Report: Liz Cheney May Primary Wyoming Sen. Enzi

Report: Liz Cheney May Primary Wyoming Sen. Enzi

on Sun, 7 Jul 2013

Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has told Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) that she is thinking about challenging him in Wyoming's Republican Senate primary in 2014.

According to the New York Times, Enzi said that Cheney "called me and said that she’s looking at it."

Cheney is reportedly "showing up everywhere in the state, from chicken dinners to cattle growers’ meetings" after she moved her family from an exclusive Washington, D.C. suburb to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Enzi, the 69-year-old incumbent, does not have plans to retire, but said Cheney did not ask if he would run for reelection before letting him know her potential interest in his seat. The Republican primary electorate will have an anti-establishment flavor in 2014, and Enzi may be vulnerable to the charge that he is too willing to compromise with Democrats.

Cheney was a former State Department official under President George W. Bush and a Fox News pundit who has blistered the Obama administration's foreign policy blunders. 

She may have had her eye on political office for some time, and has frequently offered newsworthy political commentary. For instance, in July of 2012, after her father saidit was a mistake for John McCain to put Sarah Palin on the ticket, Liz Cheney tweeted that she disagreed with her father's comments regarding the politician that former South Carolina Senator and Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint said had the most influence among voters in Republican primaries.