Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) threw her weight behind Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) for the Ohio Senate race on Tuesday, marking her second high-profile backing of a Democrat in recent days.
During a wide-ranging discussion that touched on the Capitol riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Cheney maintained that she could not back Republican hopeful J.D. Vance in the contest, alluding to his flirtation with election denialism.
LIZ CHENEY ENDORSES AND IS SET TO CAMPAIGN FOR DEMOCRATIC REP. ELISSA SLOTKIN
“I would not vote for J.D. Vance,” Cheney explained during an interview with PBS’s Judy Woodruff at Cleveland State University.
When pressed if she would hypothetically vote for Ryan, Cheney said, “I would.”
Liz Cheney endorses Tim Ryan for Senate, and does so with a little humor injected into the discussion. pic.twitter.com/HlKHdYsrcq
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) November 1, 2022
Last week, Cheney made waves when she endorsed Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and plans to stump for her on the campaign trail. Cheney and Slotkin both held posts on the House Armed Services Committee and have been outspoken on national security matters.
Once a rising House GOP star who was the No. 3 House Republican, Cheney has fallen out of favor with her party amid her disillusionment with former President Donald Trump and, in particular, her role as vice chairwoman of the Jan. 6 committee.
Vance has nodded to Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” and has painted himself as a Trump firebrand. Cheney has been fiercely critical of 2020 election denialism.
“There were certainly people voting illegally on a large-scale basis,” Vance said during an event last year, according to the Hill.
“I think the fundamental problem is we had a massive effort to shift the election by very powerful people in this country,” he told Spectrum News earlier this year. “I don’t care whether you say it’s rigged, whether you say it’s stolen, like I’ll say what I’m going to say about it.”
Vance is narrowly leading Ryan in the Senate race, which could be deterministic of the balance of power in the upper chamber. He currently has a 2 percentage-point edge over Ryan, according to the latest RealClearPolitics polling aggregate.
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Last year, Cheney was adamant that despite her gripes with Trump and others within the GOP, she would not vote for a Democrat.
“I would not vote for a Democrat ever,” she told Fox News anchor Bret Baier last year. She also did an ad chastising Republican candidates in Arizona who have raised election integrity concerns, after which Trump-backed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake thanked Cheney for the “anti-endorsement.”
Cheney explained during a new PBS interview that the panel is negotiating with Trump’s team for a deposition in keeping with its subpoena demand. She lost her primary earlier this year to a Trump-backed challenger.
