In Wyoming, a Cheney Run Worries G.O.P.

 oped: Go Liz...give em' hell don't let the RINOS get ya down...they are becoming extinct akin to dinosaurs:)

By JONATHAN MARTIN 

LUSK, Wyo. — A young Dick Cheney began his first campaign for the House in this tiny village — population 1,600 — after the state’s sole Congressional seat finally opened up. But nowadays, his daughter Liz does not seem inclined to wait patiently for such an opening.

Ms. Cheney, 46, is showing up everywhere in the state, from chicken dinners to cattle growers’ meetings, sometimes with her parents in tow. She has made it clear that she wants to run for the Senate seat now held by Michael B. Enzi, a soft-spoken Republican and onetime fly-fishing partner of her father.

But Ms. Cheney’s move threatens to start a civil war within the state’s Republican establishment, despite the reverence many hold for her family.

Mr. Enzi, 69, says he is not ready to retire, and many Republicans say he has done nothing to deserve being turned out.

It would bring about “the destruction of the Republican Party of Wyoming if she decides to run and he runs, too,” Alan K. Simpson, a former Republican senator from the state, said in an interview last week. “It’s a disaster — a divisive, ugly situation — and all it does is open the door for the Democrats for 20 years.” 

The developments underscore the complicated relationship between the Beltway-centered Cheney family and the sparsely populated state that provided its political base. Dick and Lynne Cheney, who divide their time between McLean, Va., a home on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and a house near Jackson Hole, Wyo., are widely admired here.

Liz Cheney, who grew up in McLean and moved her family to the Jackson Hole area last year, is eager to establish her Cowboy State credentials, peppering social media sites with photos of her children’s horse-riding competitions and descriptions of Wyoming as “God’s Country.”

Ms. Cheney’s ambitions reflect a greater tension within the Republican Party as a younger generation feels less reluctance to challenge incumbents in the party, especially if they are seen as too consensus-minded or insufficiently conservative. 

Mr. Enzi is known as a studious, low-key legislator who worked well with Senator Edward M. Kennedy. He avoids political talk shows because, he says, their goal is to get guests to “beat up on their colleagues.”

In an interview last week after a town hall-style meeting at the county fairgrounds here, a few feet from a plaque marking the site of Mr. Cheney’s first political speech, Mr. Enzi revealed that Ms. Cheney told him this year that she was thinking about challenging him in 2014.

“She called me and said that she’s looking at it,” he said.

And did Ms. Cheney ask Mr. Enzi, now in his third term, if he was planning to run again?

“No,” Mr. Enzi said.

Unlike former Republican colleagues who were felled in recent elections because they lost touch with home or cast votes that angered Republicans, Mr. Enzi has a reliably conservative record and has not offered critics much fodder. And at his town meetings, even as constituents flashed anger at Washington and assorted powers “back East,” none showed any ill will toward him. 

“I know of no one who doesn’t want Mike Enzi to run for the Senate again,” said Douglas W. Chamberlain, a former Wyoming House speaker.

Mr. Enzi noted with a soft chuckle, “There’s at least one person out there who wants me to retire.”

Ms. Cheney declined to comment.

What has startled some people here is not just the fact that Ms. Cheney is seemingly trying to nudge Mr. Enzi into retirement, but that she appears to be doing so with a hand from her father.

The former vice president and Mr. Enzi have been friends since the 1970s, when Mr. Cheney was Wyoming’s at-large congressman and Mr. Enzi was the mayor of Gillette. They became closer, Mr. Enzi recalled, over a shared passion: fly-fishing. The two were on the same team competing in a popular annual One Fly tournament — fishing with the same fly lure all day — in the Snake River.

But Mr. Enzi said he had not recently heard from the man he calls his “good friend.”

“I would expect that he’d call before she declares,” Mr. Enzi said of Mr. Cheney.

Wyoming residents say they have seen more of Mr. Cheney since his daughter moved to the state and his health rebounded after a heart transplant. 

He has appeared on the political dinner circuit, and he made news last month for accepting Gov. Matt Mead’s invitation to help represent Wyoming this fall in the annual antelope hunt competition with Colorado.

Mr. Cheney’s schedule is nothing compared with his daughter’s, however. Ms. Cheney, the mother of five school-age children, has become ubiquitous, appearing many times in communities over 300 miles from home. She has told associates that if she runs, she wants to do so in her own right.

Driving long distances in a state where towns can be 70 miles apart is not unusual for residents here, but few of them so frequently post Twitter or Facebook messages about their activities. Last month, Ms. Cheney shared a picture on Twitter of her daughter steering a horse around a barrel course.

If Ms. Cheney feels the need to blend in with the locals, it may be because of the carpetbagging charges her father faced when he moved back here from Washington in 1977 after working for President Gerald R. Ford.

Liz and her younger sister, Mary, grew up helping in their father’s campaigns. And while Mr. Cheney has always been close to both daughters, he has relied heavily on Liz since he left the White House. She helped write his memoir and has become his de facto publicist and gatekeeper. Now, with Mr. Cheney enjoying a new burst of energy, he appears to be returning the favor. 

Republicans report spotting Mr. Cheney and his daughter together in recent months at events like the Crook County Lincoln Day dinner. He has also talked up his daughter’s candidacy in meetings with wealthy Republican donors in New York, and next month father and daughter will be the featured speakers at a conservative conference in Steamboat Springs, Colo., an event expected to attract donors Ms. Cheney could turn to in a Senate bid.

Ms. Cheney has not criticized Mr. Enzi, but he suspects she may take aim at his legislation, passed this year in the Senate, to let states collect sales tax on Internet purchases. She also might note that in modern times, no Wyoming senator has served more than three terms.

Ms. Cheney’s broader line of attack on Mr. Enzi, though, may be that he is too willing to work with Democrats and not vocal enough in pushing conservative causes. Ms. Cheney, a State Department official in the administration of President George W. Bush, is a pugnacious partisan and has called President Obama “the most radical man ever to occupy the Oval Office.”

The only reason Mr. Enzi would “be in any difficulty is if there’s a weird group of Republicans who think compromise is akin to communism,” said Mr. Simpson, who called Mr. Enzi and Ms. Cheney “both wonderful people” and, like many here, does not want to have to choose. 

[ And the RINOS attack!]

Others in the Republican establishment are coalescing around Mr. Enzi, who indicated that he especially wants to continue serving now that he has won a long-sought seat on the Finance Committee.

In a local TV interview last month, Representative Cynthia M. Lummis, the state’s at-large Republican congresswoman, said pointedly that she would support Mr. Enzi if he ran again. And in a message many interpreted as a warning to Ms. Cheney, Ms. Lummis said she would run for the Senate if Mr. Enzi retired.

That message was echoed by Republicans at Mr. Enzi’s town hall sessions. The mere mention of Ms. Cheney to a woman after an event in Newcastle brought forth disapproving references to an article published a few days earlier in a Casper newspaper about a political organization based in California promoting her candidacy for Senate. (Ms. Cheney said through an aide that she had no connection to the group.)

“It wouldn’t go over well here if she stepped over him,” the woman said. “She just moved back here, she didn’t even grow up here, and I don’t think she could beat him.”

But seeing a reporter jot down her remarks, the woman pleaded that her name not be published because she did not want to offend the Cheneys.

“We love her and her family, and we hope she has a place,” she said. “But not his place.”