Wyoming's lone U.S. representative is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Cynthia Lummis, who isn't seeking re-election.
Rep. Harriet Hageman, a Republican, on Tuesday became first to announce for Senate in Wyoming after Lummis, also a Republican, said Friday she isn't seeking a second term.
“I will always defend Wyoming’s ability to access, manage and use our natural resources to fuel our economy,” Hageman said in a statement announcing her Senate campaign. "We must ensure that Wyoming remains a leader in energy and food production to help us maintain our way of life.”
A Cheyenne attorney who represents ranchers, Hageman is best known for beating Republican Rep. Liz Cheney by a wide margin in 2022.
Cheney, a daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, lost support in Wyoming for opposing President Donald Trump and for leading an investigation into his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Hageman defeated Cheney by a more than 2-to-1 margin in the 2022 Republican primary.
Hageman went on to win the general election in heavily Republican Wyoming by an even wider margin in 2022 and was re-elected with over 70% of the vote in 2024.
Lummis has been a U.S. senator since 2021 and is nearing the half-century mark in a political career that has included time in the state Legislature, two terms as state treasurer, and four terms as U.S. representative.
Lummis said her stamina didn't "match up” with the energy required for another term.
Wyoming hasn’t had a Democratic U.S. senator or representative since the late 1970s.
FILE - Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., arrives for an interview at the Capitol in Washington, Aug. 10, 2021. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
Former Nebraska U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, a conservative who rebuked political tribalism and stood out as a longtime critic of President Donald Trump, announced Tuesday said he was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer.
Sasse, 53, made the announcement on social media, saying he learned of the disease last week and is “now marching to the beat of a faster drummer.”
“This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase,” Sasse wrote. “Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.”
Sasse was first elected to the Senate in 2014. He comfortably won reelection in 2020 after fending off a pro-Trump primary challenger. Sasse drew the ire of GOP activists for his vocal criticism of Trump's character and policies, including questioning his moral values and saying he cozied up to adversarial foreign leaders.
Sasse was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict the former president of “ incitement of insurrection ” after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. After threats of a public censure back home, he extended his critique to party loyalists who blindly worship one man and rejected him for his refusal to bend the knee.
He resigned from the Senate in 2023 to serve as the 13th president of the University of Florida after a contentious approval process. He left that post the following year after his wife was diagnosed with epilepsy.
Sasse, who has degrees from Harvard, St. John’s College and Yale, worked as an assistant secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush. He served as president of Midland University, a small Christian university in eastern Nebraska, before he ran for the Senate.
Sasse and his wife have three children.
“I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more," Sasse wrote. “Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived.”
FILE - Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., walks the halls of the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades, File)
