Wyoming
Total Number of Delegates: 18 Pledged: 12 Unpledged: 6
How to Recognize a Wyoming Delegate: The majority of Wyomingites are uneducated, foul-mouthed cretins who look like toothless meth addicts out on parole. But those are just the Republicans who hate to pay taxes and abide by federal regulations. Wyoming women were the first in the nation to gain equal rights, not out of principle, but simply because someone had to work and they proved willing to fill positions in every field -- from game wardens to Governor. Plus, working women gave Wyoming men the time they needed to drive around in their filthy pickup trucks, drink in trashy saloons and then go back to their squalid trailers and have the kind of drunken brokeback-buddy sex that overturns nightstands, breaks hearts and captures Hollywood's imagination. The handful of Democrats who live in the Equality State are completely different. Most of them are lawyers from Cheyenne or professors from Laramie. And those two border towns aren't even considered a part of the "real Wyoming" by state Republicans. Consequently, Cowboy State delegates in Denver will actually look like Twilight Zone clones of residents of the northern Colorado cities of Greeley and Loveland. All will dress in the latest reduced-price fashions from the Bargain Barn department of the Sierra Trading Post Outlet in Cheyenne. Females will wear the April Cornell® for Orvis collection of side-yoked skirts and smocked dresses, paired with Korkers® Wetland Wading Boots and an ample coating of SPF 85 mosquito repellent with Deet. Male delegates will wear Riviera® Wrinkle-Resistant Dress Pants and Nat Nast® Panhandle Slim Camp Shirts with H.S.Trask® bison-leather oxfords and two pair of socks.
Famous Wyomingites: United States Second Lady Lynne Cheney; White House press secretary Dana Perino; abstract-expressionist Jackson Pollock; sportscaster Curt Gowdy; NBC News correspondent Pete Williams; Twilight Zone TV screenwriter George Clayton Johnson; post-apocalyptic sci-fi writer Theodore Judson; Grateful Dead lyricist and former Dick Cheney campaign manager John Perry Barlow; America's most successful trial attorney Gerry Spence; gay actor Jim J. Bullock; Deadwood actor Jim Beaver; Matthew Shepard, the gay Laramie student whose murder prompted both the U.S. House and Senate to pass hate-crimes bills that President Bush says he'll veto if they reach his desk.
Famous Wyoming Democrats: The first woman to serve as a governor of a U.S. state, fourteenth governor Nellie Tayloe Ross; nineteenth governor Lester C. Hunt; 29th governor Mike Sullivan; 31st governor Dave Freudenthal; former secretary of state Kathy Karpan; Senate Minority Floor Leader Ken Decaria; District 13 Representative Jane Warren; sixth superdelegate W. Patrick Goggles.
Famous Wyomingites With Denver Connections: The first female administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and two-term state representative Anne Gorsuch Burford; cable TV pioneer and GOP A-lister Carl Williams; Frontier Oil Corporation vice president Nancy J. Zupan; ColoradoInCollege.org executive director Dawn Taylor Owens; Denver County Court judge Melvin Okamoto; public-relations wonk Chris Chavez; Charles Hay Elementary schoolteacher Thomas Rode.
State Nickname: The Cowboy State, The Equality State, The Sagebrush State (official); The Extraction State, The Wind Farm state, Bi-oming (unofficial) Population: 515,004 Racial Distribution: 88% white, 1% black, 3% Native American, 1% Asian, 7% Hispanic Per Capita Personal Income: 32,808 Unemployment: 4.5%
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE WYOMING DELEGATION
Most Wyomingite Denver Neighborhood: Rosedale
Most Wyomingite Bar: Charlie's 900 East Colfax Avenue An extremely diverse Western gay bar that will appeal to both the equality and the cowboy from Wyoming.
Most Wyomingite Restaurant: Mizuna 225 East Seventh Avenue It'll be hard to keep a Wyoming delegate back in the land of Taco John's once he gets a taste of Mizuna's lobster mac-n-cheese.
View larger imageBest Day Trip: Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park It's the wind and wide-open spaces that makes Wyomingites so weird. Residents are a rough lot who reflect their harsh habitat. They are isolated and utterly suspicious of everyone, especially "Greenies." That special nickname is derived from the color of the license plates of Coloradans, who are blamed for continually crowding the Cowboy State's best fishing spots and parking lots. This trip to Wild Basin will have Wyoming's weirdos wondering why Greenies would ever even want to leave colorful Colorado in the first place. Ask the concierge at the hotel for directions onto I-25 north. Drive north for ten miles and take exit 209C onto westbound U.S. Highway 6. This road crosses through Denver's western suburbs and follows Clear Creek into the Rocky Mountains. Ten miles into the canyon, follow Colorado Highway 119 toward Black Hawk. Here the road is renamed the Peak-to-Peak Scenic Byway, and it winds its way through spectacular scenery and historic gold camps for 45 miles to Allenspark. Seven miles beyond, turn left onto Wild Basin Road and into the parking area for the Ouzel Falls Trail of the Wild Basin. This corner of Rocky Mountain National Park is cut off from the rest of the park by the perpetually snowcapped mass of Longs Peak. Which means it is free from the park's teeming masses and is perfect for crowd-weary Wyomingites. The Ouzel Falls Trail is named for the bird that darts for dinner through the tumbling falls. At the split in the trail, take the Thunder Lake branch that climbs up alongside North St. Vrain Creek to its headwaters. Thunder Lake, fed by melting ice from year-round snowbanks, is walled in by Mount Alice and Tanima Peak and mirrors the surrounding forests and jutting granite cliffs crowned with fantastic battlements. It also reflects the Greenies' happiness to share the wild scenic beauty of the American West's wide-open spaces with Wyomingites and the rest of the world. --Kenny Be
