Mary Cheney Confirms Pregnancy with Second Child

Mary Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, is expecting her second child with her partner, Heather Poe, The Washington Post confirmed Thursday. The news was first reported a day earlier by True/Slant. Cheney first informed her close friends of her pregnancy about four months ago, and the couple says that she is due in mid-November. Cheney said she would taking maternity leave from her position at the communications firm Navigators Global, and a family spokesperson confirmed she will start her own consulting firm.

Friends have said the new firm will involve her sister Liz, who has also been making headlines lately as a rising conservative figure who might be considering a run for office. The spokesperson for the Cheney family, however, denied that anyone but Mary will be involved in the new business.

Mary Cheney's first child, Samuel David Cheney, was born in 2007 while she was an executive at AOL. The pregnancy drew national attention and political tension, since she had served as a campaign official for President George W. Bush, who opposed gay marriage and adoption. Cheney, who had been openly gay since age 16, said in 2006 that she almost left the 2004 Bush/Cheney re-election campaign over its support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. She stayed after realizing that she lived in dangerous times and "didn't have the luxury of being a single-issue voter on same-sex marriage."

Cheney's lesbianism and pregnancies have also raised the profile of her father's stance on gay issues. Dick and Lynne Cheney always spoke positively about being grandparents, and President Bush even said he was "happy" for Mary. As far back as the 2000 campaign, Dick Cheney drew fire from social conservatives for saying he believed "people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want." That split with Bush on the issue drew much attention, but Cheney did not seem to push the issue in an administration that took a consistent position against gay marriage. Earlier this year, he reiterated his belief that gay marriage should be handled by the states.

"As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family," Cheney said in a June appearance at the National Press Club. "I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish, any kind of arrangement they wish. The question of whether or not there ought to be a federal statute to protect this, I don't support. I do believe that the historically the way marriage has been regulated is at the state level. It has always been a state issue, and I think that is the way it ought to be handled, on a state-by-state basis. ... But I don't have any problem with that. People ought to get a shot at that."

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