McDaniel says she still considers Cheney a Republican despite Wyoming GOP vote

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel on Thursday said she still considers Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) to be a member of the party after the Wyoming GOP voted to no longer recognize the Republican congresswoman.

“Obviously she’s still a Republican,” McDaniel said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast in Washington.

“But I get from a state party standpoint when you have a congressperson or a senator who’s not supporting your state party, who’s not talking about electing Republicans up and down the ballot,” she continued. “The thing about that everyone should be taking note is that a state party is the most grassroots body that the state has. These are people who are running in their district committee and they’re going to their county convention and they’re getting on their state committee and they really represent where the party is in their state.”

“So that was their choice to do that and then the voters will make a choice in the primary in Wyoming,” she said, adding that she wished Cheney was talking about electing Republicans more.

The Hill reached out to Cheney’s office for comment.

McDaniel’s remarks follow the Wyoming Republican Party central committee voting 31-29 earlier this week to no longer recognize Cheney as a member of the party. That vote followed similar votes by Republican officials in roughly one-third of Wyoming’s 23 counties. 

Cheney’s office hit back in a statement, saying it was “laughable to suggest Liz is anything but a committed conservative Republican.”

“She is bound by her oath to the Constitution. Sadly, a portion of the Wyoming GOP leadership has abandoned that fundamental principle, and instead allowed themselves to be held hostage to the lies of a dangerous and irrational man,” Jeremy Adler, a Cheney spokesman, said.

Cheney has been the target of GOP ire for much of the year, after she voted to impeach former President Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and became one of the party’s most outspoken critics of the former president and his claims of election fraud.

She is one of two Republicans serving on the House select committee investigating that attack and has bucked her party on a number of issues this year, including Thursday when she was one of two Republicans to vote in favor of censuring far-right Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.). 

In February, the same state party committee voted to censure Cheney.

She is slated to face four Republican challengers in the GOP primary for her seat, including Wyoming attorney Harriet Hageman, who has been endorsed by Trump.