 2013-14, the governor and several legislators took the wrong route to deal with reports of her poor management of the Department of Education.

They were able to keep her out of office for more than a year, but it drove Hill to run against him in the primary and provided her a weapon to assail him with. Mead could have, and should have, handled it differently, perhaps through an impeachment process. We trust he has learned a lesson.

If Mead wins the primary — and all signs point to an easy win — he would face Democratic candidate Pete Gosar. It would seem a Republican nominee would have an easy path to victory, but we expect Gosar to put up a spirited fight, especially with his deployment of Medicaid expansion and the Hill matter as issues.

We feel Mead is the best choice to make the Republican case.

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