After a couple of marginally optimistic weeks regarding my thinking about next November, I have returned to my “Hey, let’s not get ahead of ourselves” stance. That usually happens when everyone around me is getting a little too excited.
My latest cause of concern is the nagging feeling that Liz Cheney might not be going away next year. I mean away from the House of Representatives. Should she lose her seat in Congress, we know she will soon resurface at CNN, MSNBC, or Adam Kinzinger’s house, where they’ll sip wine coolers in a kiddie pool and whine about Donald Trump all day.
A couple of things about the Wyoming race keep bugging me. The first is the fact that Wyoming has more horses than it does people.
Since Wyoming is controlled by Republicans, horses aren’t allowed to vote.
Seriously though, I live in the 2nd most populous city in the 14th most populous state and my metropolitan area has almost double the population of the entire state of Wyoming. Whether state, county, or municipal, lightly populated electorates can be very volatile. A little bad weather here, an outbreak of apathy there, and suddenly elections — especially primaries — don’t go the way that they are supposed to go.
The other thing gnawing at me is that Cheney has that “bad chest cold” vibe — I feel that she’ll find a way to linger even though it seems like she’s about to go away. There might be a mix of tangibles and intangibles that could help her prevail in the primary and in November. The overwhelming intangible being that Cheney is sitting on a mountain of cash relative to her opponent.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) set a personal fundraising record in the first quarter of 2022, raking in nearly $3 million as she fights off a Trump-backed primary challenger.
Cheney raised $2.94 million in quarter one, according to a source familiar with the fundraising, bringing her total haul this cycle to upward of $10 million.
With the funds raised in the first three months of 2022, Cheney has $6.8 million in cash on hand.
Her opponent is still counting money in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Will all of that liberal out-of-state money help? It certainly won’t hurt.
The fact that Cheney is a darling of the Democrats right now could give her a slight boost at home in the primary.
As a result, Cheney may face more danger in her primary than any other House Republican running in 2022. But could she be saved by … Democrats? On March 8, Wyoming’s legislature scrapped a bill seeking to end the state’s “crossover voting” provision. That rule permits voters to switch parties on Election Day, which could allow registered Democrats and other non-Republicans to change their registration to support Cheney in the Aug. 16 GOP primary. The legislature’s deliberations over the bill, which Trump had supported, sparked a raft of headlines raising the prospect of crossover voters being key to Cheney’s survival.
As the article points out, 70 percent of the registered voters in Wyoming are Republican, so there just aren’t that many Democrats and independents to bring over for a day.
One thing is certain: Wyoming Republicans long-ago lost their patience with Liz Cheney. If they keep their current mood and have a good turnout, she should be toast. The danger in this situation is that either apathy or cockiness could depress turnout in a state where it doesn’t take many votes to change things.
Not a prediction. Just a caution.