Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) is looking to recruit registered Democrats to switch their party affiliation in order to vote for her in Wyoming’s Aug. 16 primary.
Her campaign website offers instructions for how voters can change their party affiliation in order to vote in the Republican primary and even directs them to a Wyoming voter registration change form. The New York Times also reported on Thursday that Cheney’s campaign has been sending out mailers to Wyoming Democratic voters with information about voting in the Republican primary.
Wyoming allows voters to change their party affiliations by mail up to 14 days before the primary. Voters can also switch their party affiliation at the polls.
Cheney is facing a hotly contested primary in August against Republican Harriet Hageman. Former President Donald Trump endorsed Hageman as part of his effort to oust Cheney for her vote last year to impeach him for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Cheney is also one of only two Republicans serving on the House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol.
Hageman has seized on Cheney’s impeachment vote to argue that she is insufficiently conservative.
Cheney’s primary campaign is seen as a key test of just how loyal Republican voters remain to Trump, and whether a longtime conservative who broke with the former president can survive in a party still dominated by his brand of politics.
Nevertheless, Cheney has long resisted courting Democratic voters to her cause. She told The New York Times in February that she had no plans to reach out to Democrats in her primary.
In a statement, Jeremy Adler, a spokesperson for Cheney, said that she was intent on “working hard to earn every vote.”
“Liz is proud to represent all Wyomingites and is working hard to earn every vote,” Adler said.
Cheney hasn’t styled herself as a Democrat during her campaign. While she broke with Trump over the Jan. 6 riot, she still voted with him 93 percent of the time while he was in the White House, according to the data website FiveThirtyEight. She’s also rarely sided with President Biden since he took office.
Speaking in New Hampshire late last year, Cheney defended her conservative bonafides, but said that lawmakers have an “obligation” to defend the “constitutional order” when it is “threatened.”
“I am a conservative Republican,” Cheney said in a speech at St. Anselm College in November. “I disagree strongly with nearly everything President Biden has done since he has been in office. His policies are bad for this country. I believe deeply that conservative principles: limited government, low taxes, a strong national defense, the family — the family as the essential building block of our nation and our society, those are the right ideals for this country.”