A hawkish conservative and the vice president under President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney has broken with Donald J. Trump before. Earlier this week, Liz Cheney said she would be voting for Ms. Harris.
- Share full article
“Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris,” Liz Cheney said Friday.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the most influential and hawkish conservatives in the modern Republican Party and a figure reviled by the left, will be voting for Vice President Kamala Harris in November, his daughter Liz Cheney said on Friday.
Former Representative Liz Cheney, the once high-ranking Republican from Wyoming who sacrificed her political career by breaking forcefully with former President Donald J. Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, this week said she would be voting for Ms. Harris.
Speaking at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Texas, on Friday, she revealed that her father, an unapologetic partisan, would be, too.
“Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris,” Ms. Cheney said, a remarkable statement that the Cheneys themselves could not have foreseen making even four years ago. Mr. Cheney served as White House chief of staff under President Gerald Ford; secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush and vice president under President George W. Bush, when Mr. Cheney was the architect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He was viewed by Democrats as such a force of darkness that he earned the nickname Darth Vader.
Mr. Cheney has previously broken with Mr. Trump, calling him a “threat to our republic” and a “coward” in an advertisement he starred in for his daughter’s final Republican primary, in 2022, which she lost by 37 points to a Trump-backed challenger.
Ms. Cheney on Friday tried to frame the joint family decision to vote for the Democratic presidential nominee as something beyond party, one that had to do with country and “duty.” She explicitly rejected the idea of not voting at all, as some conservative Republicans have signaled they plan to do.
Earlier this week, Pat Toomey, the former Republican senator from Pennsylvania, said he would not be supporting Mr. Trump in the fall. But, he said, he could not vote for Ms. Harris, either.
The show of support from both Cheneys is significant for the Harris campaign, which has been pouring tens of millions of dollars into a paid media campaign targeting anti-Trump Republicans. It potentially helps create a model for deeply conservative voters reluctant to back Mr. Trump to vote for a Democrat for the first time in their lives.
In her panel discussion with The Atlantic’s Mark Leibovich, Ms. Cheney said she would not be acting as an official surrogate of the Harris campaign and said she had not spoken with Ms. Harris since her announcement of support earlier this week.
Ms. Cheney also refused to entertain the speculation that she could be the Republican Ms. Harris has promised to appoint to her cabinet if she is elected.
“I am not focused on that,” she said.
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times. She writes features and profiles, with a recent focus on House Republican leadership. More about Annie Karni
See more on: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, Democratic Party
- Share full article
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Source: nytimes.com
