Republican Woman Becomes First Female President of Wyoming State Senate

Cheyenne, Wyoming,Tribune-Eagle ^ | 01-16-03 | Fashek, Allison

[Theodore R.]

By Allison Fashek Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle

CHEYENNE – It was an historic moment at the state Capitol Tuesday afternoon as Sen. April Brimmer Kunz, R-Cheyenne, was sworn in as the first female president of the state Senate.

Two other women took top leadership posts beside Brimmer Kunz in the chamber.

With Wyoming being the first state to give women the vote and to elect a woman as governor, this latest step in women’s achievements was not surprising, Brimmer Kunz said.

But it still left her nearly speechless.

“I want all of you to know that the women in your lives – the grandmothers, mothers, wives, daughters and grandchildren – are absolutely thrilled,” Brimmer Kunz said during her State of the Legislature policy address.

“We are leading, and the light is shining, I believe, today on the state of Wyoming.”

Brimmer Kunz said she has three goals in mind for her presidency – doing the best job possible, being fair and getting the message out to the people about what the Senate does.

She mentioned health care, education, infrastructure and corrections as major issues, but did not go into detail about what she hoped the Legislature would accomplish in those areas.

During the rest of the proceedings, Sen. John Schiffer, R-Kaycee, took the oath as Senate vice president. And it was announced formally that Sen. Jayne Mockler, D-Cheyenne, will serve as minority floor leader and that Sen. Rae Lynn Job, D-Rock Springs, will be the minority whip.

“It’s a cliché to say that we’ve shattered a glass ceiling, but some are difficult to break,” Mockler said later. “You won’t see much change in how we do things, but this is still very important.”

With Gov. Dave Freudenthal and many of the senators’ family members and friends watching from the balcony, William Hill, chief justice of the Wyoming Supreme Court, administered the oath of office to 16 new or re-elected senators on the floor.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Casper, whose children sat beside him during the opening ceremony, was among the newly elected.

“We’ve had our four days of orientation, and we’re ready,” Barrasso said, referring to two days of instruction provided to the incoming freshmen last December as well as informational sessions held Saturday and Monday. “LSO (the Legislative Service Office) has done a tremendous job of bringing us up to speed.”

In addition, 40 members of Senate staff took the oath of office.

For Freudenthal and Brimmer Kunz, the day also was a bit of a family affair.

Brimmer Kunz, with her three children and parents in the audience, used her speech to give a nod to her father’s mother, who served in the state House in 1927, as well as an aunt who more recently did the same.

Brimmer Kunz also looked on as a proud mother when her daughter Marianne, a 17-year-old junior at Central High in Cheyenne, took the oath of office as an intern and page for the session.

Kunz and Freudenthal’s daughter Katie later sang with the high school’s choir as part of the ceremony’s entertainment.

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Wyoming was the first State to give women the right to vote but its neighbor, Utah, led with the right for women to vote by granting women that right when it was a Territory. The Edmunds-Tucker Act, which took away the right of all Mormons from the Utah Territory to vote, when voted out of business, restored the vote to men only.

The people who conquered the West, Utahns and Wyomins alike, were tough and reconized the value of ALL working hands.