Mordecai Jones looked across the hotel room at the Wyoming senator.

At the start of the 109th Congress in 2005 Enzi became the ninth Wyoming senator to ascend to the rank of chairman on one of the 16 standing Senate committees.

"Bizarre would be a good word," said the former Wyoming senator Alan K. Simpson, one of the board members.

Her old friend Alan K. Simpson, the former Wyoming senator, laughed when asked what role he expected her to take.

"We are not going to repudiate the president," he told me, echoing the former Wyoming senator.

My father worked for the University of Wyoming as director of the alumni association and then for Gale McGee, a Wyoming senator.

The organizers would have preferred that more attention be paid, for example, to the women who addressed the convention, even though they found themselves in the company of Alan K. Simpson, the Wyoming senator who led his party's assault on Anita F. Hill.

An aide to Mr. Thomas said the Wyoming senator supported Mr. Chang's appeal after being lobbied on his behalf by one of his business partners, James A. Courter, the former Republican congressman from New Jersey.