Mike Enzi: The Shoe Salesman Senator, His 80-20 Rule, and a Laptop Ban

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Mike Enzi was born in Bremerton, Washington, in 1944 and raised in Thermopolis and Sheridan, Wyoming, where his father Elmer ran shoe stores. He earned an accounting degree at George Washington University and an MBA in retail marketing from the University of Denver, served in the Wyoming Air National Guard from 1967 to 1973 after a medical rejection for glycosuria, and in 1969 married Diana and opened NZ Shoes in Gillette. Encouraged by Alan Simpson, he defeated Mayor Cliff Davis in 1974 and dealt with the boomtown's water rationing by building a pipeline from Moorcroft. He later served in both chambers of the Wyoming legislature.

When Simpson retired in 1996, Enzi won a nine candidate Republican primary that included John Barrasso, then the general election. In the Senate he was ranked among the most conservative members yet among the Republicans most likely to work with Democrats, guided by his 80-20 rule of passing the 80 percent senators agree on. He chaired the HELP Committee and became the first accountant to chair the Budget Committee. He opposed the Affordable Care Act and the Paris Agreement while pushing to ease Cuba travel and trade limits. He retired in 2021, succeeded by Cynthia Lummis, and died at 77 months later after a bicycle accident near Gillette.

• In 1997 his request to use a laptop on the Senate floor was rejected in committee, with only Rick Santorum backing him.
• Robert Byrd objected that the clicking of keys would be irritating.
• He led the effort to put Sacagawea on the dollar coin and asked that it be unveiled at Fort Washakie.
• After reading C.J. Box's novel Free Fire, he asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to close Yellowstone's zone of death loophole.
• He co-sponsored the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act with Democrat Byron Dorgan in 2009.