If you think what’s missing from Congress is a member of the Cheney family, you’ll be pleased with yesterday’s primary results out of Wyoming.
Liz Cheney has won Wyoming’s Republican primary for U.S. House. Cheney beat seven challengers for a chance at the job her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, first won 40 years ago.Her campaign focused on national security and rolling back federal regulations affecting Wyoming’s beleaguered coal industry.
Incumbent Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R), who has served as Wyoming’s sole representative for the last eight years, is stepping down at the end of this Congress. There was a large GOP primary field, which Cheney ended up leading with relative ease.
Yesterday’s results don’t guarantee Cheney’s place in Congress, but given Wyoming’s status as a ruby-red state, it’s widely assumed that the winner of the Republican primary is well positioned to win the U.S. House seat in the fall.
What’s especially notable about Cheney’s victory is the degree to which the former Fox News pundit and State Department official had to undo the damage done by her last congressional bid.
Revisiting our coverage from February, Liz Cheney moved to Wyoming in 2013, and soon after launched a primary campaign against a popular Republican incumbent, Sen. Mike Enzi. She failed spectacularly. Over the course of a six-month campaign, Cheney’s notable accomplishments as a candidate were an unfortunate controversy over a fishing license and a family dispute over her opposition to her own sister’s right to get married.
She ultimately quit months before the primary, citing unspecified “health issues” with an unidentified member of her family. Cheney ended up becoming less popular with Wyoming voters the more they got to know her — she somehow managed to alienate the public, party insiders, former allies, and blood relatives, all at the same time.
Cheney had nowhere to go but up.
And as it turns out, she’s done exactly that, rebounding nicely from her failed Senate bid in the last cycle.
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Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."