CASPER, Wyo. The same day in June that Representative Liz Cheney was making the case for the nation that Donald Trump was responsible for the January 6 uprising, members of the Natrona County Republican Central Committee sat in a hotel conference room to debate whether January 6 was a big deal at all.
Among the points was a resolution calling for the resignation of Frank Eathorne, chairman of the state party. He was in the Capitol on January 6 and had downplayed his participation in what he called a “peaceful rally.” But pictures surfaced of Mr. Eathorne, a member of the far-right militia Oath Keepers, deep in a locked compound, walkie-talkie in hand, grinning under the railing.
In another state, such a resolution could be a fait accompli. But Wyoming is the Trumpiest of all places. A healthy number of those debating the resolution were deaf to the Jan. 6 hearings, disgusted by Ms Cheney, and convinced the election had been stolen. One participant called the allegations a “poppycock liberal vendetta.” Many in this state consider Ms. Cheney a traitor because she voted to impeach a president of her own party.
Seventy percent of voters in Wyoming elected Mr Trump in 2020, his highest share in any state. He’s been good to Wyoming. We have benefited well from his government’s energy policy. Mining is our lifeline. It signs our pay stubs; it finances our schools and paves our streets. There’s a joke that Wyoming is a two-party system: red and reddest, no Democrats allowed. Here’s the primary enactment, and since Mr. Trump has backed Ms. Cheney’s main challenger, Harriet Hageman, it’s a short jump over a dry bed to assume Mrs Cheney is toasted.
But our state’s politics are more nuanced than Trump’s margins of victory suggest. Relationships and results are important here. Ms. Cheney could hold her seat if she is able to forge together a coalition of forgotten moderates and crossover Democrats in the open primary just big enough to push her across the finish line.
Those quieter moderates—many of whom can’t bear to interact with the bully extremists who often prominently display guns on their hips at party rallies—view Ms. Cheney as a champion, a courageous renegade who puts country above party. The moderates speak less, but they vote.
For example, when it came to voting on the resolution intended to force Mr Eathorne out, they carried the day. Although the resolution has no teeth, the result was no aberration: Natrona County is the second most populous county and vote central committee may be a sign that an ideologically diverse electorate can still pick the winner.
In the 2018 Republican primary for governor, the moderate Mark Gordon defeated Mr. Trump’s nominee Foster Friess, in part because of Mr. Gordon’s experience in the Republican party during his time as state treasurer. The relationships Mr. Gordon built were important. Work hard and do good work, and Wyomingites will come out for you. Voters didn’t know about Mr. Friess, a non-native Republican mega-donor from upscale Jackson Hole who pitched his name less than four months before the primary.
Ms. Hageman, who finished third in the governor’s race despite her good faith in Wyoming and a well-funded campaign, was the first candidate for political office. She ran a superficial single-issue race and vowed to sue the federal government her first day in office. Her plans for the next day remained unclear.
Mr Gordon’s victory was not so much a victory for the centrist conservatives (Mr Gordon got 33 percent of the vote) as it was a reflection of the split vote on the outside of the party. But Mr. Gordon might have benefited from crossover voters. From July to September 2018, a combination of Democrats and unaffiliated voters, totaling 10,412, changed their registration to Republican. In a primary race where the winner got about 38,000 votes, this is an important demographic.
Moderate voters don’t just matter in the polls — they influence how the state is run and support the big-tent leadership in the legislature while keeping its finger in the brink of Republican party extremism.
The recent legislative session was instructive: a bill that curtailed the teachings of critical race theory failed. A bill banning transgender women from participating in women’s sports teams has failed. A bill to inject federal money into health clinics nationwide was passed. A Trump-approved bill to prevent crossover voting has failed.
Ms. Cheney’s campaign now unabashedly provides Democrats and unaffiliated voters with: step-by-step instructions on how to register as Republicans. It’s a squishy electorate that Ms. Cheney is counting on, a combination of crossover voters and moderate Republicans shocked by the Jan. 6 committee’s testimony.
It has been a curious path we have walked with Mrs. Cheney. In 2016, my husband, Tim, ran into her in Congress. We tried to portray her as an outsider who did not know the state. While we were once on the receiving end of her fierce campaigns, we are now supporters who see her as a sanity lifeline. Maybe she saw what I saw from Wyoming’s red-to-redest spectrum. I’ve knocked on thousands of doors and shaken thousands of hands in Wyoming, and I see a nuanced electorate judging the person, not the party.
There is a saying that Wyoming is a small city with long streets. Translated, we know everyone. Six degrees of separation is a game for suckers. Here it is more of a degree. Those personal connections are meaningful and have generational depth. Recently, we sent door-to-door mail for Senator Drew Perkins. He’s in a tight race with a challenger who marched at the Capitol on January 6.
Most people told me that Drew had their vote. They knew him and trusted him. They knew his mother. He has been their representative for years. He works hard and did a good job. Red, redder or reddest, it didn’t matter.
We Westerners take rugged individualism so seriously that we have a Code of the West. The most important of those principles are “Do what needs to be done,” “Be strict, but fair,” and “If you make a promise, keep it.” And it’s a personal matter that Ms. Cheney makes to her constituents: I will never betray the Constitution for my party. Choose me, not Donald Trump.
As a Wyomingite, I find it both gratifying and terrifying to be at this pivotal moment in our nation’s history. Ms. Cheney’s hope is that a quiet electorate will overcome the rowdy hardliners by registering their concerns the old-fashioned way: by voting. This may be the defining difference for Liz Cheney.