With incoming freshman legislators headed to Cheyenne after the holidays, it’s a good time to give them all a little bit of advice from someone who has also served in that chamber.
Opinion
First let’s start with the old saying, “Failure to prepare = prepare for failure.”
There is much to learn in your first few months of becoming a Wyoming legislator. First, of course, are just the basic mechanics of your trade, starting with how a bill becomes a law in Wyoming. It looks akin to that wonderful School House Rock cartoon we old timers all remember.
This you will learn. But for your first few months and years of being a lawmaker, what you learn is a bit like figuring out how to navigate a new town. You will get the basics right off the bat, but it will be quite a while before you learn about this shortcut, that detour, or that back road route. These insights are slow to come, not because someone is keeping them from you, or because they are insider secrets of the elitist swamp you don’t get to know, but rather because the sheer volume of things you will learn will come in a natural, sequential order.
Find a mentor. The first few weeks of the legislative session will show you which legislators understand the process and are skilled debaters, presenters and orators, and which are not. Ask the skilled legislators questions about the process but also about how they have acquired their skills and find out who their mentors were when they first came to the Legislature. There’s a lot to be learned from that.
Sooner than later, get to know the agency heads who often testify to committees you serve on. This is something I wish I had known early in my days as a legislator. If you serve on the Education Committee, make sure you get to know the superintendent of public instruction and her staff. Take the time to build relationships and talk through agendas. But I will add one word of caution. Your ethical standards must be higher than your friendships, and this fact can lead to uncomfortable realities about the limitations lawmakers must have when building relationships. If a “friend” is asking you to do something unethical or inappropriate, they were never a friend. Again, I learned this the hard way, but it’s good to know it and to be prepared for it early on in your political career.
This leads me to a phrase that will encapsulate the entirety of your service to our state, “Character is destiny.”
When I was a freshman lawmaker, a speaker said something during orientation that has stuck with me. “If you don’t know who you are, [the Legislature] is a hell of a place to find out.”
The most successful lawmakers are the ones who walk into the chamber knowing who they are and who stick to their principles throughout the process. This isn’t to say they don’t learn and grow, but rather they do not change the important parts of their character, their morality, their ethics. These things you will need in spades as you work through the process. And they will be the only things that truly ground you.
Your character will indeed be your destiny.
Serving in the Wyoming Legislature is an amazing, humbling thing. When you walk into that chamber and raise your right hand to be sworn in, you will feel the weight of Wyoming’s history pressed onto your shoulders. That weight doesn’t lift until you leave for the last time.
You are there to serve the people of this state, and they must always be on your mind as you go about your business. Not as a cudgel to beat your fellow lawmakers with, but as a soft reminder of the real purpose for being there. Service, not power, not control, should be your guiding light.
Good luck in all you do.
And finally, I wanted to take a moment to write a thank you to WyoFile for letting me be part of their opinion page.
Months ago, I got a phone call asking me if I would join them. The mission? To expand their editorial page and bring a conservative voice to their readers. It was a mission I could easily get behind.
I have always believed that reading broadly and reading outside of our comfort zone is the best way to grow and so the mission to write in this space felt like the right one. I have enjoyed every minute of it. Writing a weekly column is a bit of a grind, but it teaches discipline and creativity. I hope more conservatives will join this space soon.
And the staff at WyoFile have been amazing to work with and for. They are good people who have offered nothing but helpful advice to strengthen my writing.
It’s been a privilege to share my thoughts with this audience, and though this may be my last column, I hope these discussions continue to inspire and resonate.
The post Get ready to learn: A former lawmaker’s advice for those serving their first term appeared first on WyoFile .