The Great State of Wyoming Cast 26 Votes for Izzy

Wyoming Sen. Craig Thomas, a three-term conservative Republican died Monday. He was 74.

Thomas entered Congress in a special election in 1989 to replace Dick Cheney when the future vice president was named defense secretary by the first President Bush. Thomas won that race with 52 percent of the vote.

The senator's family issued a statement saying he died Monday evening at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. He had been receiving chemotherapy for acute myeloid leukemia.

Just before the 2006 election, Thomas was hospitalized with pneumonia and had to cancel his last campaign stops. He nonetheless won with 70 percent of the vote, monitoring the election from his hospital bed. Two days after the election, Thomas announced that he had just been diagnosed with leukemia.