Liz Cheney says she’s willing to campaign for Democrats this fall

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the outgoing congresswoman who became one of former President Trump’s most ardent Republican critics, said that she is willing to campaign for Democrats ahead of the November midterm elections. 

Asked during a discussion at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin over the weekend whether she would be open to crossing party lines to boost Democratic candidates, Cheney responded bluntly: “Yes.”

Cheney’s answer was her latest swipe at the GOP and its candidates. A lifelong Republican, Cheney has become increasingly critical of her party over the past year and a half after she voted to impeach Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. 

She’s repeatedly lamented the former president’s iron grip on the GOP and its hard-right direction, and is one of only two Republicans sitting on the House select committee charged with investigating the Jan. 6 riot. 

Of course, she has also paid a political price for her criticism. She lost renomination to her House seat last month to Republican Harriet Hageman, a Trump-backed attorney who relentlessly attacked Cheney for her disloyalty to the former president.

During her primary campaign, Cheney leaned heavily into her reputation as one of Trump’s chief Republican antagonists, and even sought to encourage Democrats to vote for her in the nominating contest.

In her remarks at the Texas Tribune Festival on Saturday, Cheney also vowed to “do everything I can to make sure that Kari Lake,” the GOP nominee for Arizona governor, doesn’t win in November. 

Lake, a staunch Trump ally who has echoed his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, is running against Democrat Katie Hobbs to succeed Gov. Doug Ducey (R). Recent polling shows Lake and Hobbs deadlocked. 

Cheney also criticized Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), who campaigned for Lake recently.

“He’s demonstrated that he’s somebody who has not bought into the toxin of Donald Trump,” Cheney said of Youngkin. “But he campaigned recently for Kari Lake, who’s an election denier, who is dangerous.”

“That’s the kind of thing we cannot see in our party,” she added. “We cannot see an accommodation like that, and I think it’s very important that we be clear about that.”