OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Harriet Hageman, a Wyoming-based attorney who is challenging Rep. Liz Cheney during this year’s Republican primary and who has already received the backing of former President Donald Trump, told voters in the state it’s time to send the GOP Establishment namesake back “home to Virginia,” a swipe at her Washington insider status.
In a new digital campaign push, Hageman told Wyoming voters that the Republican incumbent is both out of touch with voters and is “obsessed with her personal war” against Trump, Fox News reported Monday.
In a new digital ad, the primary candidate argues that Cheney is “not representing Wyoming, she’s not representing our values. Let’s send her home, to Virginia.”
An accompanying spoof website set up by the campaign is titled “Cheney for Virginia.”
WATCH:
Cheney is the highest-profile of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for a second time following the Jan. 6 riot after alleging he incited the violence for weeks by claiming the 2020 election was fraudulent.
Fox News added:
The daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, the younger Cheney immediately came under verbal attack from Trump and his allies, and last May was ousted from her number-three House GOP leadership position.
Cheney, who’s been very vocal in emphasizing the importance of defending the nation’s democratic process and of putting country before party, is one of only two Republicans serving on a special select committee organized by House Democrats to investigate the storming of the U.S. Capitol.
If the election were held today, it appears as though Hageman would be the walk-off winner; Cheney was crushed by Hageman in a late-January straw poll in the state. The Wyoming lawyer easily won the straw poll which was conducted by the Wyoming Republican State Central Committee, garnering 59 votes, according to the Casper Star-Tribune.
Cheney finished an extremely distant second with just a half-dozen votes.
What further harmed her credibility with diehard Trump supporters: She, along with Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — who won office as a Tea Party-backed candidate but who also criticized Trump and voted to impeach after the riot — joined House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Jan. 6 Select Committee allegedly investigating the origins of the riot.
Most other Republicans refused to participate in the panel after Pelosi rejected five nominees put forth by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, also of California.
“The new digital ad, which the Hageman campaign tells Fox News they’re spending five figures to run in Wyoming, uses news clips of Cheney spotlighting the work of the Jan. 6 committee, which many in the GOP view as a partisan panel aimed at attacking the former president,” the network reported.
“I’m very focused right now on my re-election and on the work of the select committee,” Cheney says in a news clip that is featured in the ad. “And I can tell you that the single-most important thing, though, is to ensure that Donald Trump is not the Republican nominee and that he certainly is not anywhere close to the Oval Office ever again.”
As for the straw poll outcome, Hageman’s totals were cheered after they were first announced at Saturday’s meeting of the state central committee, the Star-Tribune noted.
“I think it’s a good sign. It’s not an endorsement, but these are the county activists,” Hageman said in an interview with the Star-Tribune.
In backing Hageman last fall, Trump said she “is running against warmonger and disloyal Republican” Cheney.
“Harriet is a fourth-generation daughter of Wyoming, a very successful attorney, and has the support and respect of a truly great U.S. Senator, Wyoming’s own Cynthia Lummis,” Trump continued.
“Harriet Hageman adores the Great State of Wyoming, is strong on Crime and Borders, powerfully supports the Second Amendment, loves our Military and our Vets, and will fight for Election Integrity and Energy Independence (which [President Joe] Biden has already given up),” he added.
“Unlike RINO Liz Cheney, Harriet is all in for America First. Harriet has my Complete and Total Endorsement in replacing the Democrats’ number one provider of sound bites, Liz Cheney. Make America Great Again!” the former president stated further.
