Dear editor:

There was a time in Wyoming when leadership was measured a little differently.

Not by who could stir up the most outrage or say “no” the loudest. Not by turning every disagreement into a loyalty test. It was measured by whether a person would show up, listen carefully, stand shoulder to shoulder with their neighbors, and help Wyoming find a way forward.

We have been thinking about that a lot lately as Wyoming prepares to make a choice about the kind of leadership it wants. We have watched enough to know what that looks like. And we believe we see it in Eric Barlow.

Former Wyoming U.S. Sens. Al Simpson and Mike Enzi were not cut from the same cloth, and they would have been the first to tell you so. But they believed the same things where it counted. That public service wasn’t about making a show of your convictions but it was about carrying them, day after day, without needing anyone to notice. It meant doing what had to be done and treating people decently. Making the hard calls and understanding that it was a blessing to be in community and count on other people and have them count on you.

What shaped our husbands was not just their time in Washington. It was what came earlier, here at home, where we bleed brown and gold. It was in the years when Wyoming needed steadying, and they were the kind of men who stayed at the table long after the coffee in those thick ceramic café mugs went cold.

Al was in the Wyoming Legislature when the energy boom was still sorting itself out. Nobody quite knew what it would mean for the people living here, raising families, trying to build something that mattered. He believed Wyoming had a right to ask hard questions and protect what was ours. All that the wealth coming out of the ground ought to do some good for the people living above it. And he didn’t think you could rightly call something progress if the people who built this place were the ones left paying for it.

When Mike ran for mayor, Gillette was in the middle of something nobody had quite prepared for. The boom had brought people faster than the town could absorb them. The schools were overwhelmed. The streets were giving out. Families were moving in and the water lines simply couldn’t keep up. Mike used to say leadership came down to budgets, agendas and planning. That was the accountant in him. But he also had vision. He just believed somebody had to hold things steady and guide the community into something lasting.

That was the kind of conservatism our husbands believed in. Strength did not come from anger. Principle did not mean shutting your neighbors out. And the future of this state was always worth protecting.

Al used to say you have to talk to each other and hear each other. Mike believed you could find common ground and still get things done. Neither man saw that as weakness. They saw it as the duty that comes with service. You can protect what matters and still find a responsible way forward. That is what they believed, and it’s what we lived.

We have watched Wyoming politics for a long time. Long enough to know the difference between someone who wants to serve this state and someone who wants to use it. Wyoming does not need politics imported from somewhere else dressed up in Wyoming clothes. And it does not need a politics so eager to tear things down that it forgets how much care and responsibility it took to build what generations before us left behind. It needs leadership that grew here and has been tested by solving one hard problem after the next.

That is why we support Eric Barlow.

He has our support because we recognize something in him that matters to us. He is not interested in the performance of it or the title. He is interested in the work. You can tell that about a person. You can see it in how they live before anyone is watching.

Eric served as a Marine and came home to spend his life as a large-animal veterinarian, out on ranch roads in all weather, doing the work that others depend on for their livelihoods. He and his family call Gillette home, the same community Mike helped steady through some of its hardest years. And we believe that kind of life prepares a man to govern this state well.

He knows the drive from Cheyenne back home and knows it ends at a kitchen table in Gillette, a ranch gate outside Wheatland, a main street in Pinedale, a hospital in Rawlins. He understands that the people trying to hold Wyoming communities together deserve a governor who takes that seriously. We believe he does.

Walk into any grocery store in Wyoming and listen. People are wondering whether their kids can afford to stay. Whether the ranch makes it another generation. Whether the hospital down the road keeps its doors open. Those are not political questions. They are Wyoming questions.

Our Wyoming neighbors deserve more than slogans that now appear on your phone rather than true conversations over a lunch table at the senior center. They deserve someone willing to do the hard, patient work of finding real solutions.

We believe Eric Barlow is that kind of man. He seems interested in serving Wyoming well. After everything we have seen, that is not a small thing to say.

Our husbands loved this state deeply. They believed Wyoming was worth protecting, worth strengthening, and worth handing on to our children and their grandchildren with care. They believed leadership should leave a place steadier than you found it.

We believe that too and we believe Eric Barlow is the right man to do that now.

Ann Simpson

Wife of late U.S. Sen. Al Simpson, R-Wyo., Cody

Diana Enzi

Wife of late U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., Gillette