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2026 Election

Cynthia Lummis Won’t Seek a Second Term in the Senate

The Republican from Wyoming pushed for Western states’ issues like water and land management to be prioritized in Congress, and helped push a landmark crypto bill into law.

Cynthia Lummis

Sen. Cynthia Lummis opted not to run for reelection in 2026. Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP Images

By Helen Huiskes

December 19, 2025 04:25 PM

Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming will retire from the Senate after one term, she announced Friday on X, making her the fifth Republican senator to opt out of running for reelection in 2026.

In her announcement, the 71-year-old said she had decided she didn’t have the energy to serve a second term.

“Deciding not to run for reelection does represent a change of heart for me, but in the difficult, exhausting session weeks this fall I’ve come to accept that I do not have six more years in me,” Lummis said. “I am a devout legislator, but I feel like a sprinter in a marathon. The energy required doesn’t match up.”

Her retirement opens up another race for the Senate, though the seat is almost certain to stay in Republican hands. It’s not yet clear who will run in the primary, which is slated for August, but Rep. Harriet Hageman might be a contender, as she has weighed runs for future office including governor and teased an upcoming announcement to NOTUS earlier this week.

Before her election to the Senate, Lummis represented Wyoming’s at-large House district from 2009 to 2017. There, she helped revive the Congressional Western Caucus, a largely Republican group of lawmakers from the West who hold trips and meetings to push for attention to issues uniquely affecting their region, including water rights, energy production and federal land management.

During her time in the Senate, Lummis co-led the Senate Western Caucus. In early December, the caucus brought lawmakers and Trump administration officials together in Las Vegas to talk through the administration’s goals to reshape land-management agencies.

“The Western Caucus is at a high mark in terms of its ability to engage with the administration and with industry and stakeholders on the ground in the West to form solutions that are really difficult,” Lummis told NOTUS in an interview after the trip.

She’s also been a prominent Republican voice in the Senate for cryptocurrency legislation, while serving on the committees on banking, commerce and environment. Earlier this year she helped negotiate final passage of the GENIUS Act, which helped legitimize payments made with stablecoins, a kind of crypto tied to physical assets, under federal law, giving regulators power over them.