By Phil Roberts, 10-5-2026
A story of earlier times in Wyoming politics:
A half dozen college students joined more than ten townspeople in carrying in the borrowed desks and folding chairs to the empty store front a block off the main street on that warm early September afternoon in 1966. The storefront was to be the local Democratic Party headquarters for the forthcoming election.
Everyone was in joyous spirits about the feature election race, shaping up to be between two candidates vying for the empty U. S. Senate seat–the popular veteran Congressman Teno Roncalio against the incumbent governor Cliff Hansen. Some polls showed Teno, the Democrat, with a slim lead. But the Democrats were going to get swamped in the county. Powell was home to far more Democrats than rival city Cody, 23 miles away in the west of the county, but the county seat town had more voters and most voted Republican. If we could keep the Republican margin in Park County down and Sweetwater County could deliver their usual five-to-one margin, Teno would win statewide….
The jumble of ladders and boxes of campaign brochures had to be shifted from time to time to make room for ladder-climbing students tacking up the wall signs and draping the patriotic bunting from hooks and light fixtures. The front door was propped open on the warm day.
Volunteers came in and out, new ones joined into the festive work. A middle-aged couple walked in, the man holding some door-hangars and pamphlets. Both were dressed nicely like they may have come down to join in the door-knocking later.
A newly hired college professor, one of two advisors to the college’s Campus Democrats Club, welcomed them warmly, as he had been doing with all the later arrivals in the the morning. “Come in, come in” he said. “I see you already have some pamphlets,” he observed. “Ready to go, huh?”
“Well, yes,” the man said. The woman smiled. “We’re in Park County this weekend to do a little campaigning.” The professor replied, “Who for? Teno?”
“No, for myself,” the man said, handing a brochure to the young professor. As he was looking at the brochure, the man said, “That’s my picture…”
“Can I get you some coffee, a soda, a beer?” the young professor asked.
“Thanks, but no,” he said. Smiling, he reached out to shake hands, saying “I’m Cliff Hansen, the governor, and I’m running for the Senate and this is my wife Martha, Wyoming’s first lady.” He said they were walking by and decided to stop to wish us a happy afternoon and hoped to see us again “on the trail.”
Nearly everyone else in the room knew who he and his companion were. The young professor, not accustomed to Wyoming campaigns, later admitted he was shocked. “Where I come from back East, we don’t even meet OUR candidate for Senate, much less our opponent in the flesh…And never the governor!” We all grinned and continued our work. Someone told him, “Welcome to the Wyoming way of campaigning. We may disagree politically, but we’re all neighbors.”
The election was close. Hansen defeated Roncalio 51.8%-48.2% (60,535 votes to 56,137). Teno did lose in Park County, but Democrats did keep the margin close. Sweetwater and Carbon counties failed to produce the expected big vote for Teno.
