Cheney Considers Third Party Run in 2024 Presidential Race, Targeting Trump

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) speaks to supporters at an election night event during the Wyoming primary election at Mead Ranch in Jackson on Aug. 16, 2022. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) reiterated interest in a 2024 presidential run in a new interview with the Washington Post, saying she is now considering running as a third-party candidate because she doesn’t want to see former President Donald Trump back in office.

“Several years ago, I would not have contemplated a third-party run,” Ms. Cheney said. “I happen to think democracy is at risk at home, obviously, as a result of Donald Trump’s continued grip on the Republican Party, and I think democracy is at risk internationally as well.”

A vocal critic of the former president, Ms. Cheney was one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach President Trump. She also sat on the January 6 Select Committee that said he was responsible for the violence of that day in 2021.

Ms. Cheney had said she was not ruling out a presidential run when she gave a CNN interview back in October, without elaborating on whether she intended to run as a rival for the Republican nomination.

President Trump has remained the leading candidate in the polls, pulling ahead in the last few months as the faraway frontrunner while criminal prosecutions—several related to his attempt to investigate the 2020 election—mounted.

Independent Label

Ms. Cheney had previously rejected the idea of an independent party bid, saying, “I’m not going to do anything that helps Donald Trump, and I think that I’ll make a decision about what I do and what comes next later this year.”

As the third party No Labels mounted its campaign and announced that it was seeking a bipartisan ticket, pollsters pointed to survey results that showed a third party would hurt President Joe Biden’s chances of reelection more than it would hurt President Trump’s chances.

Critics of President Trump had argued against a third party bid, though Ms. Cheney had also noted in the interview that a Trump nomination would “splinter” the Republican Party.

Ms. Cheney, who lost in the Wyoming Republican primary for the House seat to now-Rep. Harriet Hageman in 2022, has been doing a book tour to promote her memoir, released Dec. 5, and gave the Dec. 4 interview with the Washington Post as part of that.

She said what had changed her mind about third-party bids was President Trump’s likely nomination.

The “tectonic plates of our politics are shifting,” she said, describing the former president as a “threat.” She said the party nomination process was “pretty irrelevant, in my view, in the 2024 cycle, because the threat is so unique.”

“It is going to require all hands on deck certainly in this campaign cycle,” she said.

Supporting Other Candidates

Ms. Cheney also did not rule out voting for President Joe Biden or even campaigning for him. She told the Post that she also would throw her support behind others to prevent a pro-Trump majority in the House.

She has already done so, raising a sizable amount through a Super PAC which has already put half a million dollars in ads in Arizona including a campaign against Kari Lake’s bid for the Senate. Ms. Lake is a vocal supporter of President Trump and announced her campaign this year with an endorsement from the former president.

Ms. Cheney accused Ms. Lake of saying she would not “honor elections,” referring to President Trump’s challenge of the 2020 election results and those who supported his efforts.

Ms. Lake responded on social media, saying the ads had the opposite effect as campaign donations increased after they went out.