Thursday, 28 Mar 2024

‘Not enough Wyoming’? Liz Cheney fights for the votes of her disgruntled constituents

‘Not enough Wyoming’? Liz Cheney fights for the votes of her disgruntled constituents


‘Not enough Wyoming’? Liz Cheney fights for the votes of her disgruntled constituents

Darin Smith says he remembers January 6 very differently from Liz Cheney and her congressional colleagues investigating the US Capitol riot.

"People were singing patriotic songs, the national anthem, hymns," insists Smith, who was outside the Capitol that day to protest about Donald Trump's election defeat. "There was a group of grey-haired ladies - the average age had to have been mid-70s - that were praying."

Nineteen months later, Smith is sitting in a cafe in his home city of Cheyenne in the western state of Wyoming. He condemns the violence that took place inside the Capitol but, despite a mountain of evidence, scoffs at the idea that Trump was responsible. And he is adamant that Cheney, his representative in Congress, should pay a price for her anti-Trump crusade.

The three-term congresswoman may lose her seat in Tuesday's Republican primary election in Wyoming, the most watched congressional primary of the year. Opinion polls show Cheney trailing Harriet Hageman, conservative lawyer and vehicle of Trump's vengeance, and defeat for the clarion voice of the January 6 panel will, in many eyes, make her a martyr for American democracy.

It will also signal a tectonic shift in Wyoming, the least populated state in America and one of the most devoutly Republican. Its most consequential political figure is Dick Cheney, vice-president under George W Bush and father of Liz. Last week, in cowboy hat, fleece and gruff tones, he recorded a campaign video for her, excoriating Trump as a "coward" and saying there has never been anyone who is a "greater threat to our republic".

Victory for Hageman would therefore be widely interpreted as a repudiation of Wyoming's most venerable political dynasty, evidence that the state Republican party no longer belongs to the Cheneys but to Trump. That would reflect a final national pivot away from the Bush era establishment to the "Make America Great Again" movement - from old school conservatism to far-right populism.

Smith, wearing a blue T-shirt that said "1776 Forever Free", grey shorts and black flip-flops, is in no doubt which camp he belongs to. Last year he was a candidate in the Republican primary for Cheney's House seat, raised $400,000 and made a pilgrimage to Trump's golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, to seek the former president's all-important endorsement.

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