Tag Archives: Wyoming

Still a carpetbagger

CHEYENNE, WY - JULY 17: Wyoming Senate candidate Liz Cheney holds a news conference at the Little America Hotel and Resort in Cheyenne, Wyoming on July 17, 2013. Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, will run against longtime incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY). Cheney launched her campaign yesterday following Enzi's announcement that he will run for a fourth term. (Photo by Marc Piscotty/Getty Images)

Liz Cheney didn’t get it. She didn’t learn her lesson.

Cheney is the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. She once thought about running for the U.S. Senate from Wyoming, which her dad once represented while serving in the U.S. House of Representatives until he was named defense secretary during the administration of President George H.W. Bush.

She ran into this problem, though. Actual residents of Wyoming accused Liz Cheney of being a carpetbagger, someone who had not lived in the state since she was a little girl.

She has lived in Virginia her entire adult life.

Liz Cheney dropped out of the race for the Senate.

Now, though, she wants back in as a Wyoming politician. She has declared her intention to run for the state’s only House seat.

Cheney posted her announcement on her Facebook page.

Oops! She forgot to delete a reference on the Facebook post that revealed a tiny detail. It contained the place from where she issued the post: Alexandria, Va.

Check it out.

She still lives there. Cheney, though, did remove the reference to Alexandria.

Will this bring about more carpetbagger accusations? It might.

I know what you’re thinking. What’s the big deal? Other “carpetbaggers” have been elected to public office. Hillary Clinton moved to New York and then got elected to the Senate from that state in 2000. My favorite carpetbagger was the late Robert F. Kennedy, who also got elected to the Senate from New York in 1964; he, too, faced the same accusation.

Still, Liz Cheney needs to prepare to answer the questions about where she lives and whether she really knows much about the state she wants to represent on Capitol Hill.

 

 

Liz Cheney ends her Senate campaign

Liz Cheney isn’t as obsessed with political power as some of us thought, apparently.

The Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Wyoming ended her campaign early today, citing undisclosed family health issues. I wish her and her family well, of course.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/liz-cheney-wyoming-senate-race-101767.html?hp=f1

Another part of me, though, is glad she’s bowing out, if only to restore some sanity to the political process in one of our 50 states.

Cheney is the outspoken daughter of the outspoken former vice president, Dick Cheney. She challenged long-time Wyoming Republican Sen. Mike Enzi for reasons that continue to escape me. She claimed, I guess, that Enzi — one of the Senate’s most conservative members — isn’t conservative enough.

Her candidacy drew immediate fire from the state’s GOP establishment. GOP powerhouses lined up in Enzi’s corner.

Then things turned bad.

Cheney was accused of being a carpetbagger, given that she moved to Wyoming in 2010 after growing up in Washington, D.C. I don’t hold that against her. Two of my favorite carpetbaggers have been Robert F. Kennedy and Hillary Rodham Clinton, both of whom represented New York quite nicely in the Senate. In this age of intense media scrutiny, though, Cheney’s opportunism was drawing unusual attention.

Of course, then we had Cheney getting into that public tiff with her openly gay sister, Mary, over the issue of same-sex marriage. Mary is married and is a mother. Liz opposes gay marriage. The sisters got into a spat that only served to embarrass the entire family.

As Politico.com notes, Cheney’s campaign never got “traction.” Enzi continued to poll far ahead of his upstart challenger.

What this means for the health of the national Republican Party, though, remains to be determined. Liz Cheney is just one challenger to establishment GOP incumbents to drop out. Other insurgents are out there, including a few throughout West Texas, who are mounting challenges to long-time Republican incumbents.

Liz Cheney, though, is out of the game. Good. Her voice, though, won’t be silenced. She’s got her Fox News Channel job waiting for her.