Conservative Gubernatorial Candidate Warns Wyoming Could Become Like Colorado If It Departs From ‘Bread And Butter’ Policies

Third-party Wyoming gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Bextel told Tucker Carlson during an interview released Saturday that the Republican Party has “imploded” in the state.

Bextel, a former Republican committeewoman who is running under the Constitution Party to be the next governor of the Equality State, cited the late Charlie Kirk’s June 2020 warning during the interview that the state will become “blue” because Democrats will have infiltrated the Republican Party. She notably accused Republican gubernatorial nominee Eric Barlow of being an example of that.

Neither Bextel nor Barlow immediately responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

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“And so what happens is the Democrats, they really have no say in Wyoming politics, so they all switch over to the Republican Party. We always have conservatives that split the election for the primary and then we end up with the Democrat candidate,” Bextel said. “And that’s exactly what’s happening right now.”

Barlow beat President Donald Trump’s endorsed candidate, Megan Degenfelder, for the Republican gubernatorial nomination on Aug. 18.

“Our candidate for the Republican Party won’t even sign platform pledge to say that they’ll stick with the party 80% of the time,” Bextel continued. “This guy is so radical. He actually testified in front of Congress one time and said we needed to remove our dependence on fossil fuels in favor of a renewable energy model. So, can you imagine a guy like that being in charge of Wyoming, where our bread and butter is the mineral industry and the energy sector?”

Wyoming is the largest coal-producing state in the nation and also has more oil and natural gas producing leases on federal lands than any other state, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. As such, its four leading sources of revenue in 2026 included $12.4 billion from oil drilling and gas extraction, $4.1 billion from petroleum refining, $3.8 billion from gasoline and petroleum bulk stations, and $3.4 billion from coal mining, according to IBISWorld.

“Well … he’s funded by the Democrats — the dark, George Soros-funded money,” Bextel said when Carlson asked how a candidate like that gets the Republican nomination. “That has trickled its way into Wyoming. We’re a very cheap state to buy politically. So, you know, if you look at someone like Vivek Ramaswamy running a 100-million-dollar governor run, I’ll be lucky if I raise a million bucks. But that’s what I’m taking on.”