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By Bob Cusack and Aaron Blake
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Posted: 06/04/07 11:10 PM [ET] |
Sen. Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.) has died at the age of 74 after battling leukemia.
Thomas's family had released a statement Monday afternoon saying the senator was in serious condition. Thomas passed away hours later.
Thomas was with his family at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., where he was undergoing a second round of chemotherapy for the disease, a form of blood cancer.
Thomas, who was in the hospital while being easily reelected to a third term last year, announced his diagnosis shortly afterward.
He returned to work in December, and signs were positive until he announced two weeks ago that he would undergo chemotherapy again. At the time, he expressed optimism and noted that he had begun running in the morning again.
A popular former congressman, he was first elected to the Senate in 1994 and won reelection twice, most recently with 70 percent of the vote.
Thomas will be replaced by a Republican. But the process is unusual.
Once the state’s governor, Democrat Dave Freudenthal, is formally notified of the vacancy, he will contact the state central committee of the outgoing incumbent’s party — in Thomas’s case, the Republicans.
The Republican state central committee chairman will then have 15 days to conduct a meeting to select three names of candidates who would satisfy constitutional requirements.
Those names will then be given to the governor, who will have five days to select one of them for a temporary appointment. The appointee will serve until the next general election, at which point a new senator would be elected to serve out the term.
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