Republican officials have spent the past year ostracizing Rep. Liz Cheney, the fierce Trump critic from Wyoming, but she’s been embraced by donors.
POLITICO reports that Cheney raised $2.94 million in the first quarter of 2021, far more than both her Trump-backed primary opponent, Harriet Hageman, and the woman who replaced her in the GOP’s leadership, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York.
Cheney’s haul, which increases her cash on hand to $6.8 million, represents more than double what Hageman raised last quarter. Stefanik, meanwhile, claims she collected “over $2 million” in the first three months of 2022.
In past contests, Cheney’s fundraising efforts generally amounted to “a few hundred thousand dollars in a quarter,”
notes POLITICO.
The Cheney-Hageman contest is viewed as a proxy battle between Republican figures committed to traditional conservative values and those enthralled with the twice-impeached president and his America First agenda. Former President George W. Bush, Sens. Mitt Romney and Mitch McConnell, and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan back Cheney, while MAGA-enthusiasts like Rep. Kevin McCarthy and tech billionaire Peter Thiel are throwing their weight behind Hageman.
Trump has pledged to unseat Cheney in retaliation for her impeachment vote following the January 6th Capitol riot. His endorsement of Hageman – even though she was once a Never Trump Republican – was thought to be a significant lift to her campaign. But POLITICO reports that it didn’t even clear the field of other challengers:
In fact, there’s still a more Trumpy candidate in the race. ANTHONY BOUCHARD, a state senator, arguably has more of a claim to the Trump mantle than Hageman, who was once a Never-Trump Republican and called then-candidate Trump “racist and xenophobic.” Bouchard, meanwhile, has been a Trump diehard since the 2016 primaries. He has some major vulnerabilities as a candidate — when he was 18, he “had a relationship with and impregnated a 14-year-old girl,” the Casper Star-Tribune has reported. His colleagues in the legislature kicked him off of his committees last month.
POLTICO adds:
If Hageman and Bouchard split the Trump vote, Cheney could squeak by with a plurality coalition of traditional Republicans and Democrats who switch parties to vote for her on primary day.
She certainly has the money now to execute that plan. And if she beats Trumpism in Wyoming, she will immediately be able to leverage her new national fundraising network into a potential 2024 primary showdown against the man himself. After all, she said last May, “I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office.”
