Liz Cheney

Liz Cheney (born July 28, 1966, Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.) American attorney and Republican politician who served as the congresswoman from Wyoming in the U.S. House of Representatives (2017–23).

Early life and education

The daughter of Lynne Vincent Cheney and Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney was born in Madison, Wisconsin, where her parents were enrolled in graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin. The family moved to the Washington, D.C., area in 1968 and settled there, when Dick Cheney served as a congressional fellow and then went on to hold various positions in government service over the next several years. In 1977 the Cheneys moved to Wyoming, where both parents had grown up. The next year, Dick Cheney was elected to serve as Wyoming’s congressman (1979–89), and the family returned to the D.C. area, settling in McLean, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C., while also continuing to spend time in Wyoming. Liz Cheney attended McLean High School, graduating in 1984, and went on to attend Colorado College, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1988; while there, she met her future husband, Philip Perry.

Postcollegiate work, law school, and career

After college Cheney worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Department of State, and Armitage Associates, LLP, a consulting firm. She enrolled in the University of Chicago Law School, from which she graduated in 1996, and went on to practice law at White & Case law firm in Washington, D.C.

Cheney’s father served as vice president of the United States in 2001–09 under Pres. George W. Bush, and she was very active in her father’s campaigns for the 2000 and 2004 elections. Meanwhile, in 2002 she had returned to work at the State Department, serving first as deputy assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs and then as principal deputy assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs. After leaving the State Department, in 2009 she cofounded Keep America Safe, an organization that was vocal in its opposition to the national security policies of Pres. Barack Obama; the group was criticized for some of its attacks.

Failed 2014 Senate bid

Cheney, Perry, and their five children moved to Wyoming in 2012. The next year she announced that she was seeking the Republican nomination for one of Wyoming’s Senate seats in the 2014 election. Her challenge to a popular incumbent, Sen. Mike Enzi, was not well received, and she was called a carpetbagger, which she tried to refute by highlighting her family’s deep roots in the state. Notably, during her campaign she stated that she was not in favour of same-sex marriage, which sparked a public dispute with her sister, Mary Cheney—a lesbian—and Mary Cheney’s wife. (In September 2021 Liz Cheney reversed her stance on same-sex marriage and said she was wrong to have opposed it). Liz Cheney’s campaign came to an end in January 2014, when, citing serious health challenges in her family, she dropped out of the race.

Congresswoman from Wyoming (2017–23)

A year before the 2016 elections, the representative for Wyoming’s lone House seat announced that she would not be running for reelection, and in early 2016 Liz Cheney announced her campaign for the seat. She was successful, easily beating out several challengers in the Republican primary and then winning in the November general election. Cheney was sworn into the 115th Congress on January 3, 2017. She was reelected in 2018 and 2020.

During her time in Congress, Cheney served on the House Rules Committee, Natural Resources Committee, and Armed Services Committee. In 2018 she was elected chair of the House Republican Conference, effective 2019, making her the third-ranking Republican in the House. Cheney largely voted in step with the agenda of the Republican president, Donald Trump (2017–21), and, when the House held a vote to impeach him in 2019, she voted against the two articles of impeachment.

Cheney’s support of Trump changed drastically after the November 2020 election, which the president falsely claimed was rigged and that he had actually won, and after the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, that occurred after President Trump gave a speech in which he encouraged a large crowd of his supporters to march to the Capitol and violently resist Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s victory over him in the November 2020 presidential election. Cheney was vocal in her criticism of Trump’s actions that day and of his false claims about the election. In the ensuing impeachment proceedings later that month, she voted in favour of the article of impeachment. Her vote to impeach and her continued outspoken criticism of Trump—she famously said that “there has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution”—put her at odds with the majority of her Republican colleagues. She successfully fended off calls for her to be removed from her position of Republican Conference chair in February, but in May she was stripped of the post.

In July 2021 Cheney was selected by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to serve on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol; she was one of only two Republicans to serve on the committee. She was named vice chair of the committee in September. Her embrace of the committee’s work to investigate the January 6 attack, as well as her continued criticism of Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election, led the Wyoming Republican Party to declare in November 2021 that it would no longer recognize her as a member of the party; it had previously censured her in February after she voted to impeach Trump. Undaunted, in May 2022 Cheney announced that she was running for reelection. The next month, the Select Committee’s televised hearings began, with Cheney taking a prominent role in the proceedings.

Cheney’s unrelenting repudiation of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, her vote to impeach Trump, and her significant role in the January 6 attack investigation and hearings made her very unpopular with most of her Wyoming constituents, who overwhelmingly supported Trump. As such, she was expected to lose in the Republican primary election, held on August 16, 2022. She was soundly defeated by Harriet Hageman, a candidate who fully embraced Trump’s false election claims and had the support of the former president as well as the Republican Party leadership. As Cheney conceded the election that night, she condemned the election denialism movement in the Republican Party and reaffirmed her resolve to put country over party and to fight for the survival of America’s democracy. Her term in Congress ended in January 2023.

Writings

Cheney wrote three books with her father: her father’s autobiography, My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir (2011); Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America (2015); and Heart: An American Medical Odyssey (2013), which was also written with her father’s heart surgeon. In 2023 she published Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, her account of the January 6th attack, the events that led up to it, and the aftermath.