CASPER — Legislative leaders have asked a Senate panel to consider whether to launch a formal investigation into allegations recently brought against Sen. Anthony Bouchard, R-Burns.
The request for an investigation comes days after the Senate voted to remove Bouchard from his committee assignments for a “long pattern” of misconduct, said Sen. Larry Hicks, R-Baggs.
“The subcommittee must determine if the factual situation is sufficient to warrant a reasonably prudent person to believe that you committed misconduct,” Senate President Dan Dockstader, R-Afton, wrote in a Monday letter to Bouchard.
Bouchard has until March 25 to provide a written answer to the committee tasked with deciding whether a formal investigation is warranted.
The committee — which consists of the senators on the Legislature’s Management Council — will determine if more evidence is needed to proceed and if Bouchard should be asked to testify before the panel.
Bouchard has for years been known for his combative brand of politics, which has sometimes included public spats with legislative colleagues.
But the most recent allegations, and his removal from the committee, follows exchanges he allegedly had with Eric Boley, a lobbyist and president of the Wyoming Hospital Association.
Boley filed a March 9 complaint against Bouchard that said the senator had yelled at him, called him a liar and has been “combative and disrespectful” to witnesses before the Legislature’s health committee.
“Senator Bouchard uses intimidation and bullying tactics frequently and this behavior must be brought to your attention for corrective action,” Boley wrote. “I have felt personally and professionally attacked on several occasions by the Senator and I’m grateful the meetings are recorded to back up my claims.”
Boley specifically cited an encounter with Bouchard on March 8 in the Senate lobby. The Legislature was in session at the time.
Boley alleged that Bouchard and Sen. Tom James, R-Green River, “entered [his] personal space,” confronted him in “an abusive and demanding tone” and tried to “intimidate [him] with their body language (hands on hips, arms waving, in my face).”
“This behavior is not the Wyoming way,” Dockstader said in a Friday press release. “It is of utmost importance that we uphold decorum and civility in the Legislature. That is the expectation of all our members. Anything less is a distraction from the important work we are doing for the people of Wyoming.”
Boley did not respond to request for comment Tuesday.
This year, Bouchard served on Senate committees governing health and agriculture.
He was also a member of the management audit committee and select committee on legislative facilities.
Bouchard took issue with the fact that he was stripped of his committee assignments before there was any investigation.
“After a whisper campaign took place, stripping me of all of my committees, the President of the Senate suddenly has an epiphany that they should have followed the due process in Rule 22? It’s an insult to everyone’s intelligence, and damaging to the integrity of the Senate,” Bouchard said.
But Hicks was adamant that the motion to kick the Burns senator off his committees was “not a direct result” of the complaint.
“There’s been requests from numerous members for over a year to take some type of disciplinary action,” Hicks said.
Those who voted to expel Bouchard from his committees said that his poor decorum has come in multiple forms: being overly confrontational in committee to the point where it’s scared the public out of testifying; multiple instances during which he’s “blown up” on the Senate floor; and addressing specific people on the floor of the Senate, which is against the rules.
During debate on the Thursday vote that stripped him of his committees, Bouchard said that members of the Senate had it out for him and that he was specifically being called out to silence him because he often pushes back on other lawmakers.
“The reason he feels like he’s being picked on is because he repeatedly does not follow the rules of the Senate,” Hicks told the Star-Tribune.
Bouchard’s social media presence has also played a role in the action taken against him. He will often post provocative and combative things on his personal and official Facebook page, including a post directly after he was kicked off the committees.
“Everybody retains their First Amendment right,” Hicks acknowledged. “You can go out and post whatever you want, but there’s also a responsibility with going out onto public media when you carry the title ‘Senator.’ You have a higher responsibility.”
Bouchard once called Senate Floor Leader Ogden Driskill a “swamp monster” and Hicks a “slime ball.”
Being stripped of committee assignments takes away significant legislative power, but Bouchard said he’s excited to be able to attend more committee meetings and provide public testimony at them.
While almost a super-majority voted to remove Bouchard from his committees, multiple dissenters spoke out in opposition, including the moderate Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander.
“I want a little more due process,” Case told the Star-Tribune. “I don’t doubt the allegations. I’m just saying that it’s kind of a lack of transparency possibly. It’s a dangerous situation where you remove people [because] you’re annoyed with their opinions and positions. Might have been better to have a committee do the investigation, make a report, then act on that.”
Sen. Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, and others said that they wanted more discussion and evidence, while others worried that this vote could set a dangerous precedent.
The Senate has three options to discipline its members: censure, taking away committee assignments and expulsion.
Politics in Wyoming have become increasingly uncivil in recent years, observers say. Hicks and Driskill linked that trend to Bouchard’s entrance in the Legislature.
“Decorum would be much different in the Legislature today, there’s not a doubt in the world,” Driskill said.
It’s not that one lawmaker can have that large of an effect on a 30-person body, Hicks said, but rather Bouchard’s ways of politicking have brought others along with him after they feel “empowered” by his tactics.
Hicks and Bouchard have a rocky and combative relationship, which reared its head Thursday after the vote.
“Look at the way he looks at me, that sneer,” Bouchard said to Hicks, who was sitting in the Senate lobby as Bouchard was interviewed by reporters. Bouchard went on to accuse Hicks of calling him names, which Hicks denied with some sarcasm.
Bouchard is also in the midst of a campaign to unseat Rep. Liz Cheney, who angered former President Donald Trump and some of the Republican base with her vote to impeach the former president.
Driskill still sees a successful future for Bouchard in the Senate.
“For me, if he wants to come back and be a normal member, I’m happy to say, ‘Lets start over again and let’s act with decency and decorum.’”
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