JACKSON, Wyo. — The two-minute video, ostensibly meant to be a final appeal to voters here, likely served much more as the launching pad for a campaign that will last for years to come. “No matter how long we have to fight, this is a battle we will win,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) tells the camera, pledging to lead “millions of Americans” of all ideological stripes “united in cause. of freedom.” “This is our great task and we will win. I hope you will join me in this fight,” Cheney concludes. Cheney is looking well beyond Tuesday’s Republican primary for that state’s at-large U.S. House seat, a race she is likely to lose, barring an unprecedented surge of non-Republican voters in the GOP contest. She entered Congress six years ago as a relative celebrity, the daughter of the former vice president who spent several years using appearances on Fox News to deliver scathing criticism of the Obama-Maiden administration. And she will leave Capitol Hill, likely in 4½ months, as the face of an anti-Trump movement that has cost her old alliances but left her with new supporters clamoring for a more nationally focused next act. “I sure hope she runs for president,” said Jim Rooks, elected to the Jackson City Council as a self-described “fierce independent,” as he sat in a coffee shop looking up at Snow King Mountain. Cheney has fielded questions about her ambitions since first taking office, but tensions rose after the summer blockbuster hearings, in which she served as vice chairman of the committee investigating the former president’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, uprising. at the United States Capitol. “I’ll make a decision for 2024 down the road,” he told CNN in late July. But Cheney is clear when it comes to her chances of actually winning the presidential nomination in a party still so loyal to former President Donald Trump, according to friends and advisers. She sees her future role similar to the way she sees the Jan. 6 committee’s task: Blocking any path for Trump back to the Oval Office. “It’s about the danger he poses to the country and that he can’t be anywhere near that power again,” he told a crowd of supporters in Cheyenne shortly before committee hearings that began in early June. Traditional conservatives who oppose Trump have already discussed the possibility of Cheney running for the White House. “That conversation was very strong even before the Dick Cheney ad,” said Dmitry Melhorn, referring to a campaign ad that aired nationally on Fox News that featured the former vice president denouncing Trump. Mehlhorn advises several donors across the political spectrum who are opposed to Trump, including billionaire LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Most are ready to provide critical funding for a Cheney bid. In that regard, Cheney will spend the months after the committee wraps up later this year figuring out her next steps. This could be the establishment of a political organization focused on Trump or some think tank that fits the media appearances. But, sure enough, Cheney and a small but powerful bloc of anti-Trump Republicans have decided there must be a 2024 nominee who will be a relentless opponent of both the former president and other contenders spewing his vices for the 2020 election. This anti-Trump group fears a repeat of the 2016 campaign, in which opponents avoided attacking Trump’s unorthodox behavior and positions until it was too late. The emerging Republican presidential field in 2024 consists of the former president, his wannabe allies, and a collection of other Republicans courting non-Trump voters but not strongly denouncing Trump. Cheney and her crowd want a nominee who would simply serve as a political kamikaze, blowing up his candidacy as well as bringing down Trump. “You need it. I think it’s got to be somebody who’s going to be willing to take the boos, take the yelling,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), the only other Republican on the Jan. 6 committee, said in a recent interview. “Someone [who] can stand on stage and tell people the truth, I think that would have a huge impact.” Mehlhorn said his group of anti-Trump donors would take a Cheney campaign designed solely to attack Trump “seriously” enough that they could put at least $20 million behind it. In doing so, he said, “Republican voters are reminded of how bad Trump is in a way that could allow someone else to get out of the primary.” Cheney was very outspoken in her rants against House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and other Republicans who remained loyal to Trump despite his help accelerating the assault on Capitol Hill. But he’s also upset a separate group of Republicans who despise Trump but instead hope the former president will go away, particularly Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “Where Kevin is like a full-on public hug, McConnell is: Ignore him and hope he goes away. And that’s just not working,” Cheney told the authors of “This Will Not Pass,” a book about the aftermath of the 2020 election. But Cheney’s single-minded focus on preventing Trump’s re-election has come at a heavy cost. Her political world has been turned upside down. Over the weekend, McCarthy began hosting the annual major donor celebration in the village of Teton, less than 15 miles north of Cheney’s polling station. It’s the same spot where Cheney and her father co-hosted a $1 million fundraiser on Trump’s behalf in August 2019, but the resort owner has since sued Cheney and is backing her challenger, Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman. Instead of her traditional GOP support, Cheney is trying to rally tens of thousands of Democrats and independents across Wyoming to get into the Republican primary. Anecdotally, local liberals are confused rush to support them after decades of viewing the Cheney family as the political enemy. “I can’t believe I’m thinking this. This world is crazy,” recalls thinking Diana Welch, an adviser to Christy Walton, the billionaire heir to the Walmart fortune. But last Monday, Welch happily attended an event in nearby Wilson where Democrats, including local elected officials, outnumbered Republicans. Alli Noland, a local PR executive, spent years as a Democrat but finally quit a few years ago because the GOP primary was so critical in this deeply conservative state. He now holds regular meetings at the Stagecoach Bar just outside Jackson for interested liberals learning how to support Cheney. And there are people like Mike May, who told friends Saturday night how, since the early days of the Bush-Cheney administration, he’s had a Volkswagen bus with a blunt bumper sticker: “Cheney is a creep.” His more traditional truck now has a “Cheney for Wyoming” sticker. She said she attended Monday’s event simply to say “thank you” for standing up to Trump. According to state records, the shift is real. As of Jan. 1, Republicans had more than 196,000 registered voters, while Democrats had about 46,000. Through August 1, Republicans gained 11,000 new voters, while Democrats lost 6,000 and unaffiliated voters fell by 2,000. Teton County, traditionally the only liberal place in Wyoming, now has more registered Republicans than Democrats, and voters can switch parties until Tuesday’s primary. Teton County Clerk Maureen Murphy reported a surprising tilt in early voting toward Republicans: 3,259 votes had been cast in the GOP primary by the end of Friday and just 166 had come in the Democratic contest. Cheney supporters believe these numbers indicate a real increase in voter turnout. Rooks, the Jackson city councilman, has spent the past few weeks wooing Democrats and independents to join him in the GOP primary, with great success. “I have two friends who just can’t do it,” Rooks said, recalling one who walked into an early voting center and left without voting for Cheney. Republican friends are a much harder sell, he said. “I might as well be trying to tell them to renounce their faith.” That scares Noland, who warns that the push to get non-Republicans into the primaries has only alienated traditional GOP voters from Cheney. “It really fired up all the Republicans,” he said. If Cheney loses Wyoming’s usual Republicans by a 2-to-1 margin, as polls suggest, she would need something like 40,000 Democrats and independents to pass — an insanely high turnout in a state where just 115,000 voted in the last midterm GOP primary. Even those crossover voters, like Patrice Kangas, have moved on from Tuesday’s result and want to know what’s next. As he told Stagecoach, he waited in line for a long time to meet Cheney after Monday’s event ended and finally asked if he would run for president. “Going big?” Kagas said. “Oh,” Cheney replied, “I don’t know yet.” Hannah Knowles contributed from Washington
