The Wyoming Republican House member is running opposite the old political axiom that’ all politics is local’……
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….
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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….
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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….
image….Credit…Stephen Speranza for The New York Times