Politics

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

Image not from story. [Screenshot/YouTube/The Tucker Carlson Show]

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.”

“He’s not a Republican,” she also said. “And so, I’m running to basically save us from turning into the state of Colorado. If I lose this election, we will be Colorado in four years.”

Trump won Wyoming 72.3% to 26.1% against former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election.

“They just vote for the Republican because that’s who you vote for … they don’t know,” Carlson observed.

Bextel responded by telling him that that’s why she’s been “begging people, ‘Please don’t vote for the R.'”

“The Republican Party has imploded,” Bextel continued. “It’s not just imploded nationally, it’s imploded in Wyoming. We don’t have any leadership. People would prefer the values of the Republican Party, but there’s no litmus test, Tucker, to just put an ‘R’ by your name.”

“Yes,” Tucker responded.

Bextel resigned from being the Teton County Republican Party’s state committeewoman in May 2026. She previously ran for chair of the Wyoming Republican Party in 2025.

“We have tons of people, like in Teton County: a guy will run as a Democrat for county commissioner, lose. Run again as a Democrat, lose,” Bextel said. “Then go do something different, put an ‘R’ by his name, lose, and then join the board of the Teton County Republican Party. It doesn’t make any sense … We have to put the person above the party, and that’s what I’m asking everyone to do in Wyoming.”