Wyoming Governor’s Race – Sam Galeotos

Wyoming Governor’s Race – an objective look at the main candidates.

This article is second of four, my attempt to look at each of the main candidates as objectively as I can. As I said in the first email, my wife and I are dedicated supporters of Harriet Hageman. Our personal regard for her does not enter into our evaluation of her opponents’ candidacies or hers. We look at record and policy, leaving out personal feelings.

After looking fairly, we conclude that there is no choice other than Harriet.

Please read on if you have the time. And please feel free to forward if you wish.

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SAM GALEOTOS:

I don’t know him personally. I’m am assured by friends who support him that he is a good person. I don’t doubt it. The other candidates are all good people too.

I don’t support Mr. Galeotos because his claims as a candidate are at odds with his history. That history and his own words paint the portrait of what he really believes.

Mr. Galeotos is chairman of Green House Data (GHD). GHD boasts about its “green energy” use and its “green” philosophy. Their corporate Vision statement reads:

“We lead by example….by choosing 100% sustainable power…[which]….provides our customers with options to reduce their own carbon footprint…….…We believe the greenest electron is the one that is never used.”

Factually, GHD cannot “choose” so-called sustainable power. It uses the electrons coming over power lines, which are the same whether produced by wind, solar, coal or natural gas. Unless GHD has its own solar panel fields, wind turbines, and battery storage facilities (which they do not), almost all their power comes from fossil fuels – just like our own homes and businesses. GHD’s claim is misleading.

To make the “green” and “sustainable” claims, GHD writes checks to buy “renewables credits”. Those credits subsidize solar and wind power producers at the expense of their unsubsidized competitors who produce conventional fuels and conventional power. GHD could have decided not to buy renewable credits and foregone their “green” advertising, but they took the opposite route. Despite the reality that they use the same proportion of “renewable” power as the rest of us, they claim otherwise. They use what we use, but they have joined the rhetorical crusade against fossil fuel industries, supplemented by corporate money.

Candidate Galeotos cannot evade the negative implications of his own company’s policies for our biggest industries. He cannot ignore ultimate intent of the “green energy” movement, which relentlessly dedicates every day’s work effort toward putting our fossil fuel industries out of business. The greenie groups could care less about the livelihoods of thousands of our neighbors who work in coal mines and oil and gas fields.

You shouldn’t need more evidence about GHD, but if you do, then take a look at the GHD Sustainability Policy (below). It disparages fossil fuels and encourages not using them, with language containing the usual environmentalist claptrap about carbon neutral, “dirty energy”, etc.

A governor who chairs a company that has signed onto this destructive nonsense cannot defend our native energy industries. As chairman of GHD, he could have renounced those policies. He has not. That tells me he believes in them, no matter his declarations to the contrary.

Mr. Galeotos also has a distressing record on government subsidies. His supporters dispute that he had any involvement in GHD taking millions in state subsidies to help its operations. He was not chairman when the money was doled out. But note – he hasn’t offered to refund them.

More important, his unscripted words reveal his real beliefs. In the July 12 Cheyenne debate (on PBS), Harriet pointed out the millions in subsidies GHD received. Mr. Galeotos blurted out these words:

“Well, I am totally baffled by the scenario that was just laid out. It shows a severe lack of understanding of how the private sector works today and how you do business in the modern world.”

Now the truth comes out! We know what he really thinks. Without realizing it, he told us how the well-connected do business.

Besides taking development subsidies, GHD benefits from a large no-bid state contract. Do you detect the scent of the Wyoming version of the DC Swamp? Some of us call this “the ole boy network” in Cheyenne. It’s not an empty joke. It’s real. And it is why Wyoming is in such fiscal peril.

If one business gets a subsidy, why shouldn’t every business get one? In Mr. Galeotos’ “modern world of business”, select companies with the right connections (e.g. GHD) get handouts of state money, while families running a café, or a construction company, or a ranch, or an outfitter, or a shoe store do not.

The rest of us run our businesses with our own capital. We don’t seek handouts, and wouldn’t know even which doors to knock on to get one. It’s just not part of our thinking. But Mr. Galeotos knows the game.

I’ve heard a great deal about Mr. Galeotos’ “vast business experience”. That’s nice. But what about principle and fairness? What about a level playing field? No, his is the “modern” way of doing business. The self-described “outsider” is really an insider.

How do we get the reform we need from a governor whose beliefs differ from his public declarations, whose thinking is “good ole boy”? The answer is: we don’t.

I conclude regretfully that Mr. Galeotos is not the outsider or reform candidate we need. If he’s elected, I think we are looking at third Mead term. Mead 2.0.

Finally, I look at the question of non-profit support. GHD boasts its civic virtue because it donates 5% of computing time and employee hours to select non-profits. Who are these non-profits? Two are deadly enemies of our biggest industries – fossil fuels. Would any of us use our financial resources to assist Earth Protect (EP)? Not a chance! See their website home page – below.

EP cloaks their intent in slogans we hear ad nauseam every day. EP will have you know all about their self-congratulatory, noble, planet-saving moral merit. But in truth, their activities are base and ugly, directed toward hampering and eventually shutting down our industries and limiting and ending jobs that support our neighbors and their families.

EP and other wealthy environmental groups get huge outside support from the left, particularly the radical left (a larger majority by the week these days in the Dem Party). Why give them a penny of additional help? None of us would. If I ran GHD, I’d kick EP and its fellow travelers off the program and invite in organizations which help advance free markets, capitalism and defense of individual liberties.

The claims of Mr. Galeotos’ campaign that he is a conservative are completely unconvincing to me. I don’t believe he would be a good governor. Again, Mead 2.0.

If you aren’t convinced about Mr. Galeotos from your own research, see the superb documentation of his record that Harriet’s campaign put together at:

www.wrongforwyoming.com

~ Dan Brophy

Notes:

GHD Sustainability Policy

Earth Protect Home Page