KEMMERER, April 3, 2026 — Brent Bien told a Kemmerer town hall Friday that Wyoming’s problems come down to more than taxes, education, public lands or the direction of state government. In his telling, the deeper issue is a failure of leadership in Cheyenne.
Bien, a retired Marine Corps colonel and 2022 gubernatorial candidate, described himself as “a principled conservative” and said he is running because he no longer trusts those in power with his or anyone else’s liberty.
He opened with a line that framed much of the evening’s message: “returning taxes to the taxpayers, elections to the voters, education to the parents, agriculture to the growers, and energy to Wyoming.” Throughout the evening, he returned again and again to the same themes: trust, transparency, accountability and putting Wyoming people ahead of bureaucracies, associations and insider-driven decision-making.
Bien told the audience that his first run for governor in 2022 grew directly out of Wyoming’s COVID-era response.
“And then Covid hit, the current governor shut the state down. That was too much for me,” Bien said. “And then of course we had that legislative session that did nothing to protect our liberty. I said, okay, that’s it. I couldn’t find anybody to do it. … And I said, well, I’ll do it, you know, I’ll run against this guy.”
For Bien, that was not just a policy disagreement. He framed it as a liberty issue. After nearly three decades in the Marine Corps, he said returning home to see government restrictions and shutdowns was the moment he decided Wyoming needed a different course.
Leadership and trust
At one point, Bien said plainly that this is “not about legislative experience, this is about leadership experience,” drawing one of the sharpest distinctions of the night between managing an existing system and trying to redirect it.
He rooted his argument in his military background. “Trust through transparency, accountability through audit. Yeah, that’s what it comes down to,” Bien said. “Other than somebody dying, the number one thing I cared about is do they trust me or not? Because if they trusted me, didn’t matter how tough the mission was, they’d do it.”
In an interview on Cowboy State Politics, Bien described his leadership style. Iverson pressed him on the differences between his military background and the office he is seeking.
He said,” trust is the foundation of any functioning relationship and argued Wyoming government has damaged that trust by withholding information, avoiding accountability and leaving residents feeling shut out of major decisions.”
Bien said,” Wyoming should stop chasing politically fashionable schemes and instead make it easier for people to live, work, produce and stay in the state.”
“Government’s only business in business is to get out of the way, deregulate, cut taxes, never enforce ESG, and guarantee the state will never shut down again,” he said.
He also argued Wyoming should get back to the priorities represented on the state seal: livestock, grain, mining and oil, and he said workers and businesses need certainty, not political gamesmanship. On agriculture, he said,” the state should treat it as critical infrastructure and ask why the next generation is losing its path back to the ranch, farm and productive work.”
Forests, public lands and 30x30
On forests and public lands, Bien argued Wyoming can no longer afford to let dead and dying timber pile up while the state cycles through drier conditions and repeated fire danger.
He discussed that he would like to get the “blue timber” out and push a more assertive management posture, rather than continue under policies he, believes, have left forests neglected. He also carried that argument into the wider land fight in Wyoming, saying the Biden and U.N. “30x30” concept is not dead but still moving through wildlife-corridor policy, rewilding efforts and biodiversity schemes tied to carbon-credit markets.
Bien connected those concerns to the Rock Springs BLM resource management plan and to broader pressure on private landowners and working ground across Wyoming.
Backroom deals and public trust
When asked about Gov. Mark Gordon attending a recent closed-door session in Jackson Hole involving data-center and big-tech interests, Bien said, he was absolutely opposed to it.
“Because he is a public figure, all those minutes should be available to all of us,” Bien said. “All of that information should be available, made available to us without having to do the FOIAs and all this other stuff. … This is why folks don’t trust our state government anymore.”
He told the audience that Wyoming’s problem is not simply that officials sometimes make bad decisions. It is that too many decisions are made without the public, without transparency and without citizens being brought in until “backdoor deals are done” and “legislation’s done to make it happen.”
Essential services before corporate handouts
Bien also contrasted what he called neglected essential services with large state awards to major corporations.
He said,” infrastructure and basic services like roads, sewage, fire protection, EMS and police, should come before corporate handouts and discretionary political deals.” He questioned why the state says it cannot afford basics while still finding massive sums for billion-dollar corporations, specifically pointing to the state’s $100 million award to BWXT.
“And then you give $100 million to a multi billion dollar corporation that is BWXT,” Bien said.
On education, Bien said,” Wyoming is spending too much money to accept mediocre performance and allowing too much authority to drift into bloated administration with too little oversight.”
He also said,” lawmakers can earmark money, but there is no meaningful enforcement mechanism to make sure it reaches teachers, and argued parental complaints should be handled at the lowest possible level rather than being pushed toward court.”
Bien also criticized the education bureaucracy more broadly, saying teachers want to teach but are buried under administrative burdens and excessive testing. Within that discussion, he said he supports career and technical education, “but not if it becomes a system that channels children too early into fixed workforce roles.”
“I don’t want a state of workers. I want a state of thinkers,” Bien said. He warned against what he described as a communist-style model of slotting children into jobs from a young age and said Wyoming should focus first on forming independent, capable thinkers, then equipping them with the skills to work, build and succeed in whatever path they choose.
Closing Thoughts
For voters trying to sort out the early contours of the 2026 governor’s race, Bien’s town hall offered a clearer sense of the case he is trying to make.
His message was that Wyoming needs a governor who will lead and be accountable to the public, will be candid about the state’s challenges and focus on serving the people rather than simply maintaining the existing system of State government.
In Kemmerer, Bien made clear that he believes the state has drifted off course and must be steered back toward the people, not left under the influence of the bureaucracies, organizations and associations that now exert so much control in Cheyenne.