When Sen. Cynthia Lummis decided to help revive the Congressional Western Caucus years ago as a House member, it was in response to learning that some members of congressional leadership didn’t know basic things about, for example, the Bureau of Land Management.
“We went to one of the members of our leadership team in the House and talked to him about BLM matters, and his response was, ‘Now remind me what BLM stands for,’” Lummis, a Wyoming Republican, told NOTUS. “That was our clue that even our own Republican leadership was not familiar with Western issues.”
More than 90% of the land the federal government owns is in 12 states, all in the West. The federal government owns 63% of land in Utah, second only to Nevada at 80%, according to the Congressional Research Service. That creates a host of policy differences that lawmakers from there say their colleagues from more densely populated states just don’t understand.
That’s where the Western Caucus, a growing group of Republican members in both chambers, comes in. The group pushes for conservative policies that encourage energy production on federal land, like mining for coal and drilling for oil. It also emphasizes rolling back federal regulations that conserve federal land as untouched natural areas, arguing for “multiple use,” where land can be both productive and sustainably conserved, and better management of forests and water.
That often means they’re at odds with environmental groups and Democrats.
Nevada’s Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s office said that while she “doesn’t need the label of a caucus to bring attention to Western priorities in the Senate,” she often works with many of its members. Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego’s office described it as a “partisan” caucus, and also emphasized his willingness to work with its members on issues.
Jayson O’Neill, a Montana-based spokesperson for Save Our Parks, an advocacy organization, told NOTUS that he sees the Western Caucus as more aligned with oil and gas companies than conservationists.
“Our parks provide billions of dollars for Western states and economic development and opportunity, and the Western caucuses have done nothing, as the Trump administration has violated the law by illegally firing employees, RIFing them, forcing employees out, misappropriating congressional funds,” O’Neill said.
“From ethics and transparency disclosure that should be demanded by Congress about impacts that affect their Western constituents, from our parks to our public lands to our access, to our fire mitigation, they aren’t doing it,” O’Neill added.
Members of the caucus maintain that their role is to educate their colleagues about those very issues and their preferred policy outcomes.
“So much of the West, and Utah, you have to see it to understand what federal ownership is like,” Utah Sen. John Curtis told NOTUS. “Until you actually see that, it’s hard to get your arms around it. So I would say a lot of it is a bigger responsibility on our part to educate and share with people the differences.”
Curtis, who is only 10 months into his Senate term, said he’s already been offering to bring his Senate colleagues to Utah to see the real-world effects of resource management and energy production policy. Some, he said, have already said they’ll take him up on it.
He’s one of several Western senators NOTUS spoke to who said bringing their colleagues out to field trips in their states is essential to getting Western priorities in front of their peers. The Western Caucus has an upcoming trip to Las Vegas, for example, that will stop by the National Finals Rodeo while also convening panels and discussions covering upcoming permitting reform legislation, according to a Western Caucus aide.
Lummis and Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan co-chair the Senate version of the caucus. The House version is led by Rep. Doug LaMalfa and other lawmakers from rural California, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, Colorado and other states. This Congress, it has more than 90 members who represent most of the nation’s landmass.
The caucus also holds closed-door lunches once a month, and has two podcasts called “A Voice for Rural America” and “Chairman’s Chats,” and a blog, where members can discuss issues of importance to them. In a recent “Chairman’s Chat” video, LaMalfa and Colorado Rep. Jeff Hurd talked about multiple wildfire mitigation bills the two have co-sponsored in this Congress. One, the bipartisan Fix Our Forests Act, would speed up the review of forest management projects.
“We always think of, from the West, that we need to educate the East about the way that the Western part of the United States was set up, and how the resources for agriculture, for ranching, for recreation, for minerals development, mining, oil, gas, coal, uranium, all of those things, and the role that the federal government as the landlord plays in all of that stuff,” Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the number two Senate Republican, told NOTUS.
That need for education, in part, has to do with representation in leadership. While in the Senate the top two Republicans are from Western states, in the House, no member of Republican leadership is from a Western state.
Landon Stropko, a former congressional aide in the Wyoming delegation who was executive director of the Western Caucus, said the caucus has been influential in filling that gap, making sure Western priorities get in front of leadership anyway.
“Going back to Western Caucus, it really is a success story, because they’ve grown in numbers. And if you look at the rosters, there are members that are members of those caucuses that are from the Southeast or from the East. When I was involved, and I know that they still do, they like to engage the Eastern members in productive conversation,” Stropko told NOTUS. “I think the education, at least on the Republican side, has really been effective. I feel like there’s more top-to-bottom understanding.”
O’Neill also said that this is a unique moment when the Western Caucus has more power and influence than ever before, since Republicans control both Congress and the White House, and the Western states, growing in population, have more political power than they historically have. But, he added, they’re not using it.
“This is a realignment of the political influence of the West; with the Sun Belt, there is more population out here. There is more political influence where this used to be a lot more flyover country,” O’Neill said. “The Congressional Western Caucus that ostensibly should have the biggest stake in how all these dynamics play out is being derelict.”