Republican women are likely to make history in Wyoming this fall with the near-certain election of conservative Republican Cynthia Lummis as the state's first-ever female U.S. senator.
Lummis' election to the seat of the retiring Sen. Mike Enzi, R.-Wyo., became a near-cinch Thursday afternoon following the announcement by Wyoming's Rep.-at-large Liz Cheney that she seek re-election to the House rather than run for the open Senate seat.
"I don't know what Liz is going to do but I'm ready to run," Lummis, 65, told Newsmax last fall. Lummis held the at-large House seat from 2008 until her retirement in 2016, but she laid the groundwork for a statewide race in the event Cheney passed on the Senate seat.
Clearly, Lummis' gamble paid off. There are no other known Republicans considering the Senate race. In a state that gave 67% of its votes to Donald Trump in 2016 and last sent a Democrat to the Senate in 1970, Lummis' election this fall is considered almost a given.
Cheney, 53, is a mother of five and chairs the House Republican Conference and thus holds the No. 3 position in the House GOP hierarchy. Most who know the congresswoman agree that her driving ambition is to be the first female Republican speaker.
The same sources also agree she has been encouraged in that goal by her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney.
"Dick always felt that had he not resigned [from the House] to become secretary of defense in 1989, he would have been speaker when Republicans took control in '94," said a former House member who served with Cheney, recalling how Newt Gingrich succeeded Cheney as House Republican Whip and thus moved up to the speakership following the elections of 1994.
"Being secretary of defense and a heartbeat from the presidency are nothing to scoff at," said the former House member. "But a lot of us thought Dick was a man of the House and always wanted to wield the gavel over the place he loved."
This is not the first time women have made big gains in Wyoming. In 1925, Democrat Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first female governor of any state in the U.S.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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