Hageman’s Primary Opponent Knows He’s A Long Shot But Believes She Needs Challenger

Casper attorney Steve Helling is well accustomed to longshot campaigns. During his ill-fated 2022 Wyoming U.S. House run, Helling based his campaign around the theme of “Democrats for Trump,” in support of former President Donald Trump. 

Helling is the first to admit that his movement did not take off. He finished third out of three Democrats candidates vying to take on the winner of the Republican primary race featuring former congresswoman Liz Cheney and U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman.

“It fell flat on its face,” he said. “‘Democrats for Trump’ was generally not popular among Democrats.”

Now, Helling is running as a Republican against Hageman in this year’s Republican primary.

“I don’t have anything to financially gain here, I have no unrealistic expectations,” Helling said.

Hageman, who’s running for reelection to a second term, is a formidable opponent. She beat Cheney by 38-percentage points in the 2022 election and coasted to an even larger victory against Democrat Lynette Grey Bull in the general election.

There are no signs that Hageman’s support has significantly waned since that time.

Inspired By Refusal To Debate

 Helling lived in Wyoming for about 24 years before moving to Colorado for about 21 years. He returned to Wyoming about 2 ½ years ago and said he hasn’t looked back since.

“It is so special for me to be able to get back to Wyoming,” Helling said. “We have such a pristine state.”

Helling said he identified as an Independent voter before his 2022 campaign and regrets running as a Democrat. He’s been registered as a Republican since the fall of 2022 and said he never plans to look back.

“Even though I’m a Republican now, I have the same positions on the issues,” he said. 

Helling has two main inspirations for running for office.

The first is Hageman’s refusal to participate in the last two televised debates.

Helling believes Hageman changed after beating Cheney in the primary and that she is singularly defined by that election win. 

“I think that Ms. Hageman will always be associated with and remembered as the person who defeated Liz Cheney with the endorsement of President Trump,” he said. “I think it’s time for Wyoming to put this Cheney-Hageman saga behind us and say thank you to Ms. Hageman and move on.” 

Her first snub came during the 2022 general election, when she refused to debate Grey Bull and third party candidates. The next came last week, when she and U.S. Sen. John Barrasso declined to participate in debates, prompting Wyoming PBS to announce that it will not be hosting a primary election debate because of their absences. 

“Apparently after beating Liz Cheney, Ms. Hageman appears to have taken the attitude that she’s too good to debate her Wyoming political opponents,” Helling said. “That offends me, and I think the voters should reject that.”

Hageman said she wants to focus on talking directly to voters this election season rather than participate in debates.

No Nuclear 

His other issue is the production of nuclear power, which he is against in all scenarios. 

“Nuclear is so expensive, the taxpayers subsidize it,” Helling said. “We pull the subsidies, there won’t be any nuclear power plants.”

Forefront in his view is the TerraPower small nuclear power plant in Kemmerer, which he thinks is bad for Wyoming and part of President Joe Biden’s agenda to grow nuclear power, which is being assisted by TerraPower Co-Founder Bill Gates.

He hopes the people of Wyoming do what they did to his ‘Democrats for Trump’ campaign and similarly kill what he sees as nuclear power’s “last best chance”

“I don’t think we should trust Joe Biden, I don’t think we should trust Bill Gates with something as important as hundreds of thousands of future generations that will have to deal with this nuclear waste,” Helling said. “It’s not fair to burden them with that simply so that we can get money now.” 

Helling mentioned how the U.S. government has been promising a storage site for spent nuclear waste for decades, but no concrete solution has been devised regarding this. Helling said there should be no more nuclear sites built in America until a permanent storage solution can be found. A total of 12 states currently have restrictions on the construction of new nuclear power facilities

The closest nuclear power plants to Wyoming are in eastern Nebraska and central Kansas

As recently as 2023, 400,000 gallons of radioactive water leaked out of a nuclear facility in Minnesota.

Helling is worried that the Kemmerer facility will serve as more of a prototype than a proven commercial reactor and will be plagued by security and environmental risks. He mentioned a Cowboy State Daily story from 2023, where a former Department of Energy employee said the proposed natrium reactor poses significant risks for accidents and the proliferation of materials that could be used in nuclear weapons.

Hageman has issued support for the TerraPower facility in various ways.

“I congratulate TerraPower and Uranium Energy Corp on their memorandum of understanding that will strengthen Wyoming’s uranium sector,” she said in a November 2023 press release. “Whether through our robust agriculture sector, legacy energy industries or the immense promise held within Wyoming’s uranium reserves, our state possesses every ingredient for sustained prosperity.”

She was also on-hand when Gates came to Kemmerer in May 2023 to visit the site of the proposed facility. 

But Other Than That

Other than those two issues, Helling said he mostly agrees with Hageman’s policies. He is pro-life on abortion and firmly supports Trump. 

Trump formally endorsed Hageman's reelection campaign in May.

"Congresswoman Harriet Hageman is doing a tremendous job representing the people of Wyoming," Trump said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social. 

Helling believes the money being dedicated to nuclear power would be better spent on renewable energy, but he also supports Wyoming’s fossil fuel industries and said if standards for nuclear power plants are lowered, so should the standards for other forms of energy like coal.

Helling served as the chairman of the Colorado Springs Independent Ethics Commission and also worked on a few local boards in Casper, but besides that has no political experience.  

He could find some support among Republicans, including former Cheney supporters who don’t like Hageman. 

Like Hageman however, Helling doesn’t like Cheney, and said she should have not acted as she did against Trump, serving as the vice chair of the United States House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 Attack. 

“Part of me feels bad for her, part of me is mad at her,” Helling said.

Hageman also hasn’t shown much propensity to mince words on hot button political topics since taking office, blasting Biden, the Department of Justice and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas frequently. Some have criticized her for a perceived focus on national issues rather than issues that the state needs.

“I think there is a market for a change-maker, someone who can make change,” Helling said. “What I would hope is that the voters of Wyoming are willing to take a chance with their vote.” 

But Helling, 70, has almost none of the resources Cheney and Hageman had for their well-endowed 2022 campaigns and told Cowboy State Daily on Monday that he’s still working as an attorney in addition to his part-time campaign. 

“I don’t have unrealistic expectations here, I don’t have any financial benefit from all of this,” Helling said. “I’m just speaking from my heart.”

Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.