Candidates: United States House of Representatives

Cynthia M. Lummis - Republican

Cynthia was raised on her family ranch in Laramie County. She attended Trinity Lutheran School and Cheyenne public schools before graduating from the University of Wyoming with bachelor degrees in Animal Science and Biology. In 1979 Cynthia was elected to the Wyoming House of Representatives – the youngest woman ever elected to the Wyoming Legislature. She returned to the University of Wyoming for her law degree, which she received in 1985.

Cynthia then clerked at the Wyoming Supreme Court, practiced law in Cheyenne, and served a total of fourteen years in the Wyoming House and Senate, concentrating on natural resource and taxation issues. She completed her legislative service in 1994 and then chaired Governor-elect Jim Geringer’s transition team. She continued to work in the Governor’s office for two more years, primarily on natural resource issues. Cynthia also served as the interim Director of the Office of State Lands and Investments.

Cynthia continues to be involved in the daily operations of the Lummis family ranch. She and her husband, Al Wiederspahn, who is a Cheyenne attorney and businessman, have one daughter, Annaliese. Annaliese graduated from Haverford College and worked in New York City before returning to Wyoming to work on her mother’s Congressional campaign. All are members of Trinity Lutheran Church.

To learn more about Cynthia Lummis, please visit her website at http://lummisforwyoming.com/.

David Wendt - Democrat

When I was a teenager growing up in New Jersey, my father urged me to go West. I started with a summer job in Colorado at age 14, and returned many years thereafter to work in Wyoming as a summer dude wrangler. During these years I also had several international experiences, which included winning a national essay contest that resulted in traveling abroad as the first Boy Scout Goodwill Ambassador to Switzerland. Later, before my senior year of college, I spent a year in East Africa, teaching refugees from white-ruled regimes in southern Africa. Returning to Wyoming the following year, I resumed my position as foreman of White Grass Ranch in Moose, where I met my future wife, who also worked at the ranch.

The next 30 years were spent on the East Coast, completing my graduate work and serving for two decades at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a bipartisan policy research center in Washington, D.C. There I managed a budget of $12 million and, as program director, worked on policy studies with Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY), Sen. Al Gore (D-TN), and other leaders in Congress. Our family lived outside Washington on a farm in northern Virginia, where we had horses, milk goats, and chickens. We raised our three sons in that environment. And every summer we all drove across the country to camp and backpack in the Tetons and Wind River Mountains.

A recurring goal for our family was to live in Wyoming. This started to become a reality in the late 1990s, when our family moved from Virginia to Wyoming’s neighboring state of Idaho. For 8 years I served as Special Assistant for International Affairs to the President of Idaho State University. During this time I began conversations with leaders in Jackson and elsewhere in Wyoming, realizing another personal goal to help found a Rockies-oriented global policy center. In 2005 I became part-time president of this policy center, the Jackson Hole Center for Global Affairs (www.jhcga.org), and moved to Jackson a year later as a resident and JHCGA’s full-time president.

To learn more about David Wendt, please visit his website at http://wendtforwyoming.com/.

John V. Love - Libertarian

John V. Love of Green River, WY is seeking the office of the United States House of Representatives, seat currently held by Cynthia Lummis. For more information about John V. Love please visit his website at http://votelove.weebly.com/.