Cynthia Lummis

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Cynthia M. Lummis Wiederspahn, known politically as Cynthia Lummis (born September 10, 1954), is a Republican lawyer and rancher in Cheyenne who served as the Wyoming state treasurer from 1999-2007 -- the 29th person to hold the position. In that capacity, she managed over $8 billion in annual funds and was elected president of the Western State Treasurer's Association.

Lummis is a candidate in the August 2008 Republican primary for Wyoming's single seat in the United States House of Representatives being vacated by the retiring Republican Barbara Cubin of Casper. The winner of the nomination will face the Democrat Gary Trauner of Wilson in Teton County in the November 4 general election. Taruner nearly unseated Cubin in the 2006 election.^[1]

Earlier, she was a member of the Wyoming State Senate (1982-1994) and the Wyoming House of Representatives (1979-1982). Thus far, she is the youngest woman, at twenty-four, to have been elected to the Wyoming House. Lummis is also the first woman to have served on the Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo board. She won the title "Miss Frontier" in 1976. Lummis is also an announced U.S. House candidate

Though she uses her maiden name, she has been married since 1983 to Cheyenne attorney and businessman Alvin Laramie "Al" Wiederspahn (born 1949), himself a former Democratic member of both houses of the Wyoming legislature. The two were House colleagues from 1979-1983, when they married.

Lummis was educated at Trinity Lutheran School and public schools in Cheyenne. She was active in the 4-H Club and raised Hereford calves every year for showing at the annual county fair in August. Lummis Livestock outside Cheyenne, which she still manages, began in 1919, when her great-grandfather, the owner of a hardware store, bought the property from a business partner. The ranch has a stone barn built in the latter nineteenth century. Lummis and Wiederspahn also own ranches in Wheatland and in Lincoln County.

After high school, Lummis enrolled in the University of Wyoming in Laramie, her state's only four-year institution of higher learning. She obtained two bachelor of science degrees in animal science in 1976 and also in biology in 1978. While she was a legislator, she received her Juris doctor degree in 1985 and also clerked for the Wyoming Supreme Court.

In the legislature, Lummis concentrated on issues of taxation and natural resources. On leaving the Senate, she served as transition director for Republican Governor Jim Geringer and then worked for two years in Geringer's office. In that capacity she spearheaded the Governor’s Open Spaces Initiative and edited Wyoming’s Open Lands Guidebook. She also served on the board of the Institute for Environmental and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming. She is a former interim director of the Office of State Lands and Investments.

State revenues increased sharply during her tenure, and she was able to increase the income on investments. Elected in 1998 and unopposed in 2002, she was ineligible to seek reelection in 2006 because of Wyoming's term limits law. She was succeeded by fellow Republican Joseph B. Meyer, previously the secretary of state.

Lummis' affiliations include the American Women's Financial Education Foundation, the advisory board of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West, Cheyenne's Vision 2020, the Wyoming Business Alliance, and the Wyoming Stock Growers Agricultural Land Trust.

As state treasurer, Lummis was cited by the Small Business Administration as the "Women in Business Advocate of the Year 2005". The award is given to a public official who promotes women's business ownership. That same year Lummis was honored by the UW College of Agriculture as one of two "Outstanding Alumni".

In 2003, Lummis was a fundraiser for the construction of Johnson Lummis Hunkins Plaza in downtown Laramie in Albany County, where a statue has been erected in honor of Louisa Gardner Swain, the first woman ever to vote in world history.

The Wiederspahns have a daughter, Annaliese Wiederspahn, who graduated in 2007 from Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania. They are members of Trinity Lutheran Church in Cheyenne. Lummis' father-in-law was former Laramie County Coroner Arling Wiederspahn (1916-2007), a Democrat.

On June 14, 2007, Lummis was among thirty-one Wyoming Republicans who filed her name with the Republican State Central Committee in Cheyenne for consideration as the successor to U.S. Senator Craig Thomas, who died earlier in the month. She was chosen as one of the three nominees by the committee, and Freudenthal, under Wyoming law, made the final selection on June 22, 2007 to appoint John Barrasso, an orthopedic surgeon and a state senator from Casper. Lummis was considering challenging Barrasso in the 2008 special election to fill out the remainder of Thomas' term but instead announced her candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives.