This story is part of our Quick Hits series. This series will bring you breaking news and short updates from throughout the state.
A former Democratic state senator has announced a run for Congress.
Lisa Kinney is an attorney from Laramie who served in the state Senate for 10 years. Her campaign website says she was also the director of the Albany County Library and former president of the Albany County Chamber of Commerce. She says she later registered as a Republican.
“I think differently from the other candidates,” she said in a campaign announcement. “They are asking for presidential endorsement. I am looking at what is going on in the world and how it affects Wyoming. All changes are not good, and we need to be prepared. If you recall the Industrial Revolution, the whole population had to change to survive. We are in the middle of a tech ‘revolution.’ Everything around us is revolving such as AI, cryptocurrency, diminishing work force, and energy to mention a few. … The effects are intense and involve electricity, water, no corporate taxes, noise and more. We need to be informed. Wyoming has been the ‘backbone of America’s energy’ for a century, so we must examine and learn if we want to remain involved in such changes.”
Kinney said her platform is based on her “R.E.A.L. priorities,” which are reintroduce, educate, affordability and law.
For reintroduce, she advocates for “getting Constitutional congressional power back to provide a system of checks and balances,” ending the war in Iran and other foreign conflicts, the notion of keeping Wyoming lands in Wyoming hands, decorum and tempering Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) surge tactics.
For educate, she said she supports public education and freedom of thought in public libraries and media, reestablishing the U.S. Department of Education, providing free lunch and breakfast for kids, bringing back “special education, gifted and talented and head start,” and eliminating the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s provisions regarding student loan forgiveness.
Under affordability, she listed continuing subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, using grants to states to lower housing costs, eliminating tariffs on common goods and reducing taxes for low-income earners while cutting tax benefits to millionaires and billionaires.
For law, she wants to see due process available to all people in the U.S., following court judgments, stop pardoning violent criminals and preserving decency by treating people “like the Sermon on the Mount—love, compassion, care for the poor, righteousness and integrity, feed the poor, provide shelter for the homeless, not hate one another because of political differences, love God and love each other as we love ourselves.”
She also frames herself as a “Congressional Robinhood.”
“Affordability should be the starting point: no one earning under $100,000 should be taxed into hardship while the ultra‑wealthy continue to benefit from policies written for them. In the years since massive tax cuts for the richest Americans, more billionaires have been created than ever before, yet regular people in Wyoming are struggling just to afford groceries, gas, and basic stability,” she wrote.
Kinney is the first Democrat to announce, whereas nine Republicans have thrown their hats in the ring to replace Harriet Hageman, who is running for U.S. Senate.
