Traditional GOP vs. MAGA

Albuquerque NM

Description

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Rep. LIZ CHENEY has set another personal fundraising record. The Wyoming Republican is fighting off a serious challenge from HARRIET HAGEMAN, a Cheyenne attorney, and the Aug. 16 primary has turned into the most important and closely watched contest between the MAGA and traditional wings of the GOP. DONALD TRUMP, KEVIN MCCARTHY, PETER THIEL and dozens of House Republicans, who kicked Cheney out of House GOP leadership, are backing Hageman. GEORGE W. BUSH, MITCH MCCONNELL, MITT ROMNEY and PAUL RYAN are backing Cheney. Normally, being booted out of leadership might put a crimp in a member’s fundraising. But this quarter, Cheney actually outraised Rep. ELISE STEFANIK of New York, who replaced her as House GOP Conference chair. Stefanik reported Thursday that she raised “over $2 million” in the first fundraising quarter of 2022. Now, the Cheney camp is prepared to announce that it raised an eye-popping $2.94 million in Q1 of 2022, bringing her total haul for the cycle to more than $10 million. With four months left to go in the primary campaign, Cheney has $6.8 million on hand. In previous cycles, it was common for Cheney to raise a few hundred thousand dollars in a quarter, mostly from Wyoming residents. With the national attention her race has received, money has poured in from across the country. At the end of the first quarter of 2021, Cheney set a personal fundraising record: $1.5 million. And she set new records in two of the next three quarters — $1.9 million in Q2 of 2021, $1.7 million in Q3, $2 million in Q4. Now, she’s shattered her Q4 record. The first quarter of 2022 saw some notable developments in the race. In February, Cheney was censured by the RNC in a statement that defended Jan. 6 as “legitimate political discourse.” Cheney responded at the time by declaring, “I’m a constitutional conservative, and I do not recognize those in my party who have abandoned the Constitution to embrace Donald Trump.” In March, despite a major push from Trump, the Wyoming legislature declined to end same-day party registration for primaries, so Cheney will be able to take advantage of Democrats registering as Republicans to vote for her on Aug. 16. The legislature’s decision pointed to a divide within Wyoming Republican politics: The state party, which censured her shortly after she voted to impeach Trump last year, is dominated by Trump loyalists. (The current party chair is reportedly a member of the Oath Keepers militia who attended the Jan. 6 rally in Washington and who once flirted with Wyoming secession during a podcast interview with STEVE BANNON.) But elected Republicans have so far refrained from passing any laws that were promoted to screw Cheney in the primary. The quarter also saw two high-profile fundraisers that pitted leaders of the two wings of the GOP against each other. In mid-March, a Romney fundraiser banked $500,000 for Cheney. A couple of weeks later, a McCarthy fundraiser brought in just $215,000 for Hageman. Cheney’s first-quarter total is more than double what Hageman raised last quarter. And that brings us to a final wrinkle in the race that hasn’t received much attention as Hageman has been feted by McCarthy in D.C. and Thiel in Miami: Trump’s endorsement of Hageman didn’t clear the field. In fact, there’s still a more Trumpy candidate in the race. ANTHONY BOUCHARD, a state senator, arguably has more of a claim to the Trump mantle than Hageman, who was once a Never-Trump Republican and called then-candidate Trump “racist and xenophobic.” Bouchard, meanwhile, has been a Trump diehard since the 2016 primaries. He has some major vulnerabilities as a candidate — when he was 18, he “had a relationship with and impregnated a 14-year-old girl,” the Casper Star-Tribune has reported. His colleagues in the legislature kicked him off of his committees last month. But some Wyoming observers are comparing the dynamic to the Alabama GOP Senate primary in 2017, when Trump endorsed the seemingly more electable LUTHER STRANGE over the seemingly toxic ROY MOORE, who still ended up winning the MAGA vote (and the primary). If Hageman and Bouchard split the Trump vote, Cheney could squeak by with a plurality coalition of traditional Republicans and Democrats who switch parties to vote for her on primary day. She certainly has the money now to execute that plan. And if she beats Trumpism in Wyoming, she will immediately be able to leverage her new national fundraising network into a potential 2024 primary showdown against the man himself. After all, she said last May, “I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office.”