Wyoming: Change on the Range

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They laughed at Clifford Hansen when he first declared for Governor of Wyoming in 1918. Admittedly, he was only six at the time. Nonetheless, it was not his precocity but his stutter that drew guffaws from cowhands on the 4,200-acre family spread near Jackson. Today Governor Clifford Hansen no longer stutters, and to many of his fellow Republicans his policies are no laughing matter, either. In a state where Republican Governors are traditionally ultraconservative, Hansen has been acting suspiciously like a moderate.

In the three years since he went to the Governor's mansion in Cheyenne as a far-right-winger, Hansen has driven through the legislature a herd of programs to which the state G.O.P. was fundamentally opposed. He asked for and got an urban-renewal plan, an increase in the state sales tax and a boost in the state minimum wage from 75¢ to $1. Under Hansen, appropriations for state programs to combat alcoholism and mental illness jumped by more than 50%. The going has not always been smooth. "My opposition," says Hansen, "seems to forget that this is the 20th century." By the opposition, of course, Hansen means the vociferous diehards within his own party.

"Main Street Meetings." The issue on which Hansen differs most sharply with his G.O.P. predecessors (and some Democratic Governors as well) is that of federal aid, from which Wyoming in the past has recoiled as if it were a one-way pass to perdition. Last year, nonetheless, Hansen persuaded the legislature to repeal a Wyoming law that prohibited the use of state funds to match federal grants for public education (the only nay votes in either house came from Republicans). Says Hansen: "I don't stand against federal programs. My job is to make all the elements of the federal program work as well as possible for Wyoming, even though I may not personally agree with the principles of the programs."

Democrats, as a result, openly express admiration for Cliff Hansen. "He has made a complete changeover since he became Governor," says Cheyenne Attorney Walter Phelan, a former Democratic state chairman and onetime state house speaker. "He has been striving mightily to get his party over from its far-right position, more toward center." Of course, he adds, "he isn't moving it a bit."

To drum up support for his programs and get ideas for new ones, Hansen has begun a series of day-long "Main Street meetings" in each of Wyoming's 23 counties, last week drew a talkative crowd of 100 at Lusk (pop. 1,890), the county seat of agricultural Niobrara County, which is steadily losing its young folk to livelier areas. "These are times of rapid change, and state government must be alert to all of its opportunities," he told them. "People expect more of their city and state governments, and I recognize that the things expected must be done if we are to entice new people here."