Reps. Kennedy, Cheney consider their choices in call of familial ambition

WASHINGTON — Reps. Liz Cheney and Joe Kennedy almost seem destined to end up squaring off against one another.

The question may be whether the Wyoming Republican and Massachusetts Democrat will clash at the top of House leadership, or across the Capitol in the Senate – or maybe even on opposing national tickets.

Cheney, 53, and Kennedy, 38, are weighing whether to leave the House to run for the Senate in 2020 in their respectively conservative and liberal states, and those decisions will tell a lot about the state of the House, the Senate and their political parties.

And, most personally, their choices will be a response to the call of familial ambition, two scions of political dynasties that have occupied the highest offices in the land.

“When a Cheney speaks, people listen,” said Matt Rhoades, the national GOP strategist who has been a Cheney confidant for a dozen years. “She’s in a win-win, whether she goes to the Senate or stays in the House. She can play either hand she is dealt and be a national figure.”

The same has been said about Kennedy, who arrived in the House in 2013, four years ahead of Cheney. Both are officially undecided for now about the Senate.

“I really am honored to serve the people of Wyoming and, ultimately, I’m going to do what’s best for Wyoming,” Cheney told a Wyoming radio interviewer in mid-August.

“Working through it,” Kennedy said Thursday in an interview with Boston’s CBS affiliate. “It’s a big decision, for me, for my family, but there’s also the question of how you’re gonna be received across the state.”

Cheney is already a statewide official, as Wyoming has just one at-large representative, able to crisscross her state without raising any eyebrows. Kennedy was spotted across Massachusetts over the six-week break for the House, a period capped off with supporters waving campaign-style signs at a Labor Day parade in Boston.

In late July, Kennedy supporters set off alarm bells when they tested him in a poll against Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who has been running for reelection. Kennedy has since acknowledged he was considering a challenge to the 73-year-old Markey, a 42-year veteran of Congress.