Centrist Independent Voter has endorsed Sam Mead in Wyoming’s August 18 Republican primary for the United States Senate.
Mead is challenging Representative Harriet Hageman, who entered Congress after defeating Liz Cheney in 2022. There is a certain symmetry to the race: Cheney delivered her concession speech that year from the Mead family ranch.
But our endorsement is not about relitigating that election.
It is about whether Republican senators should exercise independent judgment or regard loyalty to Donald Trump as part of their job description.
Mead has said senators should judge presidential nominees on competence, character and ethics rather than partisan loyalty. He has defended Congress’s constitutional authority over war, criticized deficit spending, supported secure borders combined with legal immigration reform, and opposed wholesale disposal of Wyoming’s public lands.
We have reservations. Mead needs to provide much more detail on Ukraine, NATO, China and federal fiscal policy.
But he offers something increasingly scarce in Republican politics: a willingness to tell a president of his own party no.
Four years after Hageman defeated Cheney, Wyoming Republicans have an opportunity to send a different kind of conservative to Washington.