Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., speaks Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022, at a primary Election Day gathering at Mead Ranch in Jackson, Wyo.Jae C. Hong/The Associated Press
Liz Cheney was trounced in her congressional renomination bid on Tuesday, as Wyoming Republicans gave their clear endorsement to Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
But she vowed to keep fighting against the former U.S. president’s potential 2024 comeback campaign, and do everything to stop the wave of election denialism sweeping her party.
Mr. Trump campaigned vociferously against Ms. Cheney in the primary – part of an ongoing effort to take revenge on party dissidents. The three-term Wyoming congresswoman is vice-chair of the legislative committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by Mr. Trump’s supporters. Throughout the election, she took direct aim at the slide toward authoritarianism she said Mr. Trump represents, despite acknowledging that she was damaging her own career.
Preliminary results showed Harriet Hageman, Ms. Cheney’s Trump-backed challenger, defeating her by a colossal margin of nearly 40 per centage points.
Speaking to supporters at a cattle ranch in the Rocky Mountains on the state’s western end, Ms. Cheney warned that the country is “barrelling again toward crisis, lawlessness and violence” after Republicans nominated a slew of candidates who, like Ms. Hageman, champion Mr. Trump’s false claims that his re-election defeat was rigged.
“Our work is far from over,” Ms. Cheney said. “I will do whatever it takes to make sure Donald Trump is never again anywhere near the Oval Office, and I mean it.”
She did not say what form her efforts would take, whether a presidential campaign of her own or by drumming up Republican opposition to Mr. Trump.
In a series of posts on his Truth Social platform, the ex-president derided Ms. Cheney as “sanctimonious” and called for her to “disappear into the depths of political oblivion.”
“This was a referendum on the never ending Witch Hunt. The people have spoken!” he wrote.
Mr. Trump currently faces escalating criminal investigations of his conduct in office. Last week, the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago estate.
The vote in this deep-red state is only the latest contest in which the former president has sought to tighten his grip on the party. Of 10 House Republicans who, like Ms. Cheney, voted to impeach him last year, three others have previously fallen to Mr. Trump’s candidates in their primaries. Two survived their nomination contests, and four did not run for re-election.
Ms. Cheney is Republican royalty, a former official in George W. Bush’s administration and daughter of ex-vice president Dick Cheney. She built a reputation in office as a conservative stalwart, championing guns, opposing abortion and supporting the oil industry. In Congress, she voted with Mr. Trump more than 90 per cent of the time.
But the 56-year-old lawyer became one of few prominent Republicans to break with him over his attempts to throw out his 2020 election loss. The party’s congressional caucus has since stripped her of her post as the third-highest-ranked Republican in the House, while the Wyoming state party kicked her out entirely.
In a state that gave Mr. Trump nearly 70 per cent of its vote in 2020, many of Ms. Cheney’s constituents see her break with him as an unforgivable sin.
“No true Republican would work with Democrats to take down a Republican president,” said Shianne Huston, a 56-year-old antique store owner from Mills, Wyo. “On Jan. 6, the government wasn’t threatened, it wasn’t an armed takeover. It’s just overblown.”
Tom Mattimore, a 72-year-old retired boot maker in Laramie, Wyo., said Ms. Cheney was already in trouble over doubts that she was spending much time in the state, the country’s least populous, whose 600,000 residents are used to regular contact with their elected representatives. “Liz Cheney hasn’t been around much. We don’t like that in these parts,” Mr. Mattimore said.
He said he believed the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, which recovered classified documents Mr. Trump took from the White House, was part of a sinister plot: “We have an intelligence community that is actively engaged in trying to overthrow the United States.”
Still, Ms. Cheney held on to at least some of her supporters. At a community centre in Jackson, the touristy mountain resort town close to her home, many voters professed admiration for their congresswoman’s commitment to principle.
“She stood up and had the courage to, in my opinion, do what’s right. She knew what she was getting into, but she did it anyway,” said C.J. Johnson, a 32-year-old biologist.
Warren Van Genderen said he agreed with Mr. Trump on policy, particularly his tough talk on China and his support for the oil and gas industry. But Mr. Van Genderen, 84, had always felt Mr. Trump was “a bozo, a buffoon” and “not presidential.” The now-former president’s actions on Jan. 6 solidified his alarm.
“It took a lot of chutzpah for Cheney to take on Trump. I hope she can continue,” he said as he stood in the afternoon sunshine after casting his ballot. “He does a disservice to the Republican Party.”
The fault lines running through the party nationally are particularly acute in Wyoming. A far-right faction led by state party chair Frank Eathorne has taken over the local leadership apparatus in recent years.
Pat Sweeney, a 68-year-old Republican state legislator who backed Ms. Cheney in the primary, said the state party has made a concerted effort to push out moderates by recruiting candidates for primary campaigns focused on culture-war hot-buttons, such as fighting protections for transgender people.
“A number of us have really been nailed by the state party. There’s a real movement to get people like me out,” he said at a Republican Party event in a park in Casper, Wyo.
Part of Ms. Cheney’s re-election strategy involved reaching out to Democrats and independents, urging them to change their party registrations to Republican to vote for her.
Kimberly Holloway, a 52-year-old Casper lawyer and former democratic socialist member of the city’s council, made the switch.
“I disagree with Liz Cheney on 99 per cent of things, but on this she is standing on the right side of history,” she said. “This issue overshadows everything else. The attitude of the Republican Party is a threat to our democracy, to our citizens, to our elections.”
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