U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney’s appearance at an awards dinner later this autumn in the first-in-the-nation primary state raises some speculation about her possible national ambitions.
Cheney, of Wyoming , is one of the most well-known and vocal members of the small group of GOP lawmakers and leaders opposed to former president Donald Trump. She will be the featured speaker at the annual Nackey S. Loeb School’s First Amendment Awards program on November 9. Word of her appearance comes as Trump and his allies have backed a primary challenger to Cheney when she’s up for reelection next year, as the former president aims to oust Cheney from Congress.
The school was named after its founder, the late publisher of the New Hampshire Union Leader. The school noted that the event “honors individuals or groups who have in some extraordinary way exercised or sought to protect the Constitution’s First Amendment rights of free speech, assembly, press, religion or government petition.”
Cheney, in a statement, said she was honored to participate.
“Protecting our First Amendment freedoms is at the heart of our responsibility as elected officials,” Cheney wrote. “I look forward to helping to recognize New Hampshire citizens and organizations who are working to defend those freedoms.”
The event will be held for the first time at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anslem College in Goffstown, which has become a must stop for White House hopefuls over the past two decades.
“In recent times, no other American figure has been closer to the freedom afforded by the First Amendment than Rep. Cheney,” Neil Levesque, the institute’s executive director, said in a statement. “It is a testament to the Nackey Loeb School’s national reach that she is coming to speak.”
Cheney will become the latest in a line of provocative speakers who’ve been picked to headline the event, including Trump, whose appearance at the gala in the autumn of 2014 came as he began exploring a potential run for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination.
Since leaving the White House, Trump has been repeatedly flirting with making another presidential bid. And Cheney, in April, didn’t close any doors to a potential 2024 White House run.
“I’m not going to rule anything in or out. Ever is a long time,” she told the New York Post in an interview. Cheney, who at the time was attending the House Republican retreat in Orlando, Florida, was asked if she’d consider a 2024 presidential bid.
Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, was the most senior of the 10 U.S. House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump on a charge of inciting the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by right-wing extremists and other Trump supporters, who aimed to disrupt congressional certification of Trump’s presidential election defeat to now-President Joe Biden.
Cheney immediately came under verbal attack by Trump and his allies, but in February she easily crushed an effort by Trump loyalists in the House to dump her from her leadership position as House Republican Conference Chair.
Trump continued to target Cheney, as well as the other nine House Republicans who voted to impeach him and the seven GOP senators who voted to convict the now-former president in his impeachment trial in February. In May Cheney was ousted from her No. 3 House GOP Republican leadership position.
Cheney has been very vocal in emphasizing the importance of defending the nation’s democratic process, and in the late spring she delivered a speech in the House chamber about putting love and defense of the country above partisan politics. She’s currently one of only two Republicans serving on a special committee organized by House Democrats to investigate the insurrection at the Capitol.
Stepping up his efforts to oust Cheney, Trump earlier this month backed one of the candidates hoping to defeat Wyoming’s at-large House member in next year’s election. The former president endorsed lawyer and former gubernatorial candidate Harriet Hageman. After making his endorsement, Trump and his allies successfully urged some, but not all, of the other crowded primary field of anti-Cheney candidates to drop out and coalesce around Hageman.
The attacks this year by Trump have fueled Cheney’s fundraising. She raised a record $3.5 million in fundraising during the first six months of this year. Former Republican House Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan have helped raise campaign cash for Cheney. And former President George W. Bush will headline a fundraiser for Cheney in Texas next month.
Cheney’s November trip to New Hampshire will grab national media coverage and put the spotlight on the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race.
Her visit is bound to reignite the question over whether an anti-Trump Republican can run and win in a party that’s still dominated by the former president, who remains very popular with the GOP base and continues to hold great sway over Republican politicians.
Trump crushed former Massachusetts Gov. Weld in the 2020 Republican presidential primary in New Hampshire. The then-president captured 84% of the vote in the Republican nominating contest, with his primary challenger coming an extremely distant second at just 9%.
Mike Dennehy, a longtime Republican strategist and veteran of numerous GOP presidential campaigns, said an anti-Trump Republican could gain traction in the Granite State’s presidential primary.
“I certainly believe there’s room for someone like that,” he said.
But he added “I will be brutally honest, I don’t that person can win a primary.”
David Carney, another Republican consultant with decades of presidential campaign experience, said it’s a long shot, but possible, for Cheney to potentially resonate.
“There are so many unknowns,” Carney emphasized. “It depends on who else is in the race, what the dynamics are, and what her message is.”
Carney added that he didn’t believe Cheney’s upcoming trip has much to do with president politics. Former New Hampshire House Speaker Bill O’Brien agreed.
O’Brien said that if Cheney decided to run, “she doesn’t have any chance at all up here in the primary.”
“I think she just carved out an area for herself that she hopes gets prominence on the national level, but it doesn’t serve her well to have a future in this party,” O’Brien added.
Fran Wendelboe, a longtime Republican consultant and co-managing director of the conservative 603 Alliance, noted that Republicans she speaks with “are getting still fonder by the day of President Trump.”
“I don’t think there’s room for somebody who’s a staunch critic of the president and too many people think that her votes have stabbed him in the back,” Wendelboe said. “And there’s too many other good Republicans that are trustworthy that can run if Trump chooses not to.”