Wyoming is second in Free State voting

10/01/03

Libertarians still hope to persuade like-minded people to move here even though Wyoming finished second to New Hampshire in Free State Project balloting.

State Libertarian party Chairman Dave Dawson doubts everyone who took part in the voting will want to move to New Hampshire. "What I am going to do is start campaigning for people who absolutely won't move east to come out to Wyoming, and we can have two free states," he said.

The Free State Project is an effort to get advocates of limited government to move to a single state. The project says it already has more than 5,000 members and hopes to have 20,000 by 2005.

Voting results among 10 candidate states -- all with relatively small populations -- were announced Wednesday in New York City.

New Hampshire ranked first in votes from every region except the West. Wyoming finished 10 percentage points behind New Hampshire and was followed by Montana, Idaho, Alaska, Maine, Vermont, Delaware, South Dakota and North Dakota.

Dawson, who got just over 2 percent in the 2002 governor's race, said he was not surprised that New Hampshire came out on top.

But he believes getting 20,000 people to move there is "probably fantasy." In Wyoming, the least populated state with just under half a million residents, a far smaller number of active Libertarians could make a big difference, he said.

Lewis Stock had been hopeful that Wyoming would finish first. But the Douglas-area farmer and rancher, who got 3 percent in running against Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., last year, also said the movement is not dead here.

In fact, a handful of Free State Project participants who have moved to Wyoming attended the Libertarians' last state party meeting, according to Stock.

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