A Hardy Welcome: Wyoming's U.S. Senate Challenger Rages Against the Money Machine

Seventy-five-year-old Charlie Hardy, the former Catholic priest who just won the Democratic nomination in Wyoming’s U.S. Senate race, may be the only senatorial candidate this year not accepting money from corporations or PACs. Hardy told me about a recent call he made to Colorado Sen. Mark Udall’s campaign office, in which staffers told him they’d have to raise $20 million this election to keep Udall in office. Udall’s Republican opponent is expected to raise $16 million.

“Why is a senate seat that valuable?” Hardy said. “Where does that money come from? Who does that make you beholden to?”

Hardy is running against Mike Enzi, a three-term incumbent Republican who has proven himself a professional at soliciting money from corporate donors. According to Opensecrets.org, Enzi's chief campaign contributors are coal titans like Murray Energy and Peabody Energy, and health insurance corporations like Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

Koch Industries has given $12,600 to Enzi, who has raised nearly $1 million from extractive industries and health insurance alone. And the senator’s voting record, available at ontheissues.org, reflects his deference to his donors.

Enzi’s voting record shows that he has voted yes to expanding offshore oil drilling to the outer continental shelf and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, while voting against EPA regulation of greenhouse gases. Enzi has also voted against repealing billions of dollars in tax breaks for oil companies, and against making oil-producing and -exporting cartels illegal. He even voted against tax incentives for energy production and conservation.

Enzi won support from for-profit healthcare companies by voting for Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare and turn it into a voucher system, limiting medical liability lawsuits to $250,000. He has earned a zero percent rating from the American Public Health Association, indicating an anti-public health voting record.

“Americans see this culture of lobbyists giving someone money and then the next day they vote a certain way. I think most people are tired of seeing that.” Hardy said. “When I get to Washington, I’ll be making a salary of $174,000. I won’t need any lobbyist’s money.”

The icing on the cake was Enzi’s vote to deny relief to Hurricane Sandy victims in late 2012 – a vote seen as especially despicable since Enzi is on record asking for federal help in 2010 when floods ravaged the state of Wyoming. Enzi’s junior Senate colleague, John Barrasso, who is the chair of the Republican Policy Committee, also signed onto the letter asking for federal aid for Wyoming’s flooding.

But despite all the evidence of crony capitalism piled in his opponent's corner, Hardy has his work cut out for him. He won last Tuesday’s primary, even though just a little over 18,000 Democrats voted in the election. Meanwhile, the GOP primary attracted over 90,000 voters. That means just under 20 percent of the population in a state of roughly 550,000 participated in the selection of candidates for November’s general election.

Hardy says the Democratic Party in Wyoming is “in shambles,” providing little impetus to vote in the state’s Democratic primary. Three open statewide offices – Secretary of State, State Auditor and State Treasurer – have no Democrats on the ballot.

“We have a true grassroots candidate going up against an entrenched incumbent in a deep red state,” said Bruce Wilkinson, who manages Hardy’s campaign. Wilkinson told me that in deep-red Wyoming, they’ll have to reach out to Republicans to have a chance at winning. But the Hardy campaign’s message can appeal to the libertarian side of the Republican Party, he said.

Hardy’s platform includes halting the NSA’s practice of spying on and recording the phone calls, texts, tweets and emails of ordinary citizens. Hardy is also a proponent of ending the War on Drugs. He says that while his opponent is running as one of the openly most conservative members of the U.S. Senate, Hardy’s platform is appealing to traditionally conservative values.

“We’re talking about fiscal restraint for out-of-control defense spending, an end to the bailouts for big banks, things like that,” Hardy said.

While Enzi has been in the U.S. Senate for 18 years, and in state and local elected office since 1975, his Democratic challenger prides himself on having a different kind of experience. As a Catholic priest, Hardy traveled all over Wyoming for six years starting at age 20, talking to migrant workers and learning to speak Spanish. The Catholic Church assigned him to Venezuela in 1985.

“I lived in a cardboard shack for eight years, in one of the most violent barrios in Latin America. We had no running water. The poverty was so bad, it was like being hit in the head with a hammer. I’ve spent the night in cemeteries, and in hospitals surrounded by dead bodies of people who had been killed by soldiers,” Hardy recalled.

“The police raided my house one night, and one of my neighbors told me that even though people in the barrio never went outside when the police came, they were ready to throw rocks and bottles if they saw them carrying me out in handcuffs.”

Hardy got married in 1994 and left the Church. Since then, he’s spent the last 20 years traveling the state and giving lectures, mostly on Latin American affairs. He earned his Master’s degree in Education Administration from the University of Wyoming and wrote a book about his time in Venezuela, called “Cowboy in Caracas.”

Now, Hardy will be knocking on as many doors as possible in Wyoming before November. Since his opponent has a clear fundraising edge and is likely to dominate the TV advertising market, the Hardy campaign will be more focused on social media, phone outreach and face-to-face voter contact across Wyoming.

“We’re traveling in a school bus from the 1970s. It’s big and beautiful,” Hardy said. “I don’t mind sleeping on the floor, I’ve gotten accustomed to it over the years and I’m perfectly comfortable. Some of these kids who work on my campaign don’t have quite as much energy as I do.”

Hardy is the first U.S. Senate candidate in the country to take Move to Amend’s “Pledge to Amend,” in which candidates for public office sign on their support to add an amendment to the U.S. Constitution stating explicitly that money is not speech and artificial entities like corporations don’t have the same constitutional rights that human beings do. In addition to abolishing corporate personhood, Hardy says his chief goal in Washington is to establish a living wage for all workers in the U.S.

“I have no problem with Seattle’s $15 an hour minimum wage,” Hardy said. “And I think that the $10.10 an hour proposal is a laughable, laughable raise to the current minimum wage. If you work 40 hours a week, you have the right to be able to support a family without living in poverty.”