After that incumbent, Wayne Johnson, announced his retirement in 2016, that seat has belonged to Sen. Anthony Bouchard, a Second Amendment rights activist and one of the Legislature’s most strident hard-line conservatives. After suffering a narrow, 42-vote loss to Johnson in the 2012 primaries, Bouchard escaped a highly competitive three-way primary in 2016 with just five more votes than former House Republican David Zwonitzer and, in the general, took advantage of a surge in turnout for President Donald Trump (1,000 more votes, roughly, over the 2012 presidential election’s turnout) to score a 4-point victory over Zwonitzer’s wife, Kym.
Bouchard’s path to victory has never been easy and has been defined by close escapes that, from a strictly statistical standpoint, make Senate District 6 Bouchard’s race to lose. This year, he faces a staunch primary challenge in Erin Johnson, a former aide to Rep. Barbara Cubin and Gov. Mark Gordon and the Laramie County Republican…
