Cheney to host Romney fundraiser at Wyoming home

Former Vice President Dick Cheney will hold a high-dollar fundraiser for Mitt Romney at his Wyoming home on Thursday, according to an official with the Romney campaign.

Donors will pay $30,000 per couple to dine at Cheney's home in Teton Pines, a Wyoming country club featuring an Arnold Palmer-designed golf course. Expected guests include prominent oil, private equity and farming executives.

Also among the expected guests, according to a report in the Washington Post, is Foster Friess, the investment manager and Rick Santorum backer who drew fire for his joke during the primary that birth control costs could be lowered by having women hold an aspirin between their knees. Feiess spent nearly $2 million to support Santorum's primary effort, but announced in April he was swinging his support to Romney.

The events will provide another major haul for Romney, whose $106-million haul in June outpaced President Obama by $35 million. The Post reported that between the fundraiser at Cheney's home and an earlier reception at the nearby country club, the Republican nominee could pull in around $2 million for his campaign.

But the event also carries some political risk. Romney has taken pains to represent his campaign as a break from the Bush-Cheney years, and a Gallup poll released last month showed Americans still were more likely to blame former President Bush than President Obama for the country's economic woes. In aligning with Cheney, Romney opens himself up to a renewed push from the Obama team hoping to link the former governor to the last Republican administration.

The fundraiser will be among the first significant political events for Cheney since his March heart transplant. Cheney, 71, had the surgery in Northern Virginia after a 20-month wait on the cardiac transplant list.

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