Sue Lowden, chairwoman of the Nevada’s Republican Party until Wednesday, has officially entered the field of GOP candidates seeking to challenge Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in his 2010 bid for re-election.

Lowden last ran for public office as a state senator in the mid-1990s.

She announced at the beginning of September that she would be resigning her party post to pursue a possible challenge to Reid, a four-term incumbent whose central role in controversial national policy debates has spurred a dropoff in his job approval ratings at home.

In a release sent out Thursday morning, Lowden’s campaign said she will file the official paperwork to become a candidate. Her statement did not take aim at Reid explicitly, but did say that Nevada’s current economic woes were the product of “an unresponsive, out-of-touch federal government.”