John Millin Sings the Blues; Breaking it down with Wyoming's Democratic chair
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
By Sam Petri
Jackson Hole, Wyo.-The controversially early Wyoming Republican caucuses of Jan. 5th received no more national media attention than a few quips from talking heads regarding Wyoming Republicans and their backing of Mitt Romney. Recently, the Wyoming Democratic Party Chair, John Millin, an ophthalmologist who lives in Cheyenne, made waves - or perhaps ripples - of his own when he sent a letter to The Denver Post stating that a Clinton presidential nomination would be detrimental to the Wyoming Democratic Party - but that an Obama nomination would serve the state party’s interest. The letter read:
“For reasons I don’t agree with and don’t completely understand, most voters in Wyoming seem to hate Hillary Clinton. This is in part due to the perception of her as being someone who supports big government, most notably through a federal government takeover of the health care system. She is also paying a heavy price for the sins of her husband.”
The letter went on to state that “If Hillary Clinton is our party’s nominee, every democratic candidate in Wyoming will be painted with that same liberal, big government brush. … Our opposition to Hillary Clinton is not based on her being a woman, it is based on the fact that her nomination will kill the chances of many democratic candidates around the state.”
This past week we caught up with Dr. Millin to learn about his plans to make Wyoming, a state that pumps Red blood, beat Blue.
Planet Jackson Hole: Could you explain how will Hillary Clinton, if she does indeed become the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, kill the chances for Wyoming Democratic candidates?
John Millin: It’s an obvious tactic that the Republicans have used over and over again in Wyoming by linking our candidates with the National Democratic Party. For whatever reason, the National Party seems to be unpopular in Wyoming. And she’s a much more visible, identifiable member of the National Party, obviously for being the first lady for eight years.
My concerns were along those lines - that the Republicans do this over and over again. Clearly they did that in ’06 with Gary Trauner and Nancy Pelosi [and] in ’04 with Ted Ladd and John Kerry and Ted Kennedy. They actually did that in 2002, linking Dave Freudenthal with Bill Clinton. Freudenthal was, of course, appointed by Bill Clinton to be the US attorney. …
What I’ve been told is that it goes all the way back to ’94 when Mike Sullivan ran against Craig Thomas. When Sen. Thomas ran for the US senate for the first time he ran against outgoing Governor Mike Sullivan. That was part of the strategy. I’ve been told by some of the people on the Republican side that that’s one of the things they tried to do in that campaign - to portray Mike Sullivan as an “FOB,” a “Friend of Bill Clinton.”
PJH: Do you think Wyomingites link Hillary with big government? Do you think people in Wyoming interpret her ideas for socialized medicine as “big government?”
JM: I’m a physician and I was working at Johns Hopkins at the time when Senator Clinton unveiled her health care plan. I can tell you some of my colleagues, who were very staunch Republicans, went to this presentation ready to rip her apart. They all came back and said that what she had to say was perfectly reasonable, and they agreed with it, and said it was something the country should pursue. It’s not the plan so much, but the way it was sort of spun.
I think people in the health care field recognized and appreciated the work she put into it and understood the point she was making, and basically agreed with her in terms of that plan. Again, this was back in 1993. So it’s not anything I feel about her necessarily. It’s just that she is much more identifiable as a national Democratic figure. A lot of people have criticized me for picking sides in the presidential race. I mean quite frankly, I don’t think that Wyoming is going to play a significant role in choosing a president either in a candidate selection process or in the general election.
Wyoming hasn’t voted for a democrat since 1964. I’m not saying it’s out of the question that Wyoming might, theoretically, vote for a Democrat. But if Wyoming does, pretty much every other state will, too. So again, we’re not going to have a significant impact.
PJH: If the Republicans are going to use this linking tactic no matter what, then why is it safer for you to endorse Obama? Why not John Edwards?
JM: To me that letter was not an endorsement. It was really an assessment of how I [thought] the two most likely individuals might affect Wyoming campaigns.
PJH: How come the media has focused so much on Hillary and Obama and not on John Edwards?
JM: Clearly, the earliest form of voting is how much money the different campaigns bring in. Before anyone voted in Iowa or anywhere else, people voted with their pocketbooks. Those two campaigns brought in way more money than [those of] any of the other Democratic candidates and even more money than the Republican candidates, so I think that was part of it. You’re building up an arsenal to help your campaign. The fact that those two campaigns were so far out ahead in their fundraising efforts made it obvious to most people that they were the two most likely people to win the nomination.
PJH: Our governor is a Democrat, and Gary Trauner is running again, but will the Democratic Party ever have a larger presence in the State, or will Wyoming always be “red”?
JM: It’s not going to turn blue in this election cycle, unfortunately. I guess I wouldn’t guarantee it, but I wouldn’t bet money on us becoming a Democratic state overnight, by any means. Even if you look at Colorado and other Rocky Mountain States that aren’t quite as far along like Montana or Arizona, it takes several election cycles for there to be significant progress in the Democratic Party. My main goal in this election cycle is looking at legislative candidates and county commission candidates.
PJH: Now Democrats hold five of the eight governorships in the West. Would you say that is a sign of the Democratic Party growing in the Rocky Mountain West?
JM: I think so, and that’s part of it. Colorado is probably, of the eight Rocky Mountain States, the furthest along that path. Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, are kind of lagging somewhat but probably still ahead of Idaho and Utah. To varying degrees, I think we’re moving in the direction of the Democrats in these eight Rocky Mountain States. One of the ways [Rocky Mountain] states have been successful in flipping [to the Democratic Party] is to identify the Democratic Party as something different. Not necessarily something different from what the national party is, but what people in this area’s perception of the national party is.
Western Democrats are different than DC democrats. We are more likely to own guns, we hunt, we respect the land. We’re different than DC Democrats, East Coast Democrats, or California Democrats. And I think to the extent that Western Democrats have been able to define themselves, they have been successful.
PJH: Which democratic presidential hopefuls have had the largest presence in Wyoming?
JM: I don’t see any of them having a significant presence at this point. To my knowledge the only candidate who came through was Bill Richardson. This summer he did a fundraiser in Jackson.
I’m hoping that once the super duper Tuesday is over, and our party’s nominee has been decided, that that individual will run a more national campaign. We certainly hope to see the presidential nominee in Wyoming. I think because of the nature of the process we won’t see anyone from now until when we know who our nominee is. Hopefully late spring or during the summer, we’ll see a presidential candidate here.
PJH: What impact, if any, did the Wyoming Republican Party moving their caucuses up to Jan. 5 have on the Wyoming Democratic Party?
JM:They had approached the Wyoming Democratic Party a year ago and had asked us, as a group, whether or not we’d be willing to go with them. I know that in the two “rogue states,” Michigan and Florida, both the Republican and Democratic parties in those states moved together ahead of their party’s deadline. It’s something we were asked by the Republican Party to do.
We never even really had a serious discussion about it because we knew at that time that our national party was having their national party in Denver, 100 miles from where I’m sitting right now. And we knew that the state party would be punished in terms of the number of delegates allowed to go to that convention and at the time. We just felt, as a group, that it wasn’t a time to reasonably consider doing that with our national convention so close to Wyoming.
As it turns out, the two parties sort of punished their rogue states to varying degrees. For the Democrats, it would have been a disaster for us, simply because Michigan and Florida, they had all of their delegates taken away by the Democratic National Party. The Republicans cut them in half. The Democrats, some of the states threatened to blackball any candidate that campaigned in the states that broke the rules. Michigan and Florida don’t have any of the candidates campaigning there. So, it would have hurt us a lot.
The [Wyoming] Republicans sort of got half punishment, because they lost half of their candidates. They had some attention from some of the presidential campaigns. Mitt Romney was here, he’s clearly a first-tier candidate. Fred Thompson came to Wyoming, at this point probably a second-tier candidate. Some of the other folks did too. But I don’t think it gave them quite the attention they had hoped for.
I went to college in New Hampshire and I was there in 1980, and I can tell you that it’s ridiculous the amount of attention that a state like New Hampshire - and now Iowa - gets from the presidential campaigns. I remember being a college student you could hardly walk across campus with out bumping into a candidate, or their brother, or their nephew or some Hollywood celebrity [who was] there supporting a candidate.
PJH: Do you like to see the caucuses held by both parties on the same day? And what’s the state of it this year, now that in Wyoming the caucuses are being held by the two parties on two different days?
JM: It’s probably the one consensus opinion you could get from people around the country in both parties - that the system, the way it exists now, is just a mess. Clearly, there needs to be some major reorganization in how we do our presidential selections. I don’t think anyone outside of Iowa or New Hampshire is really satisfied with the current system. I have no idea what the system will be in 2012. I assume it will be much more fair and reasonable and representative of the country as a whole.
Personally - this is not the National Dem Party opinion, but my personal feeling - I wouldn’t want to do a national primary day where every state votes on the same day. I do kind of like the concept of a rolling primary process, but maybe grouping 10 states at a time on five consecutive Tuesdays would make sense. But what the national parties wind up doing, who knows. It’s up to them, I suppose, to develop a national plan that’s fair and reasonable.
PJH: Does the Wyoming Democratic Party have aspirations to gain more national attention in the way the Republicans do?
JM: Certainly I would like to see more attention focused on Wyoming on both sides. I listen to POTUS ’08 on XM radio and this morning they were talking about the Republican Presidential campaign and someone mentioned, “Well, Mitt Romney won Wyoming, too,” and the group of talking heads on this show just started laughing about Wyoming.
It’s insulting to Wyoming, they weren’t laughing at the Wyoming Republican Party, they were just laughing about Wyoming and how insignificant we are. It’s an insult to the state, quite frankly, how little attention was paid [to it] by the national media. The few times I did hear even a mention of the Republican caucus in Wyoming it was always done in a joking way - like somehow it was meaningless because Wyoming is a meaningless state. I don’t know what we could do about it but I certainly find that offensive.
Courtesy PhotoDR. JOHN MILLIN THINKS A PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION FOR HILLARY CLINTON WOULD IMPEDE THE WYOMING DEMOCRATIC PARTY FROM GAINING TRACTION THROUGHOUT OUR RED STATE.PERMALINK:
John Millin Sings the Blues; Breaking it down with Wyoming's Democratic chair | Planet JH News Article: Cover Stories
Leave a Comment