There are Democrats in some remote rural America flirting with disappearing. In Wyoming’s Niobrara County, the state’s least populated county, Becky Blackburn is one of only 32 people.
His neighbors call him a “crazy Democrat,” though that’s more a term of endearment than irony.
Less in some less populated counties. There are 21 Democrats in Clark County, Idaho, and 20 Democrats in Blaine County, Nebraska. But Niobrara Democrats, who make up just 2.6% of registered voters, outnumber Republicans in the 30 states that track local party affiliation, according to Associated Press election data.
Voting state in Wyoming Donald Trump by a wider margin than any other, the overwhelming Republican lead could be further cemented — now that the state has passed a law making it even harder to change party affiliation.
Tuesday’s primary will be the first since the law went into effect.
It’s not easy being blue in the grassy pastures and pine-strewn hills of Niobrara County, bordering Nebraska and South Dakota.
Blackburn, a Republican assistant state attorney, hears a lot of right-wing ideas around town.
“Usually I just close my eyes and walk away because I’m fighting a losing battle and I’m fully aware of it,” he said. “Maybe that’s why they like me so much, because I keep my mouth shut 10 times more than I want to.”
Not because he is politically shy. He flies LGBTQ+ A flag in support of her lesbian daughter at her home in Lusk, the agricultural and Niobrara County seat of 1,500 people.
In the political season, Blackburn reserves Democratic political signs to replace the swipers. He speaks approvingly of police reform, a tax on public services and transgender social media celebrity Dylan Mulvaney.
Perhaps because he’s open to these ideas — and so little to implement them — Blackburn is indeed well-liked in Lusk, where he recently served nine years on the City Council.
“I won two elections here. Even though it was nonpartisan, people still knew I had left-leaning values,” he said.
Statewide, Democrats make up less than 3% of voters in three states this year, up from one county in 2020 but down from seven in 2016. In the presidential elections of 2012 and 2008, the percentage of registration of Democrats was not even low. and 2004, according to AP data.
In recent years, the most Republican states have been concentrated in Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. The most Democratic regions are less likely to be dominated by one party.
With 77% of voters being Democrats, the District of Columbia is the second most heavily Democratic. First, Breathitt County, Kentucky, is traditionally 79% Democratic, but not the primary. Vice presidential candidate from the Republican Party There’s the JD Vance family and in 2020 the county went 75% for former President Donald Trump.
Niobrara County wasn’t always so Republican. The number of Democrats more than doubled to 83 in 2012, and more than quadrupled to 139 in 2004.
The Democrats’ struggle in Wyoming reflects the party’s struggles in rural America, where the party has been losing ground for years.
It wasn’t always like that. Seventy years ago, union Democrats were a political force in southern Wyoming, where mining and railroad jobs abounded. Now the party’s only strongholds are in the university town of Laramie and the resort town of Jackson.
Meanwhile, as Wyoming Democrats struggle to field eligible candidates at all levels, many Democrats are changing their registration to vote in the more competitive Republican primaries, then returning to the general election.
“When you do that, you feel crooked and ugly. But you do it anyway, and you change it as soon as you can because you don’t want to get Republican referrals,” Blackburn said.
Republicans have decided enough is enough. The Wyoming Legislature, where the GOP controls 90% of seats, passed a law barring voters from changing their party registration three months before last year’s August primary.
Wyoming’s Republican Secretary of State Chuck Gray said in an endorsement statement that party switching “undermined the sanctity of Wyoming’s primary process.”
Wyoming’s Republican and Democratic primaries on Tuesday will be the first in modern memory in which voters cannot change party affiliation at the polls.
For Democrats, it will be a delicate choice. Statewide, obscure candidates with little campaigning are not contenders for Democratic nominations for the U.S. House and Senate.
No Democrats are running in Niobrara County. They are not running for an open seat in the Wyoming House of Representatives or county commission, the two primary races, or even for local party positions.
Still, the area soon had a Democratic state representative: Ross Diercks, known and warmly welcomed at the Outpost Cafe, a down-home breakfast and lunch spot in Lusk.
Diercks, a former high school English teacher, was a Republican before deciding the GOP wasn’t doing enough to support public education. He defeated a Republican candidate in 1992 to end his 18-year term in the Legislature.
Knowing the voters personally and being aware of the issues helped him hold office. For example, when he received a C-minus on the National Rifle Association’s survey, he decided to improve. For the next election, he scored an A in the survey.
Many of the Republican lawmakers are friends. When he died just before the road, he sang at his funeral.
Later in 2022, Diercks temporarily switched parties to vote in the GOP against incumbent challenger Harriet Hageman. Liz Cheney will serve in the state’s lone House of Representatives. It’s hard to count how many other Democrats have done the same, but Diercks wasn’t alone. Hageman, the daughter of the lawmaker at whose funeral she sang, nevertheless won the race by a wide margin.
The new law, which prevents Diercks and others from changing their registrations so easily, has angered him with the GOP.
“How far will they go to limit someone’s ability to vote? If this is really about purifying the party, from the voting level to the elected officials, soon there will be no one left who is pure enough to be in the party,” Dierks said.
Truck driver Pat Jordan supports many left-leaning goals, including universal health care, but he said he is registered only as a Republican.
“The best way to engage in meaningful change is to try to take over the dominant party,” said Jordan, who lives in Niobrara County. “You know, we need a government that serves everyone, not just Republicans, not rural, not urban, not Democrats, — and definitely not just the rich and wealthy.”
Last winter, dozens of locals gathered outside to honk and cheer as a Democrat left town. But they weren’t cheering because Ed Fullmer was gone for good.
Fullmer was on the high school boys basketball team bus on the way to the state championship. They lost, but Fullmer led the Tigers to their best record of the decade, 20-8.
According to him, people know his views, but rarely put him down in politics.
“Most people don’t want to dive into that kind of discussion,” he said. “They respect you for what you do, how you work.”
Blackburn, for one, intends to maintain his political position, even if it narrows around him.
“I am who I am and I have the opinions that I have,” he said. “And I don’t care if it bothers people.”