Liz Cheney and Colin Allred: An unlikely alliance with political repercussions

If you woke from an eight-year slumber and saw the recent photo of conservative Liz Cheney smiling with Colin Allred, her preferred candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, you’d likely figure someone got it twisted.
The picture is real, and it’s a sharp reminder of how the Donald Trump era has made for strange bedfellows and reshaped the Republican Party.
The GOP has embraced Trump’s populism and moved more to the right. Republicans who have publicly disavowed the former president have been driven from the party, losing not only their elected offices but their relevance in Republican ranks.
Such is the saga of Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney and not so long ago a leading Republican in Congress who represented deep-red Wyoming.
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After the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, Cheney was one of 10 Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment. Four did not seek reelection and four were defeated in the 2022 primaries, including Cheney, who lost to Trump-backed candidate Harriet Hageman.
Cheney remains a vocal critic of Trump. She endorsed Kamala Harris for president, as did her father. She upped the ante against today’s GOP by backing Allred over Republican incumbent Ted Cruz in the Nov. 5 Senate race.
Dallas-based conservative talk radio host Mark Davis said Cheney has forfeited her Republican credentials.
“You can have reservations about Trump, but once he’s the nominee, anything that helps Kamala Harris win is an abandonment of conservatism,” Davis said.
“The obvious truth is that the Trump agenda contains much of what they have always wanted — stronger borders, lower taxes, a more sensible regulatory environment, environmental sanity,” he said.
Davis sees Cheney’s backing of Allred as a betrayal.
“This shows that it’s more than just a revulsion for Trump,” he said. “It is, in fact, a backlash against staunch conservatism. … Why in the world would she want to lose Ted Cruz in the Senate if she is conservative as she says she is?”
Other moderate Republicans are finding trouble fitting in with the Trump-era party.
Former Dallas County Republican Party Chairman Jennifer Stoddard-Hajdu said Cheney has taken the Republican path less traveled.
“At the moment they are not relevant,” she said. “That’s not necessarily a good thing, it’s just the truth.”
Stoddard-Hajdu lost her reelection as Dallas County chair in March to former Texas Republican Party Chair Allen West. He’s also a former Florida congressman and 2022 primary candidate against Gov. Greg Abbott.
Stoddard-Hajdu is considered more moderate than West and was voted out of the party’s leadership because of it.
“There are a lot of Republicans who are more moderate” than those leading the Republican Party, she said. “I’m one of the casualties of this kind of thing.”
Stoddard-Hajdu was perplexed by Cheney’s endorsement of Allred.
Cruz is locked in a close race with Allred, who would need the backing of some Republican and independent voters to win. Cruz has been in tough races before, including his narrow 2018 win over Democrat Beto O’Rourke.
“That takes it [a] step further,” Stoddard-Hajdu said. “You can understand some people don’t like the way Trump tweets or don’t like his behavior. However, now she’s endorsing Colin Allred over Ted Cruz, and Ted Cruz is a beloved figure in the Republican Party, and Texas Republicans believe he is doing a very good job in the Senate.”
Cheney told The Dallas Morning News she’s backing Allred because she believes Cruz can’t be trusted. She mentioned his attempt to block the 2020 election results from being certified by Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.
“It was a combination of things in this particular race, the fact that I know both of these candidates, and Colin is just head and shoulders above Ted Cruz in terms of the kind of person he is, and in terms of the kind of senator he is going to be,” Cheney said.
She said she hasn’t gone down a list of issues to determine if she has more in common with Cruz than Allred.
“I have been Republican my whole life. The first vote I ever cast was for Ronald Reagan in 1984,” Cheney said. “When you look at somebody like Ted Cruz, he’s shown that he’s willing to abandon what I think is the most important conservative principle, which is being faithful to the Constitution, and so I think there’s an extremism there that certainly people, leaders of our party in the past, would not have endorsed, would not have supported.”
Cruz campaign spokesperson Macarena Martinez said, “No one takes Cheney’s endorsements of candidates seriously.”
“She was overwhelmingly rejected by voters in Wyoming two years ago, just like Colin Allred will be … by Texas voters,” she said.
When asked whether her push for Allred is a tough sell in Texas, Cheney said, “So many voters in Texas and across the country are exhausted by the toxic battles that go on and exhausted by politics.”
She conceded many Republicans who oppose Trump are in tough positions. Cheney lamented Trump’s impact on the GOP.
“What happened to the Republican Party around the country, nationwide — I think it’s heartbreaking,” she said. “There are many, many millions of people around this country, some of whom have traditionally been Republicans, some who are independents, but who won’t stand for that.”
“We need two strong parties, where both parties believe in the Constitution,” Cheney added. “Then you can begin debating substance and policy issues. We don’t ever get the chance to have those debates about policy issues if we’re in a situation where you elect somebody at the top of the ticket who’s really dangerous, someone who’s unstable, somebody who said he’s going to terminate the Constitution.”
Many moderates, including those from the era of President George W. Bush, are trying to find a way to stay in the conservative fight.
Stoddard-Hajdu has started a political action committee called Dallas County Republicans United. She said the group will, among other things, focus on the May municipal elections in Dallas.
Though these are nonpartisan races, Stoddard-Hajdu hopes to elect conservatives who will do a good job in local government and, perhaps, rise to higher office.
“We have to approach things collectively,” she said. “We have to all start talking together, not only Republicans and Democrats, but Republicans who don’t agree.”
That approach is particularly important in Dallas County, a Democratic Party stronghold, Stoddard-Hajdu said.
“We have to recognize where we are, what the demographic makeup is, and what we can do to change what’s happening today,” she said. “Pushing something too far one way is not the right way.”