Wichita ? Former U.S. Rep. Todd Tiahrt announced Thursday he will challenge incumbent Mike Pompeo in the state’s 4th Congressional District, setting up a primary election showdown between two prominent conservative Republicans.

Tiahrt entered the race to regain his old House seat with an announcement before about 100 cheering supporters at the Kansas Aviation Museum in Wichita. He represented the south-central Kansas district from 1995 until 2011.

Pompeo is seeking his third, two-year term. He won the seat in 2010 when Tiahrt gave up a re-election bid to run for U.S. Senate. Tiahrt lost the Republican nomination in a bitter contest with Jerry Moran, who won the Senate race that November.

The Pompeo-Tiahrt contest will be among the bigger political races of the year in Kansas, and both campaigns signaled that it could be as contentious as the U.S. Senate primary four years ago.

“It’ll probably be a very intense race,” said Clay Barker, the Kansas Republican Party’s executive director. “We’ll have to heal the rift when it’s over.”

Pompeo enters the fray with a sizeable financial advantage. According to campaign finance reports, he ended March with more than $2.1 million in campaign cash, while Tiahrt is starting essentially from scratch. But Barker said Tiahrt has enough name recognition to allow a late start.

The former congressman’s announcement ended what Barker described as months of rumors among Republicans about his plans.

Tiahrt said Pompeo and other U.S. House Republicans haven’t fought Democratic President Barack Obama enough on health care. Tiahrt also criticized Pompeo for calling for a U.S. military strike in Syria last year amid civil unrest there and for defending the federal electronic surveillance programs as necessary to protect safety.

Tiahrt also suggested Pompeo avoids personal contact with his constituents and favors “jet-setting” on foreign congressional trips.

“I have not changed,” Tiahrt told his supporters. “I’m the same person that fought for your values, your ideas and your freedoms.”

Pompeo chastised Tiahrt for his past “old Washington” support for federal budget spending earmarks. Tiahrt said such earmarks brought much-needed projects and resources to the district, but the conservative Club for Growth’s political action committee endorsed Pompeo, describing Tiahrt as “liberal.”

And Pompeo noted that Tiahrt endorsed him in 2010 and 2012 and had described Pompeo in 2011 as working hard to listen to his constituents — in sharp contrast to Tiahrt’s suggestion Thursday that Pompeo is aloof.

“The contrast between these two statements is exactly the kind of classic politician doublespeak that has led voters to so deeply mistrust elected officials,” Pompeo said.

Before Tiahrt’s entry into the race, Pompeo had been favored to win another term in the 4th District, where Republicans have a nearly 21 percentage-point advantage among registered voters.

No other Republicans have filed to run, and the only Democratic candidate so far is Perry Schuckman, of Wichita, the former director of a nonprofit agency, who lost a primary for a state Senate seat in 2012.

Tiahrt won the 4th District seat in 1994 by ousting longtime Democratic incumbent Dan Glickman, who later served as U.S. agriculture secretary.

After leaving office, Tiahrt remained a presence within the Kansas GOP, serving as one of the state’s three representatives on the Republican National Committee since 2011. He actually replaced Pompeo on the RNC; Pompeo gave up the position after his election to Congress.