Endangered Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney chose to mingle with reporters and media executives over attending an annual grassroots event last weekend during a rare appearance in her home state.
“Where’s Liz Cheney? The Wyoming Republican’s Exile From Wyoming Republicans,” The New York Times headlined its reporting Wednesday highlighting Cheney’s routine absence.
“Ms. Cheney hasn’t appeared at a state Republican Party function in more than two years and hasn’t been to an in-person event for any of the party’s 23 county chapters since 2020,” the Times published.
While Republicans held a major prom-themed fundraiser in southwest Wyoming Saturday, the “biggest night of the year” for the area’s Republicans, Cheney was in the state capital of Cheyenne at an annual gathering for the Wyoming Press Association. Local constituents made clear to The Federalist last fall their at-large congresswoman’s visit anywhere beyond the northwest region of the state, referred to as the “California” portion of Wyoming, was a rare sighting to begin with. She now faces a competitive primary challenge from a Trump-endorsed opponent, land-use attorney Harriet Hageman, a local of Cheyenne.
Cheney’s focus on Washington rather than Wyoming, the Times wrote, “is raising questions in Wyoming about whether she is counting on Democrats to bail her out in the August primary — or even whether she really is battling to hold on to her office.”
Cheney’s campaign, which has made an ongoing feud with former President Donald Trump and his supporters the hallmark of her tenure in the lower chamber, is funded in part by the same blue-dollar donors who bankrolled the Lincoln Project. The incumbent congresswoman is also holding East Coast fundraisers with similarly prominent NeverTrump crusaders including Mitt Romney, a Republican senator from Utah.
“I’m not going to convince the crazies and I reject the crazies,” Cheney told the Times Saturday while she gathered with reporters instead of grassroots supporters 230 miles away. “I reject the notion that somehow we don’t have to abide by the rule of law. And the people right now who are in the leadership of our state party, I’m not trying to get their support because they’ve abandoned the Constitution.”
The harsh words came a day after the Republican National Committee (RNC) voted to censure the Wyoming representative for “participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s personally appointed vice chair of the Select Committee on Jan. 6, Cheney is a key driver of the Democrats’ primary midterm vehicle as it prosecutes political dissidents with no connection to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
In November, the Wyoming GOP voted to no longer recognize Cheney as a Republican, as the state’s sole member of the lower chamber escalates her attacks on political opponents including those working to unseat the congresswoman at home.
