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 for only a 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 a downturn in the coal industry. Her 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.
"I can't say that I'm surprised," fellow candidate State Rep. Tim Stubson said Saturday of Cheney's entry. "We know that she brings with her kind of a big Washington machine and lots of national money, which certainly changes the complexion of the race."
Cheney, 49, 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 rural frontier state well. Enzi's popularity, meanwhile, remained high despite Cheney's attempts to portray him as too willing to compromise with Democrats.
Still, Cheney's close to $2 million in fundraising was impressive for the least-populated state.
Cheney quit her campaign seven months before the 2014 primary, citing family health issues. She 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.