Jackson Hole native Matt Mead said he will apply to fill the U.S. Senate seat of the late Craig Thomas.

Mead, who resigned as U.S. attorney for Wyoming last week, said he will begin stumping across the state to build support in the 71-member central committee of the Wyoming Republican Party.

“My wife and I are getting in the pickup and driving around the next five, six days,” Mead said in a phone interview Monday. “We’re going to try to cover the whole state.”

Mead is the grandson of former U.S. Sen. and Wyoming Gov. Cliff Hansen and the son of Pete and the late Mary Mead. He said in his resignation statement that he would return to his family ranch south of Woods Landing in Albany County. His relatives, including brother Brad Mead and sister-in-law Kate, still run a cattle operation in Jackson Hole’s Spring Gulch.

For central committee members who don’t already know him, Mead said, he will stress his past legal experience and his perspective as a cattleman.

“I think what I would want folks to know is of my service at the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” he said. “In addition to ranching being in my blood, public service is in my blood.”

Mead said it was too early to tell how he would vote on some of Thomas’ bills, such as those that would have protected the Wyoming Range from further oil and gas leasing and protected valley streams under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

“I think it’s extremely important to take into account what Senator Thomas had in process,” he said. “However, it is too early to know how any one person would vote for Thomas’ bills.”

Thomas died June 4 while undergoing treatment for leukemia. Funeral services were Saturday in Casper, and Thomas was buried Sunday in Cody.

Another Jackson Hole resident’s name being bantered about as a replacement for Thomas is Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney’s press office did not return calls to either the Jackson Hole Daily or The Associated Press.

The Wyoming Republican Party set a Thursday deadline for anyone interested in the slot to fill out an application and has scheduled a public meeting June 19 to select the party’s three nominees.

Fred Parady, the state party chairman, said Monday the party would take applications until 5 p.m. on Thursday and will announce each morning who has applied.

“Our goal is simple — to put forward the three very best possible candidates for the office of senator,” Parady said.

Within hours of Parady’s announcement, two Wyoming politicians besides Mead announced they intended to apply for the job: state Rep. Colin Simpson, R-Cody, son of former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson, and state Sen. John Barrasso, R-Casper.

State law gives the central committee until June 20 to submit the names of three nominees to Gov. Dave Freudenthal, who will then have five days to choose Thomas’ successor from those three. The central committee includes four members from Jackson: chairman of the county party Joe Schloss, state committeewoman Diana Vaughan, state committeeman Jeremy Aughenbaugh, and the national committeewoman, Jan Larimer.

The agenda for the upcoming central committee meeting will be announced Friday, and the party is working to set up a televised candidate forum Sunday, Parady said.

The new senator will be appointed to serve until early 2009. A special election in November 2008 will determine who completes Thomas’ term, which runs through 2012.

The party’s application form asks candidates whether they would run for re-election in 2008, but Parady said it would be up to individual members of the central committee to decide whether that influences the selection of nominees.

“I’m not sure you can have an enforceable or binding commitment as to someone’s intention to run in 2008, so we’ll just let that run its course,” Parady said.

On June 19, the central committee will hear brief presentations from each candidate; if there are more than eight, the first vote will cull the list to eight, followed by another round of speeches.

Parady said the meeting will be open and vote totals will be announced after each round of voting; once the list of candidates is pared to three, those names will be submitted to the governor.