Driving from his hotel on the way to campaign door to door in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Casper, Gary Trauner passes 13 signs supporting his bid to unseat Barbara Cubin as Wyoming’s lone delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives.

One is in the small second-floor window of the state Democratic Party’s office. The other 12 cover the window of his own downtown campaign office.

Casper is a town that rises and falls from the dusty Wyoming desert with the gushes and gurgles of the fickle but surging petroleum market. It is an industrial city; staunchly Republican and Barbara Cubin’s home.

Trauner has come here to continue his Quixotic quest to become the first Democrat to represent Wyoming in the House since Dick Cheney replaced Teno Roncalio in 1978. It is a quest he is taking one door at a time.

“Hi. May I introduce myself?” he says.

An elderly woman peers out at Trauner through a screen door as a small dog yaps at her feet and a TV drones in the background.

“I guess,” she says, warily.

“I’m Gary Trauner and I am running for the U.S. House of Representatives. I am going door to door across Wyoming and have knocked on almost 10,000 doors.”

It is an introduction Trauner, 47, has been practicing since early January,  when he declared his candidacy. Since then, accompanied by a small cadre of loyal volunteers, he has kept a frenetic schedule crisscrossing the state, giving press conferences, and attending events. Mostly he has been knocking on doors.

“I need name recognition and I need to meet as many people as possible, because the only way I am going to win as a Democrat – and I admit it is going to be an uphill battle – is to get people past the label and the only way I am going to do that is to let them get to know who I am,” he says.

His quest has taken him to within three doors of the home of Wyoming’s six-term incumbent Congresswoman. “I decided not to push it,” he laughs.

Today, he is stumping his way in 90 degree heat around Rustic Ridge, a neighborhood described by one resident as inhabited largely by ex-oil executives – affluent, elderly and Republican.

The response Trauner gets is as varied as the people he meets.

“Oh I am going to vote for you, and my husband is too,” one woman says as her face lights up and she opens the screen. “We need to get rid of Cubin so badly.”

Trauner walks on to the next door. “As much as I try not to get up or down, you can’t help but be excited by things like that,” he says. “I try not to hear just what I want to hear and actually hear what people are telling me.”

Others simply nod and shut the door when he finishes his introduction. Trauner’s enthusiasm for talking to people has carried him through rants against the Democratic Party and a nip from a 90-year-old woman’s toy poodle. But his worst response ever came when an older woman answered the door in Buffalo.

“She seemed nice, and after I introduced myself and said I was running for U.S. Congress, she asked, ‘What party?’” Trauner says. “I told her Democrat, and she just turned and closed the door without talking. That hurt. In fact, I think I even said that out loud.”

If no one answers the door (60 percent to 70 percent don’t), he leaves a “walk card” with his name, phone number, Web site and a personal note that he jots at each door.

It’s 5:21 p.m., and Trauner has been knocking on doors for more than five hours.

“That’s it, my legs are killing me,” he sighs. Then he sees Forest Irons, a volunteer helping him canvas, talking to someone on the front porch of a house across the street. Trauner breaks into a trot.

“Hi, I’m Gary Trauner. ...”



Campaign strategy

From afar, Trauner’s campaign strategy seems like the wanderings of an idealist whose rose-colored glasses have obscured the modern political landscape. Trauner’s campaign manager, Linda Stoval, a 20-year veteran of Wyoming politics, argues exactly the opposite. Trauner’s approach is the only one that will work in the quirky political landscape of this large and scattered state.

“Even though the state is so big, people still expect to know the people they have elected,” she says. “Whether it happens or not, it means a lot to people that they have met him, especially at this level a race. In my mind [going door to door] is a necessity for Democratic candidates but I have been campaigning here for 20 years and have never seen it at this level.”

For Trauner, who sees his campaign as a full-time job, if not more, it is the best way to continue working.

“The thing is, this is a state with no major population centers and I don’t know what else I would do,” he says. “I could be cranking out a position paper or something, but that doesn’t take that long and who is going to read it? Issues matter but people don’t vote on 10-point health care plans.”

Trauner’s enthusiasm for grassroots campaigning also was sparked by another so-called idealist politician, deceased U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota.

A year ago, Trauner attended a workshop for new candidates put on by Wellstone Action, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group dedicated to carrying on Wellstone’s legacy of progressive, grassroots politicking. While it taught him some campaign basics, Trauner’s door-to-door strategy is all his own – and there is strategy.

Trauner targets what he calls “persuadable precincts.”  Before coming to a town, Trauner researches voter records to see how certain precincts voted in the last few elections. He looks for precincts that split between Democratic and Republican candidates, ones with a preponderance of registered Republicans that have voted for Democrats, or simply where the race was close.

“I picked it [Rustic Ridge] because I thought it might be more conservative, and I need to talk to those people,” he says. “We aren’t necessarily looking for Democratic districts.”



A reluctant politician

While Trauner’s door-to-door campaign strategy may include precinct lists and philosophies on Wyoming politics, when he walks the streets of Rustic Ridge, his world condenses considerably.

“My friends think running for Congress is a glamorous thing because I’m talking about the national issues of the day,” he says as he hangs a walk card. “I’m actually thinking what is the best way to hang this flier on one of these straight door handles. Round ones are so much easier.”

Trauner grew up in a suburb north of New York as the middle of three boys. He describes his parents as “educated and active,” but their political activities did not extend beyond a lively dinner table debate.

After a getting an MBA at New York University and serving a stint on Wall Street, Trauner made his way to Jackson. Here, he helped found and build OneWest.net, a local internet service provider that he recently sold.

Politically, Trauner can point to his meteoric rise on the Jackson school board, where he was elected chairman after a few months on the board and oversaw the firing and replacement of both a high school principal and the district’s superintendent.

“I am a normal guy, but I see myself as having the ability to be a leader,” he says.

But it is his one and only political experience.

Despite his resolve, Trauner is not necessarily comfortable in his candidacy, at least not with the idea of being a politician. He cringes noticeably whenever the “P” word comes up.

“I’m  not a politician; I’m a businessman,” he says. “It still hurts whenever people call me a politician.”

But to those who have known him the longest, it seems to be a natural fit.

“I never thought I would be doing this, but a friend of mine said, ‘I knew when you were 10 years old this is what you would be doing,’” he says,

“I try not to be too delusional, but from what I hear going door to door across the state, people are ready for a change,” he says. “I always ask the question, ‘We get one representative – and forget about party for a second – do we have the best representative we could have?’ I would argue that even the staunchest Republican supporters know the answer to that.”

The Ted Ladd-Barbara Cubin race in 2004 had Democrats all over the state giddy with anticipation that they could send one of their own to Washington.

But Cubin carried Natrona County by a 15,630 to 14,886 margin and won the overall race 131,682 to 99,982.

“Ted Ladd was the first legitimate candidate we have had run against Barbara Cubin, but even legitimate candidates sometimes fall a little short,” Wyoming Democratic Party Chairman Mike Gierau said. “Because of Ted Ladd, people know the race is winnable, and Gary Trauner has raised more money because people think this is a race worth investing in.”



I think I have a shot

“He is starting to get the attention of folks around the state and the country,” Gierau continued.

Some of those people include National Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean.

“I was going door to door, and I felt like I was in this little bubble and no one knew what I was doing,” Trauner says. “I told Mike [Gierau], ‘Get me 15 minutes in front of whoever you can, because I want them to know what I’m up to.”

Trauner got an audience with Dean and stressed why the DNC chairman should support him with a business-based argument.

“This is essentially a cheap seat; this is not a $10 million race or even a $5 million race and so the return on the investment could be huge, because, let’s face it, a seat is a seat,” Trauner says.“I wanted their financial support, but I also wanted them to know that I am not going to agree with Howard Dean or a someone from Massachusetts on everything. I am a pro-business, pro-gun Democrat.

The next day, the DNC featured Trauner on the opening page of its Web site. Shortly after, a Rasmussen Reports poll showed Trauner to be tied with Cubin 47 percent to 43 percent, (with a 4 percent margin of error) and Congressional Quarterly changed its status of the race from “Safe Republican” to “Republican Favored.”

Besides more money and more national attention, Trauner thinks he has the advantage of running in a year without a presidential election race.

“Ted got enough votes in 2004 to win this election,” Trauner says. “It’s an off year, and based on our projections of voter turnout, if I get as many votes as Ted did, I will win. On the other hand, we need to stop people from dropping off on our side as well.”



Home on the trail

During the campaign, Trauner is a Wilson resident in name only. His real home is whatever hotel room he happens to stay in that night.

“I really don’t care where I stay, with the exception of a few towns where specific hotels have supported me,” Trauner says. “I just try to stay at the newest place in town because at least then it is clean”

In Casper, after walking door to door for five hours, Trauner heads to the gym.

“On the road, the hardest thing to do is eat well and  stay in shape,” he says. At the Flex Complex, Trauner jumps on a StairMaster with a copy of his press conference speech and a booklet from the University of Colorado titled “What Every Westerner Should Know About Energy.” Besides staying in shape, the gym offers Trauner a chance to focus.

“I get some of my best thinking done when I can pop my Ipod in and just go,” Trauner says. “It has a clearing effect on my head.”

After a 45-minute workout, Trauner grabs dinner at the Applebee’s near his hotel.

“On a normal day I would probably go to the mall and meet people, but I am going to be up late tonight preparing for tomorrow’s press conference and I might bang out some notes,” he says.

Just after 9 p.m. Trauner’s wife, Terry, calls from Wilson, where she is a partner in an interior design firm. “She is a single mom essentially and is working full time,” Trauner says. “But every time I call her, she is the happiest she has been because I am doing what I was meant to do.”

The couple has a two sons, ages 6 and 12.

“I am Mr. Dad when I’m home, and that has been really hard, and if I win it will be even harder,” Trauner says. “They [his sons] get it. They’re not psyched about it, but they get it. I just tell them that I am going to get to run the country, and they think that’s pretty cool.”

Trauner’s enthusiasm for his campaign is contagious but not infinite: “Things get frustrating and there are days when I go out there and think ‘Can I really make a difference?”

When the distance becomes too much, Trauner heads back to Wilson to spend time with his family. For the little down periods, his solution is simple: He knocks on doors.

After he gets off the phone, Trauner works on his speech lying on his bed and turns in at 10:30. He is in his campaign office at 6:45, with a bagel and a coke for breakfast.

Kitty-corner from Trauner’s campaign office in Casper loom the twin towers of the Petroleum Building and the Mineral Resource Center. The tan sandstone buildings, made of the same stone as the nearby Dick Cheney federal building, house the offices of many petroleum operators and support service providers. Across Center Street at the historic Rialto Theater, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s movie about global warming is playing four times a day.

If An Inconvenient Truth can draw a crowd in Casper, maybe Gary Trauner can carry the Equality State.