Former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) has plunged headfirst into the campaign trail on behalf of her former political rivals. trudging after Vice President Harris and Support for a handful of defeated Democrats to prevent former President Trump and his allies in Congress from coming to power next year.
However, their impact remains as unclear as the election results themselves. And the parties disagree about the breadth of their influence.
Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has national name recognition, exemplary conservative credentials and a network of powerful GOP allies built over decades. Democrats see her as a forceful ally in the late-season fight to attract both independent and time-honored Republican voters averse to Trump’s irreverent brand of populist nationalism.
“There are a lot of Republicans out there who feel like their party has just gone off the rails after Donald Trump,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California). “And no one speaks to them better than Liz Cheney.”
Still, the Republican Party has changed dramatically in recent decades, evolving from a party committed to free trade, immigration, vigorous foreign policy and forceful support for allies abroad – all ideas promoted by the Reagan and two Bush administrations – has changed into a more isolationist form, embodied by Trump. Against this backdrop, GOP campaign aides are dismissing Cheney’s messaging campaign, saying her brand of old-fashioned conservatism is a stale relic of a bygone era – an era that no longer has the power to sway voters on any meaningful scale.
“We didn’t sleep a wink,” said a House GOP strategist. “We know it’s there, but it’s really irrelevant. … Our coalitions have changed so much. Now we’re taking in these blue-collar workers, former working-class Democrats, and they’re all on Trump’s side. And now the Cheneys are known for their warmongering, and that’s kind of a Kamala Harris base. You are pro-Ukraine.
“So it’s just a different coalition these days.”
Cheney endorsed Harris in September and has since backed four Democrats in tough congressional races: Reps. Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) and Colin Allred (Texas), both of whom are vying for Senate seats in their respective states; Rep. Susan Wild, who is running for a fifth term in a competitive Pennsylvania district; and John Avlon, a former CNN commentator who is challenging Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) on Long Island.
Cheney was similarly selective in deciding where to take her anti-Trump message to the streets, choosing a handful of counties with significant shares of suburban GOP women – a key constituency that Harris is trying to siphon from Trump Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, three critical swing states that could decide Harris’ bid for the presidency.
The stops coincided with former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley performing well in the GOP primary, a sign that she is targeting Republican voters with a negative view of Trump.
For example, Cheney campaigned in Ripon, Wis., Waukesha County, Wis., Chester County, Pennsylvania, and Oakland County, Mich., where more than 10 percent of GOP voters voted for Haley in the primary. In Oakland County, Michigan’s second-largest county by population in 2023, Haley attracted 24 percent of GOP voters, according to the state Senate.
“A natural voter base that Cheney is targeting is Nikki Haley voters, in the sense that they probably have conservative views. They know they are voting for a conservative candidate, but they have a certain skepticism about Trump because they have broken with that.” “The rest of the party has actively chosen to support a candidate who has at times been very anti-Trump and against big lies,” said Zachary Donnini, data scientist at Decision Desk HQ, a nonpartisan election watchdog.
“These are the voters that Cheney thinks she might be able to turn,” he added. “These are people who may have a positive view of her but have not completely left the Republican Party.”
However, whether these efforts are effective remains the critical question.
Recent polls have shown that the presidential candidates are separated by only a razor-thin margin – making it anyone’s guess with less than a week to go until Election Day.
A CNN poll conducted by SSRS The poll released Wednesday showed Harris with a 6-point lead among likely voters in Wisconsin, a 5-point lead in Michigan and a tie race in Pennsylvania, with both candidates receiving 48 percent support each. The margin of error is 4.8 percentage points for Wisconsin and 4.7 percentage points for Michigan and Pennsylvania, putting the states almost on par statistically.
The closeness of the race opens up the opportunity for each voting bloc to tip the scales one way or the other. Former GOP Rep. Charlie Dent (Pa.) — who revealed this earlier this month he voted for Harris — said Cheney’s influence may be marginal, but it could be enough to make a difference in this race.
“This game is won or lost on the margins, and to the extent that Liz Cheney can help Kamala Harris with certain demographics like college-educated women, suburban women, Republican women and independent women, that’s all the better for Harris,” said Dent, who left is congress in 2018 after more than a dozen years in the House of Representatives, The Hill said in an interview.
“[Do] I think it will have a dramatic impact? No. But do I think Liz Cheney is helping on the sidelines? Absolutely,” Dent continued. “And again, even a small movement can have enormous consequences. So I think overall it’s a positive for them.”
The marginal effects may remain mute until Election Day. Along the way, Cheney reminded Republicans that their vote was a “secret vote,” a message intended to allay any concerns about retaliation for supporting the opposing party.
“I think, quite frankly, there are going to be a lot of men and women who are going to go into the voting booth and vote with their conscience for Vice President Harris,” Cheney said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” last month. . “They may never say anything publicly, but the results will speak for themselves.”
Cheney was not the most predictable figure to launch a campaign against her party’s presidential candidate. In her first years in the House, Cheney was a superstar of the right, quickly rising through the ranks of GOP leadership and siding with Trump in nearly every major policy dispute while defending him at his first impeachment trial in 2019.
The turning point came after the 2020 election, when Trump refused to concede defeat and fought to stay in the White House by overturning Joe Biden’s victory. This campaign led directly to the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building in a failed attempt to stop Congress from certifying the election results.
Since then, Cheney has become Trump’s most prominent Republican critic. He voted to impeach the president in the days after the rampage and later joined the House investigative committee that found him guilty of inciting the violence.
The allegations cost Cheney her seat in Congress – replaced by a Trump ally. But as Trump fights for a second term, Cheney has returned to the national stage with warnings that the former president poses a significant threat to the country’s fundamental democratic traditions. Her criticism extended to those in her party — including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — who support Trump’s re-election bid.
But while Cheney is the most vocal anti-Trump Republican this campaign cycle, she also represents Republicans a much larger universe of conservatives who have refused to support the Republican candidate – not because they support Harris on these issues, but because they see Trump as a threat to democracy.
Hardly fringe characters, the critics represent a who’s who of decades-long GOP leaders, including former President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio ), former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Mike Pence, who served as vice president in Trump’s first term.
Still, a gigantic majority of Republicans on and off Capitol Hill are sticking with Trump despite the internal conflict. And many say his appeal to former Democrats more than offset the decline in support from conservative traditionalists.
“To tell you the truth, I think we won more than we lost,” the GOP campaign strategist said.
Democrats disagree, pointing to recent polls that suggest there are many more Republicans who support Harris than Democrats who support Trump. Some say Cheney is influencing this trend.
“I think there is a subset of suburban Republican voters who feel abandoned by today’s MAGA-led Republican Party,” said a Democratic campaign strategist familiar with the House races. “So if Republicans for Democrats create a permission structure for these individuals, then they have more power.”
