Voters could send Republican Cynthia Lummis to the U.S. House because of her experience in Wyoming government and conservative credentials, she said.

Voters could send Democrat Gary Trauner because of his business background and willingness to do what's right for Wyoming regardless of party dictates, he said.

Or they could send in the clone.

"The closest you could come to voting for an independent would be to vote for me," Libertarian David Herbert said at a forum at Casper College on Sunday for the three candidates running to for Wyoming's lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

"If you vote for me, I will be a clone of (Republican) Ron Paul in the Congress. Ron Paul and I have very few differences in our positions on just about everything," Herbert said.

Herbert responded to the first question - whether voting for an independent candidate is a wasted vote - posed by forum moderators Walter Allen of Channel 13 and Chad Baldwin, editor of the Casper Star-Tribune.

Of course not, said Herbert, a podiatrist from Riverton.

Trauner, who lives in Wilson, responded that he'd thought about running as an independent but knows that for a candidate to have a good chance of winning, he/she needs the backing of one of the two major parties.

Corruption, he said, can be found in both parties from Rep. William Jefferson, D.-La., who's been accused of taking bribes to Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., who's serving an eight-year prison sentence for bribery.

"We all know the label doesn't make the person," Trauner said.

Lummis proudly declared her Republican pedigree.

"I believe my party stands for limited government, low taxes, for keeping spending under control, and for balancing budgets," she said. "As a member of the Wyoming Legislature for 14 years, we did exactly that."

She wants to take that experience to Congress and push for a line-item veto, and limit bills to one subject to avoid slathering on the pork.

This and all questions dealt with domestic policy. The moderators did not ask questions about foreign policy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, education, transportation or moral issues such as abortion.

The forum rules did not permit candidates to question each other.

However, Trauner and Lummis were able to aim a few zingers at each other.

For his part, Trauner did not respond to one major gaffe on Lummis' part that elicited angry groans from some in the audience.

Lummis was questioned about a comment that almost half the households in America pay no income tax.

Enter the gaffe.

"Yet the Osama, uh, the Barack Obama excuse me, the Obama (health care) plan would give those people rebates and they're not paying taxes now," Lummis said.

After the forum, Lummis again apologized. "That was such an accident; it was absolutely an accident."

Some issues garnered some agreement.

Both Trauner and Lummis agreed reluctantly Congress needed to intervene with the collapse of the financial markets, but it did a terrible job of explaining what it was doing as the bill grew from two-and-a-half pages to several hundred pages.

Herbert, however, said the bill gives the Secretary of Treasury unlimited power and could create a constitutional crisis.

They agreed that Yellowstone National Park should be available at all times for as many people as possible, with Lummis adding the federal government has been making regulations further restricting some uses such as snowmobiling.

They also agreed with the need for exploring all possible types of energy, with Trauner favoring more efforts to keep oil produced on federal lands to remain in the United States instead of being sold overseas.

A 90-second response to dealing with health care drew the sharpest retorts.

The United States already has a nationalized health care system because 20 cents to 30 cents of every health care dollar goes toward paying for those who are not covered by insurance, Trauner said.

Health insurance coverage for everyone, he said. "is morally the right thing to do and the economically right thing to do."

Lummis responded that people need to be able to choose their own doctors, and the Medicare and Medicaid systems have shown that the federal government can't manage health care.

"I support patient directed health care, not government dictated health care," he said.

Reach Tom Morton at (307) 266-0592, or at Tom.Morton@trib.com.