Wyoming Legislature 2023: Kinskey Column On Breakdowns In Etiquette

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Dave Kinskey (above) represents Johnson County and eastern Sheridan County in the Wyoming Senate. A businessperson and former Mayor of Sheridan, he can be reached at his legislative email at Dave.Kinskey@WyoLeg.gov. Kinskey has agreed to pen multiple columns for AARP Wyoming to get our Legislative minds working. We thank the Senator.

Breakdowns in Legislative Etiquette
By Dave Kinskey, Wyoming Senate

Parliamentary procedure originated in the English Parliament as a set of rules intended to promote civil and orderly legislative debate. Unfortunately, sometimes political positions and passions run so deep that orderly, dispassionate discussion loses out to shouting and brawling.

In the U.S. Congress, in the days leading up to our Civil War, Yale historian Joanne B. Freeman documented more than 70 acts of violence between congressmen.

In 1838, a congressman delivered a speech perceived by the other party as an insult. When asked in writing to take back the comment, he refused. The congressman was challenged to a duel by another congressman and they squared off with rifles. After two missed rounds, on the third round, one of them lay dead.

In 1856, a pro-slavery Representative beat an anti-slavery Senator in the head with a metal tipped cane until he was unconscious. Earlier, in debate, the Senator who was beaten had insulted the attacker’s relative, who also served in the Senate:

“[He] has chosen a mistress . . . who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; I mean the harlot, slavery” and, declared him an “imbecile that touches nothing which he does not disfigure with error…. He cannot open his mouth, but out there flies a blunder.”

The caning of the Senator by the Representative followed shortly thereafter.

In 1858, in a Congressional debate that lasted until two in the morning, two Representatives, one pro-slavery and the other for abolition, insulted one another until fisticuffs broke out between them.  According to one newspaper account, “in an instant the House was in the greatest possible confusion.”

More than 30 Congressmen exchanged blows. One had his hairpiece ripped from his head.  Finally, after much gavel banging, the melee subsided as each side continued to shout insults at one another.

Sadly, the Wyoming Legislature has not been immune to such outbreaks.

In 1913, a forty-five-minute debate in the Wyoming House of Representatives turned into a shouting match, then fistfights, and ultimately what has been described as a riot. At issue between the Republicans and the Democrats was the adoption of rules, one set of which would assure the re-election of the Republican, and former Governor, Francis Warren to the U.S. Senate, and the rules preferred by the Democrats would frustrate that plan.

The headline in the New York Times screamed:

LEGISLATORS RIOT IN WYOMING HOUSE; Rival Presiding Officers Struggle Until Separated by Their Partisans.

CHEYENNE, Wyo., Jan. 20. -- A riot started in the House of Representatives of the Wyoming Legislature to-day, when Martin L. Pratt, the Speaker, and W.J. Wood, Speaker pro tem., both claimed the right to preside. A hand-to-hand fight took place between the two officers.

A photo of the Democratic Party legislators was torn from the wall and, allegedly, smashed across the head of another legislator, tearing the photo in the process.

The next day, a shame-faced House voted to expunge any reference of the battle from the official record of legislative proceedings, but the stain remains in newspaper accounts.

If you tour the state Capitol, be sure to ask to see the photograph smashed and torn in the battle, now restored and on display in the House.

While the partisan politics between the parties today is often uncivil, let us hope it never again degenerates into violence of the floor of the House or the Senate.