Cheney was trounced by Republican opponent Harriet Hageman 66%-28% in the August 16 primary, ending her third term as Wyoming’s sole representative in the U.S. House.
Hours after the loss, Cheney made it clear she wasn’t done in politics. In the early morning hours of August 17, she converted her House campaign-finance committee to a leadership PAC called “The Great Task.”
Creating a PAC allows candidates to raise money if they have political ambitions for future, Business Insider pointed out. The congresswoman had collected $15 million for her re-election campaign and reportedly has $7 million that could help jumpstart a White House run.
According to a recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll, President Biden wins in 2024 by four points if he runs head-to-head against Donald Trump. If, however, Cheney enters the race as an independent, Trump comes out on top by eight points.
In other words, at least according to the poll, Liz Cheney could single-handedly hand the election to Donald Trump in her bid for revenge.
Nathan Winters of the Family Policy Alliance of Wyoming tells AFN he predicts Cheney has too much pride to let that happen.
“One of the things that would do, though, is leave a legacy in history that would demonstrate someone that ran specifically to be a spoiler,” he says. “I think that will not settle well.”
As hard as it is to remember at this point, Winters says, at one point Cheney supported Trump and boasted a conservative voting record.
“When you look at her voting record during the Trump administration,” he recalls, “there were very few people that voted more with his agenda than Liz Cheney did.”
All of that changed in the early months of January 2020, Winters says. Cheney would say what changed was Donald Trump insisting the election was stolen from him by Joe Biden and the Democratic Party, and of course the riot on Capitol Hill. Winters says, however, red-state Wyoming voters watched their congresswoman change on other issues, too.
“Sadly,” he recalls, “we also watched a change regarding her view of marriage, and many other things, that are of great concern to voters in Wyoming.”
Asked about Wyoming voters looking ahead to 2024, Winters says there is a lot of buzz about a potential candidate on the other side of the country, Gov. Ron DeSantis.
