GILLETTE — Reid Rasner hopes to give Wyoming Republicans representation in the U.S. Senate that he said has been missing for years. Rasner is running against Sen. John Barrasso, who has been in office since 2007.

“You won’t get change until you elect change,” Rasner said at a campaign event Tuesday afternoon at the La Quinta Inn in Gillette.

Rasner is a financial advisor from Casper who announced his campaign for U.S. Senate at the end of last year. He is in favor of term limits on Congress, limited government and a balanced budget. He also is pro-Second Amendment, anti-abortion and is an advocate for energy independence.

He said that with the nuclear industry seeing a resurgence, it’s Wyoming uranium that needs to be powering the nuclear reactors, but “we can’t give up on coal, oil or gas either.”

He criticized carbon capture technology and wind and solar energy, and reiterated the importance of “keeping fossil fuels going.”

When Barrasso was appointed to the U.S. Senate in 2007 by then-Gov. Dave Freudenthal, “I don’t remember too many windmills or solar panels in the state,” Rasner said.

“Now, that’s all I hear,” he said.

The downfall of the fossil fuel industry is “happening because we’ve had 20 years of truly bad leadership in Washington, D.C., that continues to push for carbon-free or net-zero emission policies,” Rasner said.

Rasner said the Republican leadership in the U.S. Senate is lacking, and that Barrasso is very much part of the problem. Rasner classified Barrasso as one of McConnell’s “lackeys,” and that if Barrasso is re-elected, Wyoming residents can sit back and watch as nothing changes.

“Either you elect someone who’s actually going to (effect change), or you go with insanity and hope that the same thing you did for the past 20 years is going to pay out in the next six years,” he said.

Looking to the future, Rasner said “we are one generation away” from saving this country, but it starts with putting “thoughtful patriotism” back in schools, where students say the pledge of allegiance every day and there’s an American flag in every classroom.

Rasner said he is not a career politician and that, if elected, he would be willing to “just do the right thing” and not worry about making decisions that would improve his chances of getting re-elected.

He criticized Barrasso for voting to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, adding that “we don’t know what happened” in that race. He added that even if former President Donald Trump is elected president this year, it won’t mean much unless the House and Senate have a conservative majority.

“Trump won’t be effective unless we have a Congress that can back him and legislate without executive orders,” he said. “He can do executive orders into oblivion, but it’ll just be a four-year witch hunt and then he’s termed out.”

He also criticized Congress as a whole for not standing up to “the violation of our president’s rights,” referring to Trump’s hush money trial.

“Nobody is standing up and blocking this and saying no,” he said.

The longer that Barrasso is in office, the more things will either stay the same or change for the worse, Rasner said.

“We might get conservative leadership in the U.S. Senate finally by taking this guy out,” he said.