What Wyoming Really Thinks of Liz Cheney

[mahatmakanejeeves]

For some reason, the pictures are in a form that doesn't appear at DU.

What Wyoming Really Thinks of Liz Cheney

I traveled 2,100 miles across the state to figure out if she is doomed — and to glimpse the future of the Republican Party.

By David Montgomery
Photos by Katherine Frey
OCTOBER 7, 2021

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Early September was a strange time to be in Wyoming. California forest fires that scientists increasingly blame on climate change were belching a haze over a state where the economy has long relied on oil, gas, coal and cows. You couldn’t smell the smoke, but daily news bulletins updated air quality levels. The iconic Teton and Big Horn mountain ranges looked like ghosts of themselves. You’d wake up with a little tightness in the chest and wonder if it was the onset of covid-19 or just the smoke. Hardly anyone wore a mask, as far as I could tell, except in Teton County (which includes Jackson Hole) where — cue eye roll from the rest of the state — the ruling local Democrats insist. And yet even with the smoke and the virus, the land was beautiful — endless prairies, terrifying heights, infinite solitude.

The first person I interviewed, in Cheyenne at the southern edge of the state, was a retired elementary school teacher walking her dog near the state Capitol. She said she admired Cheney for standing up to Trump. She added, “I don’t know anyone else in Wyoming who supports her except me.” Passing the storefront office of the state GOP, I couldn’t help noticing a poster celebrating “Premier Wyoming Republican Women.” Of the seven women listed, two were dead and none was Liz Cheney.

To understand the origins of the grass-roots anti-Cheney movement, I knew I had to head west into Carbon County. Despite its name, the county is home to some of Wyoming’s most impressive wind farms. Herds of beef cattle grazed placidly beneath swooping turbines tilting at a carbonless future. I pulled into the town of Saratoga (population 1,615), where I found the Whistle Pig Saloon. Joey Correnti IV, chairman of the Carbon County GOP, was waiting for me. He wore a cap with a red, white and blue buffalo on the front, a white shirt, black vest, jeans, cowboy boots and a pistol on his hip. I mention the gun only because it was the first of many that I saw in this open-carry state, and soon I stopped noticing them. “I don’t see any reason not to have a firearm with me at all times,” Correnti told me in a rust-bucket baritone that I recognized from his appearances on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast.

If anyone gets credit for helping spark the prairie fire of resistance to Cheney, it’s Correnti. The day of the impeachment vote, Correnti found himself fielding spontaneous impassioned rants from members of the party in Carbon County. That night he put together a Zoom meeting with maybe 50 people. They vented and began to brainstorm. Three consecutive nights of Zooms culminated in a virtual town hall with about 150 people from around the state. “Being rural Wyoming, if you have 150 people in a captive audience, you’re actually talking to about 15,000 people,” Correnti says. “It’s literally some people’s jobs in communities to be the person to know about this and bring it back to the coffee shop or whatever.” The next day, Jan. 16, the county party passed the first censure of Cheney. In coming weeks, all but a few of the state’s 23 county GOP chapters followed, modeling their resolutions on Carbon County’s, and so did the state GOP.

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David Montgomery is a staff writer for the magazine. Katherine Frey is a Washington Post staff photographer.