Only a few polls have been released, and they show Cheney by a wide margin. Most Wyoming political insiders say polling the state is difficult, especially when it’s hard to know how many voters will turn out and who they will be. But they also agree that even if the polls are somewhat off, it’s clear that Cheney is far behind her primary challenger, Harriet Hageman, who has the support of former President Donald Trump. Rep. Liz Cheney at a House Select Committee hearing on Tuesday. (Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) But with a month to go before the Aug. 16 primary in a House of Representatives that has major implications for the future of the national Republican Party, there is a sense among some that there are ripples of movement that are hard to detect outside of private conversations. “If you had asked me six months ago if Cheney had a chance, I would have said, ‘Not in the world.’ But now I think he’s building support,” Tom Lubnau, a former Republican House speaker, told Yahoo News. “It’s way behind. I don’t know if there is enough time or momentum to beat Hageman.” The Jan. 6 committee hearings in Washington, Lubnau said, “begin to peel back the layers” of how the attack on Capitol Hill was also an attack on democracy. Lubnau, who now practices law and has endorsed lesser-known GOP primary candidate Denton Knapp, a retired Army colonel who is his childhood friend, said there are a few different types of voters in Wyoming. Some of these voters respect Cheney for standing up to Trump and have no problem saying so. Others, who support Hageman, feel Cheney has betrayed them by confronting Trump about his attempt to overturn the 2020 election or “can’t separate being crazy about January 6th with a whole endorsement of the Democratic agenda.” And then there’s another group that’s “keeping their mouths shut and not wanting to fight, but they’re going to vote for Cheney,” Lubnau said. That last group “is growing, but I don’t know if it’s growing enough to outgrow the hole Rep. Cheney dug for herself.” The story continues Republican candidate for Congress Harriet Hageman. (Natalie Behring/Getty Images) “I’m not sure of the exact statistics, but about 60% of us make our decisions based solely on emotion, and Rep. Cheney is one of those logical decision makers who makes her decisions based on facts. And so I don’t know if he can develop enough emotion to sway emotional voters,” Lubnau said. Other Cheney supporters are less optimistic and express concern about her chances of winning. “I’m cautious and worried … I’m not optimistic, but I’m hanging in there,” said Joanne Tweedy, a Gillette supporter of Cheney. “I invite people every day. Anyone I can talk to and change their minds, I do.” Tweedy told Yahoo News that she doesn’t even have a Cheney sign in her yard. “I have neighbors who may or may not be happy if I put it up, so I don’t want the hateful thoughts and comments.” “I know a lot of quiet people who say, ‘We’re going to vote for Liz, we just don’t want our name on these surveys,’” Tweedy said. “I just don’t know how many there are.” Many Cheney supporters have expressed hope that the congresswoman’s political career will simply enter another chapter if she loses to Hageman, managing their expectations for the near future while also predicting that she will run for president in 2024 no matter what . “Don’t worry about her. Don’t worry about her. Whatever he does, he knows exactly what he’s doing, and if it doesn’t work, there’s something else he’s going to do,” former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, a Cheney supporter, told Yahoo News. Former Sen. Alan Simpson at his home in Cody, Wyo. (Bill O’Leary/Washington Post via Getty Images) Simpson also said the Jan. 6 committee, which Cheney helps lead, is gradually giving her a boost. “Every day that goes by, they take some of the shine off of Donald J. Trump. When these primaries are held on August 16, they will have taken off the emperor’s clothes,” he said. Simpson added that the simplicity of Cheney’s recent challenge to Hageman — daring her to acknowledge that the 2020 election was legitimate and not stolen — undermines Hageman’s momentum. In the July 1 debate between Cheney, Hageman and three other candidates for Wyoming’s lone House seat, Cheney laid down a gauntlet. “I would be interested to know if my opponent Ms. Hageman is willing to say here tonight that the election was not stolen. He knows it wasn’t stolen,” Cheney said. “I think she can’t say it wasn’t stolen because she’s totally accountable to Donald Trump. And if she says it wasn’t stolen, he won’t support her. So we have to be honest.” Cheney also pointed out that Bill Stepien, who is now advising Hageman, was Trump’s 2020 campaign manager and was one of several close Trump advisers who testified before the panel on Jan. 6 that the election was not rigged and that Trump knew this. since election night. Cheney also aimed the word “betrayed” at Hageman, who has repeatedly accused her of betraying Wyoming by standing up to Trump. Campaign manager Bill Stepien with President Donald Trump on Air Force One in August 2020. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images) “I think there’s a real tragedy that’s happening, and the tragedy is that there are politicians in this country, starting with Donald Trump, who have lied to the American people and the people have been betrayed,” Cheney said. “He has consistently said the election was stolen when it wasn’t, when it’s absolutely clear, the courts decided, the courts determined the outcome.” Hageman, in response, said the committee’s Jan. 6 process was “totally unfair.” Voters, he said, are “terribly concerned about the lack of due process” and “that there is no opportunity to cross-examine or cross-examine witnesses.” “You might have 15 hours of videotaped testimony and the committee shows 13 seconds of something or two and a half minutes of something,” Hageman said. Hageman also tried to sidestep Cheney’s question, saying there are “serious questions about the 2020 election.” Her basis for that claim was $500 million given by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, to help administer elections across the country in 2020 after Congress failed to appropriate enough funding. to hold elections during a pandemic. (Yahoo News did a detailed review last December of the criticism leveled against Zuckerberg’s donations and found that there was little evidence that the money helped Joe Biden or other Democrats in any meaningful way.) But the belief that the 2020 election was rigged for Biden continues to outweigh the facts among some Republican voters in Wyoming. “The riot was before Jan. 6,” said state Senate candidate Bob Ide who joined the crowd outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Trump supporters stormed in trying to stop the results from being certified. . . Ide called the Jan. 6 hearings a “show trial.” Images of Capitol Police Officer Aquilino Gonell appear on a screen during a House Select Committee hearing on Tuesday. (Doug Mills/Pool/Getty Images) Hageman supporter Marti Halverson, an active member of the Wyoming Republican Party in the western part of the state, endorsed Cheney in 2020 and hosted the congresswoman at her home that year. But he stopped supporting Cheney once he voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 uprising, Halverson told Yahoo News. He said Cheney’s “most recent offense” was to vote in favor of legislation last month aimed at reducing gun violence. Cheney was one of 14 House Republicans who sponsored the measure, which passed the Senate with 15 Republican votes and became law. Halverson, like Hageman, called the Jan. 6 hearings “so one-sided it’s ridiculous,” but also said she’s “not attached to them.” “I’ve got better things to do,” Halverson said. Even some of Cheney’s supporters expressed their displeasure with the Jan. 6 panel on Yahoo News. “I thought the committee was supposed to find out if there were any anti-American activities with the event that day, but I think it’s been cleared of that. I think it’s been completely taken after Trump, and maybe it’s a little misplaced now,” said state Sen. James Anderson, who has endorsed Cheney and is encouraging Wyomingians to vote for her. Another prominent Cheney supporter, state Rep. Landon Brown, said Cheney’s candidacy is not just about who represents Wyoming in Congress. Liz Cheney’s political director, Amy Womack, talks about her candidate to a voter in Casper, Wyo. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) It’s a test, he said, of whether the national GOP can support a set of principles and pro-Constitution policies or whether it will walk further down the path of obedience and submission to Trump, who has already shown no regard for the rule of law. or the will of the people. “We have to think about what the outcome of this election ultimately means for our country, because this is not just Wyoming,” Brown told Yahoo News. “This is the outcome of our entire country that we are looking at now.” Simpson, the former senator, put it this way: “To me it’s very simple. Liz attacked the root cause of a man so full of himself and full of himself that he would pick up a phone and tell someone to swing 11,000 votes in Georgia or call someone to say, “Why don’t you organize .. .
