Liz Cheney to run for Wyoming’s U.S. House seat

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — The elder daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney is running for Congress, following up a failed U.S. Senate campaign two years ago with another attempt to woo voters in a state where she has been a full-time resident only for the past few years.

Liz Cheney filed federal election documents Friday showing she’s running for Wyoming’s lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Campaign officials said she plans to formally announce Monday in Gillette, a northeastern Wyoming town hit hard by the downturn in the coal industry. The plans suggest she will base her campaign on fears that the Obama administration is waging a “war on coal” with climate-change regulations and a recently announced moratorium on federal coal leasing.

Cheney couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Cheney ran a brief and ill-fated U.S. Senate campaign in 2013. She tried to unseat Wyoming senior U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, a fellow Republican, but failed to gain traction among Wyoming’s political establishment. The former Fox News commentator drew considerable nationwide attention but virtually no mainstream Republicans in the state endorsed her — despite the fact that the GOP dominates Wyoming politics at every level.

Many expressed skepticism that somebody who had moved to Wyoming only recently could know and serve the state well.

She quit her campaign seven months before the 2014 primary, citing family health issues. Cheney has five children and lives in Jackson Hole, a wealthy resort town at the gateway to Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, where she moved in 2012.

This time, Cheney seeks to replace Republican Rep. Cynthia Lummis, who plans to retire at the end of her current term.

Cheney faces a field of eight Republican competitors, including two experienced Wyoming state legislators, state Rep. Tim Stubson and State Sen. Leland Christensen. All eight took part in a debate Jan. 23 while Cheney, despite rumors she would run, was noticeably absent.

Cheney and her father were scheduled to speak at a presidential candidates’ town hall in Nashua, New Hampshire, that day but had to cancel because of the weather.