Liz Cheney, former VP’s daughter, to run for U.S. House

CHEYENNE, Wyo. – The elder daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney is running for Congress, following a failed U.S. Senate campaign 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 the Obama administration is waging a “war on coal” with climate-change regulations and a recently announced moratorium on federal coal leasing.

“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 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.