Centrist Independent Voter endorses Sam Mead in Wyoming’s August 18 Republican primary for the United States Senate.
Mead is challenging Representative Harriet Hageman, who entered Congress four years ago after defeating Liz Cheney in a Republican primary dominated by Cheney’s opposition to Donald Trump.
There is a certain symmetry to this race. Cheney gave her 2022 concession speech at the Mead family ranch. Mead has said he was proud of Cheney for standing up for the truth, although he also believes her campaign became too focused on Trump personally rather than on policy.
That distinction is important.
The case for Sam Mead is not that Wyoming Republicans should relitigate the Cheney-Hageman primary. It is that senators should exercise independent judgment rather than regard loyalty to a president as part of their job description.
On that question, Mead offers a clear alternative.
Independence and Constitutional Government
Mead has explicitly rejected the idea that a presidential endorsement should carry an expectation of automatic political loyalty. He says senators should evaluate presidential nominees on competence, character and ethics and should be willing to tell a president of their own party when they believe he is wrong.
He has also taken a strong position on congressional war powers. During the conflict with Iran, Mead criticized the administration’s shifting explanations for military action and argued that Congress should reassert its constitutional authority over decisions of war and peace.
Centrist Independent Voter strongly agrees.
Congress has surrendered too much authority to presidents of both parties. Senators are elected to exercise independent constitutional judgment, not to function as members of a president’s political staff.
Hageman’s record provides a sharp contrast. Her political rise was closely tied to Trump’s effort to defeat Cheney, and she has generally aligned herself with his political movement. She supported the administration’s military action against Iran and has voted against aid to Ukraine, where Centrist Independent Voter strongly supports continued resistance to Russian aggression.
Fiscal Responsibility
Mead also makes the federal deficit a significant part of his campaign.
He argues that government cannot indefinitely spend without regard to available revenue and has criticized Hageman’s support for tax and spending legislation that increases federal borrowing. He has also identified military procurement as an area where government can spend more efficiently without weakening national defense.
That is a welcome approach.
Centrist Independent Voter believes persistent federal deficits are unsustainable. We do not believe deficit reduction can be accomplished through spending cuts alone. Eventually it will require entitlement reform, additional revenue and compromises that both parties would prefer to avoid.
But acknowledging that arithmetic is a better starting point than pretending deficits matter only when the opposing party controls Washington.
Immigration and Public Lands
Mead’s immigration position is similarly pragmatic.
He supports secure borders and enforcement of immigration law but recognizes that enforcement by itself is not an immigration policy. He favors legal pathways for workers, employer accountability, faster immigration courts and a more efficient legal immigration system. He has also raised concerns about due process and constitutional protections in immigration enforcement.
That combination of enforcement and legal reform is substantially closer to Centrist Independent Voter’s approach to immigration than either open-border rhetoric or indiscriminate mass deportation.
Public lands were one of the issues that led Mead to enter the race. He opposes wholesale transfers or sales of federal lands and argues that hunting, fishing, grazing, tourism, conservation and energy development can coexist.
Centrist Independent Voter has not taken a formal position on federal public-land ownership. But we believe there are ways to reconcile Mead’s concern for preserving public access with our preference for market-like regulation. Where public lands are used commercially for grazing, energy, minerals or other private purposes, for example, charging something approaching the market value of that use can help reconcile conservation, economic development and the interests of taxpayers.
A Willingness to Reconsider
One smaller episode also tells us something useful about Mead.
In 2019 he made a $27 contribution to Bernie Sanders because he believed Sanders was at least attempting to address the country’s health-care problems. Mead does not now advocate Medicare for All. His own proposals emphasize insurance competition across state lines, larger risk pools, price transparency, telehealth and reduced administrative costs.
Centrist Independent Voter favors a market-based system of universal health insurance and certainly does not endorse Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All program. But we do value politicians who are willing to consider an idea without first asking which party proposed it.
Political independence sometimes begins with intellectual independence.
Important Reservations
Mead is only 36, and his elected experience is limited. He has served as mayor of Kirby, Wyoming, but has never held state or federal office. His professional background—including ranching, technology, aerospace and business—provides useful experience, but it does not substitute for a legislative record.
His campaign also needs considerably more foreign-policy detail. We would like clear positions on Ukraine, NATO, China and America’s broader international responsibilities. Given Hageman’s opposition to Ukraine aid, this is particularly important.
Mead should also provide greater detail on federal taxation, entitlement reform and how he would translate his concern about deficits into a sustainable fiscal program.
And he begins this race at a substantial financial disadvantage against an incumbent member of Congress with Trump’s endorsement.
The Choice
Those reservations are real, but they do not outweigh what Mead offers.
He favors secure borders without pretending enforcement alone will solve immigration. He recognizes the fiscal consequences of deficit spending. He believes Wyoming’s public lands can accommodate both public access and productive economic use. He believes Congress should reclaim its constitutional authority over war. And he explicitly rejects the proposition that Republican senators owe personal loyalty to a Republican president.
Four years ago, Harriet Hageman defeated Liz Cheney after Cheney chose constitutional principle over loyalty to Donald Trump.
Sam Mead does not ask Wyoming Republicans to agree with Liz Cheney about everything. Neither do we.
He does offer them an opportunity to restore something that disappeared when she left Congress: a representative willing to tell a president of his own party no.
Centrist Independent Voter endorses Sam Mead in Wyoming’s Republican primary for the United States Senate.