Rep. Liz Cheney is poised to lose to a Trump-backed opponent in Tuesday’s Wyoming Republican primary election after igniting the former president’s wrath by voting to impeach him and serving on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot.
Cheney, 56, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, is the last of the 10 Republican House members who voted to impeach Donald Trump in 2021, and she trails her opponent Harriet Hageman by double digits, according to the latest polls in deep red Wyoming.
Only two Republican members of Congress who supported the impeachment have won their primaries this year.
Cheney, who has taken a leading role on the Jan. 6 panel, has been defiant in the face of potential defeat, continuing to speak out about the former president’s inciting a mob to attack the Capitol in an effort to disrupt the results of the 2020 election and the threat he still poses.
“I am working hard to earn every single vote,” Cheney said in an interview last month on “Fox News Sunday.”
“Given the choice between maintaining my seat in the House of Representatives on the one hand or ensuring the survival of our constitutional republic and ensuring the American people know the truth about Donald Trump, I will choose the Constitution and the truth every day of the week and twice on Sunday,” she continued.
Her father, who served as vice president in the George W. Bush administration’s two terms, reiterated his daughter’s anti-Trump message in a campaign message earlier this month.
“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” her father said in the campaign spot. “There is nothing more important she will ever do than lead the effort to make sure Donald Trump is never again near the Oval Office.”
In a state that Trump won with nearly 70% of the vote, Cheney is hard-pressed to find enough Democratic voters who are willing to switch parties to vote for her.
Republicans vastly outnumber other parties in voter registration in Wyoming, making it highly likely that even if some voters did switch the effort would still fall short.
In a campaign ad last week, she sounded an appeal to Democrats and independents, saying that they must stand united against “those trying to destroy our republic.”
“Millions of Americans across our nation, Republicans, Democrats, independents, stand united in the cause of freedom. We are stronger, more dedicated and more determined than those trying to destroy our republic,” she said.
“This is our great task, and we will prevail,” Cheney continued.
Some have speculated that sensing defeat, Cheney is looking over the horizon at a possible run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
But others say that Cheney, already an outcast among Trump Republicans, is likely facing political oblivion because her conservatism will eventually turn off Democratic and independent voters.
“You know… we have a common enemy in Donald Trump, right? I mean, you know, politics makes strange bedfellows. Plus, look, if I lived in Wyoming, I would vote for Liz Cheney because a Republican is going to be in that seat. So it might as well be Liz Cheney,” political commentator Hilary Rosen said Monday on CNN.
“But look, Liz Cheney is still anti-abortion. She still has a huge level of conservatism. I think she’s going to be a woman without a party. You know, all these people speculating that she’s going to now become a Democrat or she’s going to run as an independent, or let her be, you know, a vice presidential candidate for the Democrats, I just don’t see any of that,” Rosen said.
With Post wires
