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      Liz Cheney Is Ready to Lose. But She’s Not Ready to Quit.

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      The Republican says her crusade to stop Donald J. Trump will continue — even if she loses her primary next week. Restoring a “very sick” G.O.P. will take years, she says, “if it can be healed.”CHEYENNE, Wyo. — It was just over a month before her primary, but Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming was nowhere near the voters weighing her future.Ms. Cheney was instead huddled with fellow lawmakers and aides in the Capitol complex, bucking up her allies in a cause she believes is more important than her House seat: Ridding American politics of former President Donald J Trump and his influence.“The nine of us have done more to prevent Trump from ever regaining power than any group to date,” she said to fellow members of the panel investigating Mr. Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. “We can’t let up.”The most closely-watched primary of 2022 has not become much of a race at all. Polls show Ms. Cheney losing badly to her rival, Harriet Hageman, Mr. Trump’s vehicle for revenge, and the congresswoman has been all but driven out of her Trump-loving state, in part because of death threats, her office says.Ms. Cheney told fellow members of the House panel, “The nine of us have done more to prevent Trump from ever regaining power than any group to date.” Doug Mills/The New York TimesYet for Ms. Cheney, the race stopped being about political survival months ago. Instead, she’s used the Aug. 16 contest as a sort of a high-profile stage for her martyrdom — and a proving ground for her new crusade. She used the only debate to tell voters to “vote for somebody else” if they wanted a politician who would violate their oath of office. Last week, she enlisted her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, to cut an ad calling Mr. Trump a “coward” who represents the greatest threat to America in the history of the republic.In a state where Mr. Trump won 70 percent of the vote two years ago, Ms. Cheney might as well be asking ranchers to go vegan.“If the cost of standing up for the Constitution is losing the House seat, then that’s a price I’m willing to pay,” she said in an interview this week in the conference room of a Cheyenne bank.The 56-year-old daughter of a politician who once had visions of rising to the top of the House leadership — but landed as vice president instead — has become arguably the most consequential rank-and-file member of Congress in modern times. Few others have so aggressively used the levers of the office to attempt to reroute the course of American politics — but, in doing so, she has effectively sacrificed her own future in the institution she grew up to revere.Ms. Cheney’s relentless focus on Mr. Trump has driven speculation — even among longtime family friends — that she is preparing to run for president. She has done little to dissuade such talk.At a house party Thursday night in Cheyenne, with former Vice President Dick Cheney happily looking on under a pair of mounted leather chaps, the host introduced Ms. Cheney by recalling how another Republican woman, Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith, confronted Senator Joseph McCarthy when doing so was unpopular — and went on to become the first female candidate for president from a major party.The attendees applauded at the parallel, as Ms. Cheney smiled.In the interview, she said she was focused on her primary — and her work on the committee. But it’s far from clear that she could be a viable candidate in the current Republican Party, or whether she has interest in the donor-class schemes about a third-party bid, in part because she knows it may just siphon votes from a Democrat opposing Mr. Trump.Ms. Cheney said she had no interest in changing parties: “I’m a Republican.” But when asked if the G.O.P. she was raised in was even salvageable in the short term, she said: “It may not be” and called her party “very sick.”Understand the Aug. 2 Primary ElectionsWhile the Trump wing of the Republican Party flexed its muscle, voters in deep-red Kansas delivered a loud warning to the G.O.P. on abortion rights.Takeaways: Tuesday’s results suggest this year’s midterms are a trickier environment for uncompromising conservatives than Republicans once believed. Here’s what we learned.Kansas Abortion Vote: In the first election test since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Kansas voters resoundingly decided against removing the right to abortion from the State Constitution, a major victory for the abortion rights movement in a reliably conservative state.Trump’s Grip on G.O.P.: Primary victories in Arizona and Michigan for allies of former President Donald J. Trump reaffirmed his continued influence over the Republican Party.Winners and Losers: See a rundown of the most notable results.The party, she said, “is continuing to drive itself in a ditch and I think it’s going to take several cycles if it can be healed.”Ms. Cheney remains close to and protective of her parents and has never much expanded her inner circle beyond family and a handful of close advisers.Stephen Speranza for The New York TimesMs. Cheney suggested she was animated as much by Trumpism as Mr. Trump himself. She could support a Republican for president in 2024, she said, but her redline is a refusal to state clearly that Mr. Trump lost a legitimate election in 2020.Asked if the ranks of off-limits candidates included Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whom many Republicans have latched onto as a Trump alternative, she said she “would find it very difficult” to support Mr. DeSantis in a general election.“I think that Ron DeSantis has lined himself up almost entirely with Donald Trump, and I think that’s very dangerous,” Ms. Cheney said.It’s easy to hear other soundings of a White House bid in Ms. Cheney’s rhetoric.In Cheyenne, she channeled the worries of “moms” and what she described as their hunger for “somebody’s who’s competent.” Having once largely scorned identity politics — Ms. Cheney was only the female lawmaker who wouldn’t pose for a picture of the women of Congress after 2018 — she now freely discusses gender and her perspective as a mother.“These days, for the most part, men are running the world, and it is really not going that well,” she said in June when she spoke at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif.The audience at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library during Ms. Cheney’s speech there in June.Kyle Grillot for The New York TimesIn a sign that Ms. Cheney’s political awakening goes beyond her contempt for Mr. Trump, she said she prefers the ranks of Democratic women with national security backgrounds to her party’s right flank.“I would much rather serve with Mikie Sherrill and Chrissy Houlahan and Elissa Slotkin than Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, even though on substance certainly I have big disagreements with the Democratic women I just mentioned,” Ms. Cheney said in the interview. “But they love this country, they do their homework and they are people that are trying to do the right thing for the country.”Ms. Cheney is surer of her diagnosis for what ails the G.O.P. than she is of her prescription for reform.She has no post-Congress political organization in waiting and has benefited from Democratic donors, whose affections may be fleeting. To the frustration of some allies, she has not expanded her inner circle beyond family and a handful of close advisers. Never much of a schmoozer, she said she longed for what she recalled as her father’s era of policy-centric politics.“What the country needs are serious people who are willing to engage in debates about policy,” Ms. Cheney said.It’s all a far cry from the Liz Cheney of a decade ago, who had a contract to appear regularly on Fox News and would use her perch as a guest host for Sean Hannity to present her unswerving conservative views and savage former President Barack Obama and Democrats.Today, Ms. Cheney doesn’t concede specific regrets about helping to create the atmosphere that gave rise to Mr. Trump’s takeover of her party. She did, however, acknowledge a “reflexive partisanship that I have been guilty of” and noted Jan. 6 “demonstrated how dangerous that is.”Few lawmakers today face those dangers as regularly as Ms. Cheney, who has had a full-time Capitol Police security detail for nearly a year because of the threats against her — protection few rank-and-file lawmakers are assigned. She no longer provides advance notice about her Wyoming travel and, not welcome at most county and state Republican events, has turned her campaign into a series of invite-only House parties.Not welcome at most county and state Republican events, Ms. Cheney has turned her campaign into a series of invite-only House parties.Stephen Speranza for The New York TimesWhat’s more puzzling than her schedule is why Ms. Cheney, who has raised over $13 million, has not poured more money into the race, especially early on when she had an opportunity to define Ms. Hageman. Ms. Cheney had spent roughly half her war chest as of the start of July, spurring speculation that she was saving money for future efforts against Mr. Trump.Ms. Cheney long ago stopped attending meetings of House Republicans. When at the Capitol, she spends much of her time with the Democrats on the Jan. 6 panel and often heads to the Lindy Boggs Room, the reception room for female lawmakers, rather than the House floor with the male-dominated House G.O.P. conference. Some members of the Jan. 6 panel have been struck by how often her Zoom background is her suburban Virginia home.In Washington, even some Republicans who are also eager to move on from Mr. Trump question Ms. Cheney’s decision to wage open war against her own party. She’s limiting her future influence, they argue.“It depends on if you want to go out in a blaze of glory and be ineffective or if you want to try to be effective,” said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who has his own future leadership aspirations. “I respect her but I wouldn’t have made the same choice.”Responding to Mr. Cornyn, a spokesman for Ms. Cheney, Jeremy Adler, said she was not focused on politics but rather the former president: “And obviously nothing the senators have done has effectively addressed this threat.”Ms. Cheney is mindful that the Jan. 6 inquiry, with its prime-time hearings, is viewed by critics as an attention-seeking opportunity. She has turned down some opportunities that could have been helpful to her ambitions, most notably proposals from documentary filmmakers.Still, to her skeptics at home, Ms. Cheney’s attacks on Mr. Trump have resurrected dormant questions about her ties to the state and raised fears that she has gone Washington and taken up with the opposition, dismissing the political views of the voters who gave her and her father their starts in electoral politics.Harriet Hageman at a rally hosted by former President Donald J. Trump in Casper, Wyo., in May.Natalie Behring for The New York TimesAt a parade in Casper last month, held while Ms. Cheney was in Washington preparing for a hearing, Ms. Hageman received frequent applause from voters who said the incumbent had lost her way. “Her voting record is not bad,” said Julie Hitt, a Casper resident. “But so much of her focus is on Jan 6.”“She’s so in bed with the Democrats, with Pelosi and with all them people,” Bruce Hitt, Ms. Hitt’s husband, interjected.Notably, no voters interviewed at the parade brought up Ms. Cheney’s support for the gun control bill the House passed just weeks earlier — the sort of apostasy that would have infuriated Wyoming Republicans in an era more dominated by policy than one man’s persona.“Her vote on the gun bill hardly got any publicity whatsoever,” Mike Sullivan, a former Democratic governor of Wyoming who intends to vote for Ms. Cheney in the primary, said, puzzled. (Ms. Cheney is pushing independents and Democrats to re-register as Republicans, as least long enough to vote for her in the primary.)For Ms. Cheney, any sense of bafflement about this moment — a Cheney, Republican royalty, being effectively read out of the party — has faded in the year and a half since the Capitol attack.Ms. Cheney, at the Capitol in 2019. She said in a recent interview that, “If the cost of standing up for the Constitution is losing the House seat, then that’s a price I’m willing to pay.”Erin Schaff/The New York TimesWhen she attended the funeral last year for Mike Enzi, the former Wyoming senator, Ms. Cheney welcomed a visiting delegation of G.O.P. senators. As she greeted them one by one, several praised her bravery and told her keep up the fight against Mr. Trump, she recalled.She did not miss the opportunity to pointedly remind them: They, too, could join her.“There have been so many moments like that,” she said at the bank, a touch of weariness in her voice. 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      Dick Cheney Excoriates Trump in an Ad for His Daughter Liz Cheney

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      A new advertisement for Representative Liz Cheney’s re-election campaign features a leader of a bygone era in the Republican Party excoriating the leader of the current one.“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual that was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Ms. Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, said in the ad, released less than two weeks before Wyoming’s primary elections on Aug. 16.He praised Ms. Cheney, who has become a pariah among Republicans for her criticism of Mr. Trump and her work as vice chairwoman of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, for “honoring her oath to the Constitution when so many in our party are too scared to do so.”The one-minute ad landed with a bang Thursday on social media, where a single copy racked up seven million views. But in Wyoming, where Mr. Trump won 69.9 percent of the vote in 2020 — more than in any other state — it is highly unlikely to sway any significant number of voters in Ms. Cheney’s favor.For decades before Mr. Trump transformed the party, Mr. Cheney was one of the most influential Republicans in the nation: He was the White House chief of staff under President Gerald Ford, secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush and vice president under President George W. Bush, a position in which he wielded uncommon power and was an architect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But the Republican Party of 2022 bears little resemblance to the party he held power in.At least six of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump will be leaving Congress in January: Four of them are retiring and two were defeated in primaries, with another two still awaiting primary results several days after voting ended in Washington State. It would take an astonishing political turnaround for Ms. Cheney to avoid joining them. In a Casper Star-Tribune poll last month, she trailed her opponent, Harriet Hageman, by 22 percentage points.In light of those numbers, the ad, like many of Ms. Cheney’s public statements as a leader of the Jan. 6 committee, seemed more of an appeal to history than one to the electorate.Mr. Trump “tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him,” Mr. Cheney said in the ad. “He’s a coward. A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters. He lost his election and he lost big. I know it, he knows it, and, deep down, I think most Republicans know it.”Of his daughter, he continued, “There is nothing more important she will ever do than lead the effort to make sure Donald Trump is never again near the Oval Office — and she will succeed.” More

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      Dick Cheney attacks Donald Trump as ‘greatest threat to our republic’

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      Dick Cheney attacks Donald Trump as ‘greatest threat to our republic’Vice-president under George W Bush denounces, in campaign ad for daughter Liz, ‘coward … who lost his election, and lost big’ Dick Cheney has branded Donald Trump the greatest “threat to our republic”, in a new campaign ad for his daughter, Liz Cheney, who is running for re-election in Wyoming.“In our nation’s 236-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” said Cheney, who served as vice-president for two terms under George W Bush.Alex Jones: Sandy Hook family seeks punitive damages beyond $4.1m awardRead moreCheney said: “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him.“He is a coward. A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters. He lost his election, and he lost big. I know it, he knows it, and deep down I think most Republicans know it.”Cheney went on to speak about how proud he was of his daughter “for standing up to the truth, doing what’s right, honoring her oath to the constitution when so many in our party are too scared to do so”.The one-minute ad featured the elder Cheney’s sharpest public attacks against Trump to date. Best known as the most powerful vice-president in American history, and a major figure in leading the US to war in Iraq, he has taken to defending his daughter in her fight against Trump.“There’s nothing more important she will ever do than lead the effort to make sure Donald Trump is never near the Oval Office. And she will succeed,” he said in the ad.The younger Cheney has been widely praised from liberals as vice-chairwoman of the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack. Cheney has been one of Trump’s most pointed critics, accusing him of violating the constitution for his role in the insurrection.In return, she has been largely ostracized from her party. Cheney faces an uphill re-election battle against the Trump-backed candidate Harriet Hageman, who maintains that the 2020 election was stolen.“Liz Cheney has long forgotten she works for Wyoming (or perhaps she never knew), not the Radical Democrats,” Hageman tweeted on Thursday. “Wyoming deserves a Congresswoman who will represent us AND our conservative values. It’s time to retire elitist Liz Cheney.”Though Cheney has at least a million dollars more in donations to her campaign against Hageman, she was 22 points behind Hageman in a July poll conducted by the Casper Star-Tribune.In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Cheney said she does not expect to lose on 16 August.“I really believe that the people of Wyoming fundamentally understand how important fidelity to the constitution is – understand how important it is that we fight for those fundamental principles on which everything else is based,” she said.TopicsRepublicansWyomingUS politicsDick CheneyDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Liz Cheney Calls Trump ‘a Domestic Threat That We Have Never Faced Before’

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      Representative Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican and vice chairwoman of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, described former President Donald J. Trump in stark terms on Wednesday night as a threat to the republic who had “gone to war with the rule of law.”“At this moment, we are confronting a domestic threat that we have never faced before — and that is a former president who is attempting to unravel the foundations of our constitutional republic,” Ms. Cheney said in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, where her address was met with a sustained standing ovation.“He is aided by Republican leaders and elected officials who made themselves willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man,” she said, continuing, “Even after all we’ve seen, they’re enabling his lies.”Ms. Cheney spoke at a moment when Mr. Trump is potentially on the verge of announcing a presidential campaign for 2024, according to his advisers, raising the prospect of a front-running candidate in early polls who is also facing active civil and criminal investigations. Mr. Trump has also continued to repeat lies about his 2020 election loss, maintaining that the contest was “stolen” from him.“As the full picture is coming into view with the Jan. 6 committee, it has become clear that the efforts Donald Trump oversaw and engaged in were even more chilling and more threatening than we could have imagined,” Ms. Cheney said.Republicans, she said at another point, “have to choose,” because they “cannot both be loyal to Donald Trump and loyal to the Constitution.”It was a striking commentary from the daughter of a Republican former vice president, Dick Cheney, against the current leader of the Republican Party, even as he is out of office. Ms. Cheney had been a supporter of Mr. Trump’s until shortly after the 2020 election, when she criticized him for his baseless fraud allegations.In May 2021, she said she regretted voting for him the previous year.Ms. Cheney, who was forced out of her leadership post as the No. 3 Republican in the House last year as she repeatedly excoriated Mr. Trump for the events of Jan. 6, has become a fairly isolated presence within a party that remains heavily in thrall of the former president.She is seen as a potential presidential candidate in the 2024 election, in which she could try to plant a flag showing how the party has morphed from the one her father helped lead into one reshaped by Trumpism.Ms. Cheney began her speech by talking about undemocratic countries around the world and nations that are adversaries of the United States, including Russia and China. From there, she talked about Mr. Trump.She praised Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s last White House chief of staff, for her public testimony in Congress a day earlier.“Her bravery and patriotism were awesome to behold,” Ms. Cheney said.Ms. Cheney is facing a Trump-backed primary challenger for her Wyoming congressional seat in August, and the race is widely seen as an uphill battle for her. More

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      Liz Cheney Encourages Wyoming Democrats to Change Parties to Vote for Her

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      Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican of Wyoming whose polling remains far behind her Trump-endorsed primary challenger as her House committee’s Jan. 6 hearings continue, is urging Democrats in her home state to switch parties to support her in the Aug. 16 primary.In the last week, Wyoming Democrats have received mail from Ms. Cheney’s campaign with specific instructions on how to change their party affiliation to vote for her. Ms. Cheney’s campaign website now has a link to a form for changing parties.Ms. Cheney has begun mailing instructions to Democratic voters in Wyoming that explain how they can change their party status to vote for her in the upcoming Republican primary.Cheney for WyomingJoseph Barbuto, the chairman of the Wyoming Democratic Party, was among those who received Ms. Cheney’s instructions. Mr. Barbuto said that over the last week, his social media feeds have been flooded with Democrats — and only Democrats — posting about receiving mailers from the Cheney campaign.“I haven’t had any Republicans share online or tell me that they received it,” Mr. Barbuto said on Thursday.Recruiting Democratic support has been a sensitive topic for Ms. Cheney since she voted to impeach former President Donald J. Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. She has cast her August primary contest with Harriet Hageman, who is allied with and endorsed by Mr. Trump, as a battle for the soul of the Republican Party. Recruiting Democrats to that fight could undermine those efforts.In a February interview in Cheyenne, Wyo., Ms. Cheney dismissed the possibility that she would make a concerted effort to reach out to Democrats asking them to change parties ahead of the primary.“That is not something that I have contemplated, that I have organized or that I will organize,” Ms. Cheney told The New York Times then, adding that she would “work hard for every single vote.”Her spokesman, Jeremy Adler, said on Thursday that Ms. Cheney was “proud to represent all Wyomingites and is working hard to earn every vote.”Ms. Hageman’s campaign said Ms. Cheney’s attempt to recruit Democrats represented a political flip-flop.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 6Making a case against Trump. More

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      Kevin McCarthy Backs Liz Cheney’s Challenger, Escalating a Party Feud

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      The top House Republican’s unusual intervention in a primary marked the party’s latest move against Ms. Cheney, who has been a vocal critic of Donald J. Trump.WASHINGTON — Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, on Thursday endorsed Representative Liz Cheney’s G.O.P. rival for Wyoming’s sole congressional seat, taking the unusual step of intervening in a party primary to oust a onetime ally who has become the prime political target of former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. McCarthy said he was backing Harriet Hageman, a pro-Trump candidate who has repeated the former president’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, in a race that has become a prominent test for the Republican Party.“I look forward to welcoming Harriet to a Republican majority next Congress, where together, we will hold the Biden administration accountable and deliver much-needed solutions for the American people,” Mr. McCarthy said in a statement. “The most successful representatives in Congress focus on the needs of their constituents.”It was an extraordinary move for a leader who is aiming to become speaker of the House if his party wins control of Congress in November’s midterm congressional elections, and has worked to toe a fine line between his far right flank and more mainstream conservatives.Congressional leaders rarely involve themselves in primary races against sitting members, but Mr. McCarthy’s move was the latest escalation of the Republican Party effort to exile Ms. Cheney for speaking out forcefully against Mr. Trump and participating in a House investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. After initially defending her, Mr. McCarthy last year led a push to strip Ms. Cheney of her No. 3 position in House Republican leadership.In a statement, Jeremy Adler, a spokesman for Ms. Cheney, provided the verbal equivalent of an eyeroll, suggesting that Mr. McCarthy’s statement of support for Ms. Hageman was a reflection of her weakness.“Wow, she must be really desperate,” Mr. Adler said.Mr. McCarthy’s endorsement came about two weeks after the Republican National Committee voted to censure Ms. Cheney and Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, for participating in the inquiry into the deadly riot at the Capitol. The resolution said the pair was involved in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse,” the party’s clearest statement to date that it considered the riot and the efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election that fueled it defensible.Harriet Hageman speaks with guests at a fundraiser in Rock Springs, Wyo.Kim Raff for The New York TimesMr. McCarthy last week defended the R.N.C., saying the committee had a right to pass its resolution.In contrast, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, castigated the party for doing so, stating that “traditionally, the view of the national party committees is that we support all members of our party, regardless of their positions on some issues.”Key Developments in the Jan. 6 InvestigationCard 1 of 3Piecing the evidence together. More

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      Where’s Liz Cheney? The Republican’s Exile From Wyoming Republicans

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      The congresswoman hasn’t attended Republican Party events in person in her state in years, amid a wave of local conservative hostility. “I’m not going to convince the crazies,” she said.ROCK SPRINGS, Wyo. — The women arrived in red formal gowns, the men in suits and tuxedos. They posed in a photo booth with a cardboard cutout of former President Donald J. Trump and bid on auction items including a Glock pistol in a gift basket.Saturday was the biggest night of the year for Republicans in southwest Wyoming — a prom-themed fund-raiser at a Holiday Inn that drew 150 of the most active conservatives in Carbon, Sweetwater and Uinta counties.But Representative Liz Cheney, the Republican who has represented Wyoming since 2017, was nowhere to be found. She spent Saturday night 230 miles away with a group certain to give her a friendlier reception: reporters and media executives at the annual gathering of the Wyoming Press Association.The wrath that national Republicans have unleashed on Ms. Cheney — the Republican National Committee voted to censure her the day before the Rock Springs gala — is nothing compared to the fury she is encountering from Wyoming Republicans. The state party not only censured her but adopted a resolution to effectively disown her.The biggest night of the year for Republicans in southwest Wyoming was the Conservatives in Crimson Gala on Feb. 5.Kim Raff for The New York TimesYet her response has been to become strangely invisible in her home state.Ms. Cheney hasn’t appeared at a state Republican Party function in more than two years and hasn’t been to an in-person event for any of the party’s 23 county chapters since 2020. Her vote to impeach Mr. Trump last January and her decision to take part in the House investigation of the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 have forced her into a kind of exile from Wyoming’s Republican Party apparatus, in a state where Mr. Trump won 70 percent of the vote in 2020, the highest percentage in the country.“She speaks about her conscience, but you weren’t elected to do what you think is right, you were elected to do what the people want you do to,” said Sam Eliopoulos, a Cheyenne businessman and Republican who is running for a seat in the State House. “She didn’t do what the people want her to do. At the end of the day, that’s it.”Ms. Cheney’s focus on events in Washington rather than Wyoming is all the more striking given that she faces a well-known primary opponent who has been endorsed by Mr. Trump and the state Republican Party. And it is raising questions in Wyoming about whether she is counting on Democrats to bail her out in the August primary — or even whether she really is battling to hold on to her office.In an interview on Saturday in Cheyenne, Ms. Cheney tried to put to rest those questions and resisted the suggestion that she cared more about the fight with Mr. Trump than about running for re-election.“I’m not going to convince the crazies and I reject the crazies,” Ms. Cheney said of Wyoming’s Republican leadership. “I reject the notion that somehow we don’t have to abide by the rule of law. And the people right now who are in the leadership of our state party, I’m not trying to get their support because they’ve abandoned the Constitution.”On Saturday, Ms. Cheney skipped the conservative gala in Rock Springs, Wyo., and went to the annual gathering of the Wyoming Press Association in Casper.Stephen Speranza for The New York TimesThe heated Trump antagonism and Ms. Cheney’s light public schedule — she skipped the state fair and has appeared at just one in-person Wyoming event between Veterans Day and the press association gathering, according to a calendar provided by her office — has prompted an open discussion in the state about the possibility that she might abandon her seat and instead mount a run for the White House in 2024.Bill Sniffin, a longtime Wyoming newspaper executive who is now the publisher of the news website Cowboy State Daily, said he’s bet five cigars that Ms. Cheney will eventually drop out of the House contest.A Look Ahead to the 2022 U.S. Midterm ElectionsIn the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are 10 races to watch.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Campaign Financing: With both parties awash in political money, billionaires and big checks are shaping the midterm elections.Key Issues: Democrats and Republicans are preparing for abortion and voting rights to be defining topics.“She understands she has to campaign and earn the trust of voters — I would certainly like to see her here more,” said Landon Brown, a Wyoming state representative from Cheyenne who is the only Republican in the Wyoming State House publicly supporting Ms. Cheney. For that, he has been denied funding by the state party and expects his own primary challenge for the first time since he took office in 2017.Ms. Cheney insisted she would be on the ballot in August and dismissed a question about pivoting to a 2024 primary contest against Mr. Trump. She’s held dozens of meetings with Wyomingites via videoconference and said she planned to attend a Lincoln Day dinner later this month in Natrona County, which includes Casper and is home to her strongest base of support. And she described a silent majority of Wyoming Republicans who she said do not embrace Mr. Trump’s lies about the election.Speaking to the Wyoming Press Association in Casper, Ms. Cheney joked in response to a question about her political headwinds (“There’s a backlash against me? Wait, what?”) while trying to stress that her post-Jan. 6 opposition to Mr. Trump is not akin to endorsing Democratic policies.“I was pro-Trump, and I am proud of the policies of the Trump administration,” she told the crowd of journalists. “But he crossed a line you can never cross. Some people, I think, interpreted my vote to impeach him as a vote in favor of Biden or Biden’s policies, which it wasn’t.”Last summer, Mr. Trump and his allies recruited and vetted candidates to oppose Ms. Cheney. They ended up choosing Harriet Hageman, a Cheyenne land-use attorney and former Cheney adviser who was then a member of the Republican National Committee. Ms. Hageman had plotted against Mr. Trump during the 2016 election, but after Mr. Trump endorsed her she declared him the best president in her lifetime.Over a sausage quiche breakfast she cooked at her home near the State Capitol in Cheyenne, Ms. Hageman said in an interview that she could not name any issue on which she differs from the former president. And she said that Ms. Cheney’s break with Mr. Trump has left her incapable of being an effective advocate for Wyoming in Washington.“She’s using her seat as Wyoming’s representative to pursue her own agenda,” Ms. Hageman said. “That’s not our agenda. We don’t agree with what Liz Cheney is doing.”“We don’t agree with what Liz Cheney is doing,” said Harriet Hageman, left. She is Ms. Cheney’s Republican opponent in an August primary.Kim Raff for The New York TimesMs. Hageman’s campaign sponsored the dessert table, which offered brownies, cheesecake and pie at the gala in Rock Springs, Wyo.Kim Raff for The New York TimesMs. Hageman said she didn’t know who the legitimate winner of the 2020 election was (“I don’t know the answer”) and couldn’t say if former Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to block congressional certification of President Biden’s election (“I’m not an elections attorney”).“I wasn’t there on Jan. 6,” she said. “I can’t tell you everything Pence did or didn’t do. What you need to understand is that, for most people out in the real world, none of us really care that much about what happened on Jan. 6.”Ms. Hageman has taken full advantage of Ms. Cheney’s diminished profile in the state. While Ms. Cheney’s movements are complicated by the presence of a Capitol Police detail she was assigned since she began receiving threats after joining the Jan. 6 committee, Ms. Hageman has clocked more than 11,000 miles driving to Wyoming events since she entered the race in September. And she was a star of the Rock Springs conservative prom, where her campaign sponsored the dessert table of brownies, cheesecake and pie.At the gala, the master of ceremonies was Joey Correnti IV, chairman of the Carbon County Republican Party, which censured Ms. Cheney four days after she voted to impeach Mr. Trump last January. Mr. Correnti pushed the state party to issue a similar censure weeks later and, in November, to adopt a resolution to no longer recognize Ms. Cheney as a Republican.Mr. Correnti wore a bright red tuxedo jacket and a gold lapel pin with the “Let’s Go Brandon” phrase that has become a stand-in for an insult against Mr. Biden. He celebrated from the stage the Republican National Committee’s censure of Ms. Cheney, which described the attack on the Capitol and events that led up to it as “legitimate political discourse.”Many Republicans in attendance agreed.Anita Vonder Embse had just finished taking a picture with her husband and the cardboard cutout of Mr. Trump — all three of them flashing the signature thumbs-up — when she said there was “nothing wrong” with the rioters’ attempt to block Congress from certifying Mr. Biden’s victory.“People had every right to go in there,” said Ms. Vonder Embse, a retiree from nearby Green River. “Push came to shove and they shoved. It went to an extreme because it had to.”Private polling in January found just 31 percent of Wyoming Republican primary voters had a favorable view of Ms. Cheney, compared to 60 percent who saw her unfavorably. More than half the state’s Republican primary electorate described themselves as strong supporters of Mr. Trump who would not vote for a candidate he opposes.Ms. Cheney told journalists in Casper that some people interpreted her vote to impeach Mr. Trump “as a vote in favor of Biden or Biden’s policies, which it wasn’t.”Stephen Speranza for The New York TimesThe state Republican Party chairman, Frank Eathorne, announced at a meeting in November that Mr. Trump plans to hold a rally in Wyoming with Ms. Hageman on May 28, according to WyoFile, a political news website in Wyoming. Mr. Eathorne did not respond to messages, nor did Mr. Trump’s spokeswoman.Ms. Cheney’s hope for political survival may rest in Wyoming’s lenient rules for primary elections. Democrats and independents can change their party affiliation at the polls, then switch back the next day.Four years ago, more than 10,000 Wyomingites switched their party registration to Republican to vote in a contested governor’s primary, according to data from the Wyoming secretary of state. Mark Gordon beat a field of more conservative candidates, including Ms. Hageman, by about 9,000 votes.Ms. Cheney said she will not organize “Democrats for Cheney” groups, encourage party switching or bless a political action committee to encourage Democrats to vote in the Republican primary. She did have a one-on-one meeting last summer with Jeffrey Katzenberg, the billionaire Hollywood mogul and Democratic megadonor. After the meeting, Mr. Katzenberg and his wife each made maximum contributions to Ms. Cheney’s campaign.There are no declared Democratic candidates for Ms. Cheney’s seat or for governor, limiting the appeal of participating in a Democratic primary.Teresa and Island Richards were named “Republi-Queen” and “Republi-King” of 2022 at the fundraiser in Rock Springs, Wyo.Kim Raff for The New York TimesMs. Richards was the only gala participant, among more than three dozen interviewed, who admitted being a Cheney supporter.Kim Raff for The New York TimesToward the end of the gala in Rock Springs, five nominees each for “Republi-King” and “Republi-Queen” gathered on the dance floor for the announcement of the winners. Throughout the night, attendees had signaled their preferred candidates by placing cash into bags.Mr. Correnti announced the winners: Island and Teresa Richards. Mr. Richards, a former Sweetwater County Republican chairman, wouldn’t reveal his position on Ms. Cheney. Ms. Richards, as it turned out, was the only admitted Cheney supporter among more than three dozen people interviewed at the gala.“This whole crowd is not representative of what’s going on with Liz Cheney,” Ms. Richards said. “She does have support.”Katie Klingsporn contributed reporting from Casper, Wyo. More