Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney highlights her role as the top Republican on the Jan. 6 committee in a closing ad for her nearly doomed reelection campaign, as polls show her Trump-backed opponent, Harriet Hageman, just five days before the primaries.
But the nearly two-and-a-half-minute ad published online Thursday seemed as much aimed at a national audience as it was at Wyoming’s Republican primary voters, who will decide the fate of Mrs. Cheney, the state’s only member of the House.
“The lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is insidious,” Ms Cheney said as the ad opened. “It preys on those who love their country. It is a door that Donald Trump opened to manipulate Americans into giving up their principles, sacrificing their freedom, justifying violence, ignoring the rulings of our courts and the rule of law.”
Ms. Cheney, who has been vilified by former President Donald J. Trump and many of his supporters, defended the work of the House Special Committee investigating the 2021 Capitol attack and former Mr. Trump’s efforts to advance the 2020 election. to undo. Results.
Ms Cheney, the deputy chair of the January 6 committee, has acknowledged her political danger. A poll released Thursday by the University of Wyoming’s Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center showed that Ms. Cheney was nearly 30 points behind Mrs. Hageman.
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She is the last of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump to stand before voters in a primary this year. Three lost: Representatives Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, Tom Rice of South Carolina and Peter Meijer of Michigan. Two others survived their primaries and four refused to run for new terms.
The ad, titled “The Great Task,” is being promoted on social media but will not appear on television, according to Jeremy Adler, a campaign spokesperson for Ms. Cheney.
In the ad, Ms. Cheney described Mr Trump’s false claims about voter fraud as his legacy and said the country has a duty to hold those responsible for inciting violence.
“History has shown us time and again how toxic lies like this destroy free nations,” Ms. Cheney said of those who insisted that Mr. Trump win the election. “No one who understands the laws of our nation, no one with an honest, honorable, sincere commitment to our Constitution would say that. It is a cancer that threatens our great republic.”
Ms. Cheney did not mention Ms. Hageman by name in her ad, but compared her opponents in Wyoming to candidates who are rejecting the election across the country. Last week, Ms. Hageman reiterated Mr Trump’s false claim that the election had been rigged.
Ms Hageman’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
Ms. Cheney’s relinquishing of Mr. Trump — and her vote to impeach him last year — has already brought a political prize. The Wyoming Republican Party reprimanded her in February 2021, a month after Ms. Cheney’s impeachment vote. House Republicans later ousted Ms. Cheney as the party’s No. 3 leader in the room, replacing her with Representative Elise Stefanik, a Trump loyalist from New York.
When the ad closed, Ms Cheney said she would always try to maintain peaceful transitions of power, “no violent confrontations, intimidation and violence”, adding: “where we are led by people who love this country more than themselves. .”