Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) claimed on Thursday her fixation with former President Donald Trump is not political.
In an interview with the New York Times, Cheney alleged her alliance with Democrats on the partisan January 6 commission to attack Trump is not political but rather educational.
“I don’t look at it through a political lens,” she claimed about her work on the committee. “I look at it through the angle of: People need to understand how dangerous he is and how unfit for office he is.”
Cheney, who has received praise from Democrats for joining them in combatting Trump, is running behind in primary polls against Trump-endorsed opponent Harriet Hageman by nearly 30 points. Additional polling shows 54 percent of voters are less likely to support Cheney after tangling with Trump on the committee.
The polling reveals Cheney may have politically miscalculated by obsessing over Trump, a political figure who is popular in Wyoming. In 2020, Trump won the Cowboy State by nearly 70 percent of the vote.
Brad Coker, managing director of the polling firm Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy, suggested Friday that Cheney will lose the August 16 primary against Hageman due to her alliance with Democrats on the January 6 committee. “This race is more about Liz Cheney than it is about Donald Trump,” he said.
Hageman has used Cheney’s focus on the January 6 Committee to highlight the congresswoman’s priorities, which she says do not include Wyoming voters. “Liz Cheney has lost Wyoming. Liz Cheney doesn’t live in Wyoming. She doesn’t represent us,” Hageman told Breitbart News. “She doesn’t represent our values.”
In the last few months, Cheney has been spending most of her time in Washington, DC, holding hearings with the partisan committee, while Hageman has been crisscrossing Wyoming meeting voters, who have taken notice of Cheney’s absence.
“She doesn’t live here,” voter Sally O’Brien told Yahoo News of Cheney. “She doesn’t really represent us… She says she’s a constitutionalist, but she doesn’t believe in justice for all, only for the Jan. 6 people.”
Former Cheney donor, Nancy Donovan, who has given more than $35,000 to Cheney’s past campaigns, is questioning Cheney’s mental state for fixating on Trump and not campaigning in Wyoming.
“I sit there watching the January 6 hearings and I think: ‘Have you lost your mind?’” she told the Financial Times. “This man [Trump] has every major institution going after him, from the media to the swamp in Washington, DC, and now to have one of his own party do the same thing?”
According to Thursday’s betting odds, Hageman is favored to win by 94 cents on the dollar. Cheney’s odds of winning the primary are only 7 cents on the dollar, dropping from 14 cents on June 14.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter and Gettr @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.