Feb. 6 (UPI) — The Wyoming Republican Party’s state central committee voted Saturday to censure Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., for her vote to impeach then-President Donald Trump.
The Casper Star-Tribune reported that the vote came after just 11 minutes of debate, with just three people speaking against censoring the state’s lone representative in the House.
“Let’s resist this left-wing trend of ‘cancel culture,’ trying to censure and get rid of anybody that we disagree with,” said Teton County Chairman Alex Muromcew, who voted against the censure and said Republicans can vote her out next year if they disagree with her position.
JoAnn True, a state committee member from Natrona County and one of the handful of party members who voted “no,” said she stood to speak but was not permitted to do so during the meeting.
Supporters of the censure vote argued that Cheney’s vote to impeach ran counter to the will of Wyoming voters, who supported Trump by a more than 40-point margin, and robbed the president of due process by not allowing him the opportunity to defend himself in the House’s impeachment proceedings.
The resolution text also claimed the riot at the Capitol was “instigated by Antifa and BLM radicals”and that Trump at no point called for violence during the Jan. 6 rally at the U.S. Capitol in the lead-up to the riot that was the center of the impeachment vote.
At least a dozen county-level Republican committees had already passed censure resolutions of their own before Saturday’s vote, and several candidates in the state have already announced primary challenges for 2022.
“I’m honored to represent the people of Wyoming in Congress and will always fight for the issues that matter most to our state,” Cheney said in a statement issued shortly after the vote, for which she was not present. “Foremost among these is the defense of our Constitution and the freedoms it guarantees. My vote to impeach was compelled by the oath I swore to the Constitution. Wyoming citizens know that this oath does not bend or yield to politics or partisanship.”
Earlier this week House Republicans voted 145-61 to allow Cheney to keep her role as House Republican Conference Chair.
Cheney was one of just 10 House Republicans who voted in favor of impeaching Trump last month, and she is not the first to be censured by her local party for doing so.
Last week the South Carolina Republican party voted to censure Rep. Tom Rice, R-S.C., for his impeachment vote.
The Arizona Republican Party has censured Gov. Doug Ducey, former Sen. Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, all of whom opposed Trump’s efforts to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory, or in the case of Flake and McCain, endorsed Biden in the 2020 election.
Nebraska’s Republican Party has also advanced a measure to censure Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., for his criticism of former President Trump.
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