The presidential election isn’t the only nightmare awaiting us in November. Welcome to Congressional Cacophony, a feature on The Slot about House and Senate races that really, really matter. Suggestions? Pitches? Email us.
Liz Cheney—yes, that Liz Cheney, daughter of that other Cheney—has won the Republican primary for a Congressional seat in Wyoming. The Wall Street Journal suggests that her likely victory in the general elections will revive the Cheney family’s “presence” in Washington. Great! That’s great.
Cheney was once best known for insisting that she believes in “traditional” marriage, in spite of the fact that her sister Mary is gay and married. “Listen, I love Mary very much, I love her family very much, this is just an issue on which we disagree,” she told Fox News.
That nugget came during Cheney’s run for Senate in 2014, part of an apparent bid to charm the conservative voters of Wyoming. It didn’t work; they were more distracted by the fact that she had few apparent actual ties to Wyoming.
This round went better: Cheney beat seven other challengers in the primary to compete for the seat her dad held from 1979 to 1990. As NBC notes, her campaign “ focused on national security and rolling back federal regulations affecting Wyoming’s beleaguered coal industry.” The WSJ notes that she spent time working on “personal relationships” this time around, i.e. actually being in Wyoming. In the general election, she’ll face Democrat Ryan Greene, a “political newcomer” who works in the energy business, which should make their race interesting, particularly because Wyoming is typically a Red state.
Cheney, of course, campaigned on her own merits and not stressing her family ties; this was, however, the image she used to celebrate her victory:
Does anyone else suddenly feel cold? I feel cold.