The ultraconservatives in Wyoming’s Freedom Caucus entered Tuesday’s Republican primaries with visions of a clean sweep of the state government, from the governor’s office to the State Senate and House.

Instead, the pendulum swung the other way — hard.

Republican voters in Wyoming rejected Freedom Caucus candidates who ran for governor, secretary of state and schools superintendent, siding with more mainstream conservative Republicans, The Associated Press reported.

In the primary to succeed the low-key outgoing governor, Mark Gordon, State Senator Eric Barlow, a rancher and veteran lawmaker, topped Megan Degenfelder, the schools superintendent who was endorsed by President Trump, and another hard-right candidate, Brent Bien, a retired Marine colonel backed by the Wyoming Republican Party.

At least a dozen Freedom Caucus incumbents were ousted from the Legislature, possibly including three of the four leaders of the caucus in the State House. (With 99 percent of the votes counted, one leader lost soundly, and two others were behind, including Chip Neiman, the House speaker who was running for State Senate.)

Rather than seizing control of the state’s upper chamber, the Freedom Caucus lost its majority in the House.

The results — a “near-total massacre,” as Wyoming’s Cowboy State Daily put it — were a stinging rebuke of the hard-right agenda and aggressive style that had propelled Wyoming in 2024 to become the country’s first such caucus to control a statehouse chamber.