If the FSP were to choose a state like Wyoming or Montana, the distances between cities would not present so much of a daunting challenge to activism given that most of us would not be scattered out "in the bush country." We'd either be in or near the major population centers, and thus close enough to get together pretty much whenever we needed to within our own local clusters. Our western candidate states are more "urbanized" when it comes to this factor, as the population of our eastern states is more spread out via numerous towns and smaller cities.
Oddly enough, even though the eastern towns are closer to one another, I believe they would serve to scatter our numbers and resources to a greater extent than western cities that are farther apart from one another.
Consider two scenarios in which we're dealing with the disposition of 20,000 activists:
Scenario A:
This is more of your Wyoming sort of model state where most of our activists would be concentrated around the two major population centers: Cheyenne and Casper. Take 20,000 activists and disburse them evenly (for simplicity's sake):
City 1 City 2
10,000 10,000
Each of these two major population centers now has 10,000 activists voting and running for office within the same electoral districts.
Scenario B:
Now consider a state with more numerous population centers (more of a New England model):
City 1 City 2 City 3 City 4
5,000 5,000 5,000 5,000
Each group of 5,000 activists is effectively isolated from the others when it comes to voting and running for office within the each of these four cities (since you cannot vote or run for office outside of your own district).
The above examples are simplified for the ease of illustration, so, yes, I am aware that there are other factors involved (city size, etc...), and each state will be somewhat different. The point here is that having a population that is scattered to a higher degree has the potential to diminish our effectiveness by erecting more numerous barriers between us. Town A and Town B may be five miles apart, but if they are truly independent entities, then they might as well be 5,000 miles apart when it comes to voting or running for office: you can't do it in both, so their proximity really doesn't matter all that much. States with more concentrated populations may be easier for us to influence because they will be more conducive to allowing larger numbers of us to vote and run for office within the same districts.
There are extremes on both side of this, of course. Alaska is the extreme when it comes to the concentrated population side because Anchorage holds over 40% of the state's population, while Vermont is the extreme when it comes to a scattered population.
Far from being a disadvantage, I believe this is another area where Wyoming really shines. With most of the population and economic opportunity in the Casper and Cheyenne areas, we can anticipate that most of our membership will also end up in these areas. That means that more of us will be clustered together so as to support one another to the highest degree in both local and state politics.
And if FSPer's decided to meet between Cheyenne and Casper once or twice a year, that would effectively mean that most FSPer's would be only 150 miles apart from one another anyway. Other than that, most of our work would be local. I don't see why we would need to meet en mass more frequently than once or twice a year anyway, no matter where we went.
Some have pointed out that Wyoming has rather large districts (in terms of physical size, not the number of people in them). This is true; however, it should be noted that these districts are very large because they include vast areas of unpopulated territory where we would obviously not need to do any campaigning. For example, some of Wyoming's counties only have a few thousand people living in them. The vast majority of the population lives in the Cheyenne and Casper areas, and these are the areas we would need to concentrate on in order to be successful in state politics.