Liz Cheney announced Tuesday that she will challenge Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi in a Republican primary next year. 
 
 The daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney made the announcement in a six-minute YouTube video. Most of her announcement was an attack on President Barack Obama, with only a veiled swipe at the incumbent. 
 
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 “We can get our nation back on track,” Cheney said. “Instead of cutting deals with the president’s liberal allies, we should be opposing them every step of the way.” 
 
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 “I’m running because I believe it is necessary for a new generation of leaders to step up to the plate,” she added. “We can’t continue business as usual in Washington.” 
 
 Enzi, 69, announced Tuesday that he will run for a fourth term. He said at the Capitol that Cheney did not give him a heads up and defiantly insisted that her move will not dissuade him. 
 
 “She said that if I ran she wasn’t going to run. That wasn’t correct,” he said. “I thought we were friends.” 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Seeking Senate, Liz Cheney will leave Fox) 
 
 National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Jerry Moran, a senator from Kansas, announced that the official party body will back Enzi. 
 
 Cheney, 46, worked in the State Department and the Agency for International Development during the George W. Bush administration. But she moved her family to Jackson Hole last year and has traveled aggressively around the state laying the foundation for what everyone assumed would be a political bid. 
 
 Fox News reportedly will terminate Cheney’s contract as a political analyst with the cable network. She’s appeared often over the last 18 months. 
 
 A Cheney spokesman said that the candidate will hold a press conference on Wednesday. 
 
 The elder Cheney was a Wyoming congressman before becoming Secretary of Defense. 
 
 Wyoming’s other senator, Sen. John Barrasso, quickly endorsed Enzi. 
 
 “Mike Enzi is a friend, a mentor and a tremendous US Senator for Wyoming,” Barrasso said. “I support his reelection.” 
 
 Cheney did not call Barrasso ahead of her announcement either. 
 
 Though she is mounting an upstart campaign against an incumbent senator, Cheney has already amassed significant financial firepower from within the GOP establishment. 
 
 Former Republican National Committee Finance Chairman Mel Sembler, a longtime friend of the Cheney family who served as ambassador to Italy, told POLITICO he’s all-in for the former vice president’s daughter. 
 
 “Absolutely, I’m supporting her,” Sembler said. “We’ve got a lot of events already set all over the country.” 
 
 Asked if it was at all uncomfortable for a former top RNC official to dive into a primary challenge like this, Sembler chuckled: “I left that job many years ago.” 
 
 “I’ve been a friend [of the family] for 20 years, since Dick was defense secretary,” he said. “We’re happy to support her campaign.” 
 
 Veteran GOP strategist Mary Matalin, who was a top adviser to the vice president while he was in office, cautioned the powers-that-be in Washington not to try and undermine the younger Cheney’s campaign. 
 
 “The so-called ‘Establishment’ should let the voters decide,” Matalin said in an email. “Her service and consistent conservative commitment is deep and broad and should and will be judged on its own merits. Her supporters believe in something bigger than themselves, and that is more potent than can be calculated.” 
 
 Another Republican with extensive ties to the fundraising world predicted that Cheney would collect strong support from national security conservatives, including the influential world of pro-Israel donors. 
 
 “She will create a lot of excitement and raise a lot of money among those folks in the pro-Israel community that she and her father have gotten to know over the years,” the Republican said. “We have not seen somebody run as a strong foreign policy platform-based candidate in quite some time. So much of the discussion in the last several cycles has been about domestic issues.” ||||| Liz Cheney to primary Sen. Enzi in Wyoming 
 
 By Cameron Joseph - 
 
 Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, announced Tuesday she will challenge Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) in 2014, setting up a high-profile GOP primary battle. 
 
 “I am running for the United States Senate because I believe deeply in the values that have made our state and our nation great. I’m running because I believe it is necessary for a new generation of leaders to step up to the plate," Cheney said. 
 
 "I’m running because I know as a mother and a patriot we can no longer afford simply to go along to get along. We can’t continue business as usual in Washington. I’m running because I know we’re taxed more than enough already.” 
 
 Cheney, a former Fox News commentator and former State Department official, could give the longtime senator a tough challenge in the race. 
 
 She is well-known to national Republican donors, especially those focused on international issues, and, along with conservative commentator Bill Kristol, ran a national security organization called Keep America Safe. 
 
 Enzi released his own statement Tuesday afternoon, saying he plans to run for reelection to a fourth term. The senator has long suggested he'd run again, and the statement appeared to be a shot across the bow of his new primary foe. 
 
 Speaking to reporters after Cheney's announcement, Enzi sounded wounded about the decision. The senator said considered Cheney a friend and did not expect to face her at the ballot box. 
 
 "She said that if I ran she wasn't going to run, but obviously that isn't correct," Enzi said. 
 
 "I thought we were friends," he said when asked about their relationship. 
 
 
 
 He said he wouldn't reconsider his plans to run for reelection, but admitted that "money raising's always been a problem for me" when asked about her fundraising prowess. 
 
 Enzi's fundraising struggles continued in the last quarter: he brought in less than $100,000, and has less than $500,000 in the bank for what will likely be a costly race. 
 
 
 
 Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), standing alongside Enzi, said he'd back the senator. 
 
 "Senator Enzi is my friend, he's my mentor, he's a tremendous senator for the people of Wyoming and I plan to support him for reelection, I am supporting him for reelection," he told reporters. 
 
 The New York Times reported recently that Cheney had telephoned the GOP senator and told him that she was considering a primary challenge. 
 
 She has been highly active in local Republican politics since moving to Wyoming with her family about a year ago, attending a number of events around the state, sometimes with her father by her side. 
 
 Enzi said he planned a more formal announcement of his reelection plans in the future. 
 
 "In the meantime, I will do the job I was already elected to do. My trips to Wyoming almost weekly, the public listening sessions, the groups I meet with and speak to, working behind the scenes — this is what I have been doing since I was elected and this is what needs to be done," he said in the statement. 
 
 The race could break as much on a generational divide as an ideological one. 
 
 Both are known as strong conservatives, though Enzi drew criticism from some on the right for his strong support for a law that would allow states to collect a sales tax on out-of-state Internet purchases. 
 
 The National Republican Senatorial Committee has already announced it will back Enzi in the primary, though it’s unlikely it will spend heavily on a race in which either Republican is likely to win the general election. 
 
 —This report was last updated at 6:14 p.m. 
 
 - This story was updated on July 17 to reflect that Cheney is no longer a Fox News commentator. Fox News announced it had terminated her contract after she announced her campaign. ||||| Former Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter Liz Cheney will run against Wyoming's senior U.S. senator in next year's Republican primary, her campaign said Tuesday. 
 
 FILE - In this Feb. 18, 2010, file photo, Liz Cheney addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. Cheney announced Tuesday, July 16, 2013, she will run against Wyoming's senior... (Associated Press) 
 
 Liz Cheney, 46, is the elder of Dick Cheney's two daughters. Her announcement is a political challenge unlike anything Wyoming has seen for years, maybe decades. 
 
 Republicans in the state rarely challenge incumbents of their own party in national office. All three members of the state's congressional delegation and all statewide elected officials are Republican. 
 
 Liz Cheney is married and has five children. She hasn't been a longtime Wyoming resident but she and her husband bought a home in the posh northwest Wyoming community of Jackson Hole last year. 
 
 "I am running because I know, as a mother and a patriot, we can no longer afford simply to go along to get along. We can't continue business as usual in Washington," Cheney said in a statement. 
 
 Meanwhile, apparently aware that Cheney's announcement was imminent, Sen. Mike Enzi announced his bid for a fourth term. He made the announcement more than six months earlier in the political cycle than he has in the past. 
 
 Enzi said he would continue to "do the job I was already elected to do." 
 
 "Working behind the scenes _ this is what I have been doing since I was elected and this is what needs to be done," he said by email through his spokesman. 
 
 The race promises to be hard-fought. Enzi has had few serious Democratic opponents _ much less Republican ones _ and remains well-liked as an affable former shoe salesman and mayor of the coal-mining city of Gillette. 
 
 Enzi takes pride in keeping a lower profile and remaining much less partisan than most of his colleagues. He often refers to his "80-20" rule _ that opposing parties usually can agree on 80 percent of the details of any given issue _ as a model for Republicans and Democrats to work together. 
 
 Enzi handily won re-election in 2008 with more than 75 percent of the vote. 
 
 Cheney's interest in the seat has been an open secret for months, dating back at least to last year's purchase of a Wilson home listed for $1.9 million. 
 
 She appeared onstage with her father at last year's state Republican Party convention. It was Dick Cheney's first public appearance since he underwent a heart transplant, and father and daughter have been working on a book together. 
 
 Since then, Liz Cheney has made frequent appearances at county-level Republican events in virtually every corner of the state. 
 
 The Cheneys are well-established as a family with Wyoming roots _ an important qualification for anybody seeking major office in the state. Her announcement release pointed out that the Cheney family goes back more than 100 years in Wyoming. Liz Cheney was born in Madison, Wis. 
 
 Liz Cheney has been in the national public eye in recent years as a Fox News political commentator. 
 
 "Anybody can get in the race that wants to get in the race. There's at least one person that's trying to get me to retire," Enzi said earlier this month at a constituent meeting in Pine Bluffs. He declined to say who he was referring to. "No, people can judge who they think that is themselves," he said. 
 
 Alan K. Simpson, a former U.S. Senator from Wyoming and a longtime observer of state politics, said Tuesday he couldn't comment on what the race would mean for the Wyoming Republican Party. 
 
 "Right now, I have nothing to say at all except one thing, I deeply care about both of them, and that's all I have to say," Simpson said of Enzi and Cheney. 
 
 Cheney holds a law degree from the University of Chicago and has worked as a lawyer for the State Department and the Agency for International Development. ||||| Photo by Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Next year's senate primary in Wyoming just got a whole lot more interesting. The Associated Press reports that Liz Cheney, the elder of Dick Cheney's two daughters, has officially announced her plans to challenge Wyoming's senior senator in the Republican primary. 
 
 
 
 The move isn't a complete surprise—rumors of it had been swirling inside the Cowboy State and around the Beltway for weeks—but it's still rather major news because 69-year-old Sen. Mike Enzi has made it clear that he has no desire to step aside, even for the daughter of his former fly-fishing buddy. Here's how the New York Times' Jonathan Martin summed things up last week in advance of today's announcement: 
 
 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. ... The developments underscore the complicated relationship between the Beltway-centered Cheney family and the sparsely populated state that provided its political base. 
 
 
 
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– Liz Cheney announced today that she's running for the Senate in Wyoming next year, reports AP. The news isn't a huge surprise, notes Slate, but it's especially interesting because of one salient fact: She's trying to oust a fellow Republican. And that Republican, 69-year-old Mike Enzi, immediately announced that he'd be seeking a fourth term, thus setting up what may be the most interesting Senate primary of the bunch. Enzi even sounded "wounded" by Cheney's move, observes the Hill. "She said that if I ran she wasn't going to run, but obviously that isn't correct," he said. "I thought we were friends." As for Cheney, the 46-year-old daughter of Dick Cheney says in her video that "I’m running because I believe it is necessary for a new generation of leaders to step up to the plate." Politico notes this take from Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer: “I’m a big fan of Liz Cheney," he tweeted. "But not in this race." He added that "divisive, internal GOP fights aren’t helpful. No need to create this one.” No matter which Republican wins the primary—followed by almost certain victory in the general election—the party stands a decent chance of recapturing the Senate.)