Laramie Native Lisa Kinney Announces Run for U.S. House Seat

The sixth woman ever elected to the Wyoming State Senate entered Saturday's open congressional race with a résumé spanning three of Albany County's most consequential civic institutions: the statehouse in Cheyenne, the courtroom, and the Albany County Public Library on Seventh Street.

Lisa Kinney, born and raised in Laramie, announced her candidacy for Wyoming's at-large U.S. House seat on April 4. The seat is open because Rep. Harriet Hageman, who won it in 2022 after defeating Liz Cheney in the Republican primary, announced she is running for the U.S. Senate instead, a bid that quickly drew an endorsement from President Trump.

Kinney's campaign materials describe her as "raised by Wyoming values, and shaped by years of service in our State Senate." That Senate tenure ran from 1984 to 1994, a decade during which she rose to serve as Democratic minority leader from 1992 to 1994 and was recognized for a bipartisan approach unusual in Wyoming's increasingly polarized federal landscape. She is also an attorney, a financial advisor, and the founder of Summit Bar Review.

For Albany County, the seat carries specific federal stakes. Wyoming's single House member sits on committees that shape federal highway allocations along the I-80 corridor through Laramie, broadband funding formulas that determine connectivity in communities like Centennial and Rock River, and public lands policy governing the federal acreage that surrounds the county on multiple sides. The House also controls appropriations that reach Veterans Affairs services and rural health-care programs that backstop institutions like Ivinson Memorial Hospital.

Kinney is running as a Democrat in a state where Trump won in 2024 by more than 45 percentage points, and the Republican primary field she would face in November is already crowded. Wyoming Senate President Bo Biteman, Secretary of State Chuck Gray, former Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow, military veterans David Giralt and Kevin Christensen, Casper businessman Reid Rasner, and Moran rancher and attorney Frank Chapman are all competing for the GOP nomination. Former Casper vice mayor Shawn Johnson is seeking the Libertarian nomination.

Albany County provides Kinney a more competitive base than most Wyoming counties can offer a Democrat. The University of Wyoming anchors Laramie's economy and civic identity, and the county's mix of university employees, students, agricultural operators in Rock River, and outdoor recreation users in the Centennial Valley represents the kind of coalition that has made Albany County a persistent outlier in Wyoming's statewide elections.

The candidate filing deadline is May 29. The primary is August 18, 2026, with the general election on November 3.