‘Bye Liz’: With Cheney’s loss, Rand Paul scores an elusive endorsement win
Rand Paul traveled to Texas to stump in their governor’s race. He appeared in a television commercial for an Ohio Senate contender. And he held a tele-townhall for a controversial Alabama candidate who ferociously attacked Mitch McConnell and managed to stumble into the crosshairs of former President Donald Trump.
All three of those candidates lost their primaries, as have most of Paul’s preferred picks for office this year.
Which is why the result in Tuesday’s election in Wyoming – in which Harriet Hageman easily vanquished Rep. Liz Cheney – is a rare reprieve for Paul, who has struggled to enlarge his libertarian imprint inside the Republican Party during the Trump era.
“Few people in Washington have been as wrong and damaging on foreign policy as Liz Cheney,” Paul tweeted Tuesday night after the race was called for Hageman. “Congratulations to @HagemanforWY on her victory tonight. I look forward to working with an advocate for liberty as the next Congresswoman from Wyoming. Bye Liz.”
Paul’s vendetta with Cheney was the most personal of his interventions, due to their divergent foreign policy views and an ideological clash that goes back years and spilled over into nasty Twitter skirmishes.
Kentucky’s junior senator visited Wyoming to campaign for Hageman back in March and his Protect Freedom PAC spent $250,000 on a television campaign that branded Cheney as a Washington elitist who “loves endless wars in the Middle East, costing us American lives and tax dollars.” McConnell personally contributed to Cheney’s re-election.
Still, it was Trump’s disdain of Cheney, for voting to impeach him and steering the high-profile inquiry into his actions around the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection that defined the primary contest.
Paul’s ventures into other 2022 contests have not proven to be successful.
Last winter, he dispatched to Texas to campaign for Don Huffines, a longshot Republican primary challenger to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Abbott trounced Huffines, who finished in third, by 55 points.
In Ohio, Paul cut a TV advertisement for wealthy businessman Mike Gibbons, who was competing in a crowded GOP primary for an open Senate seat. Paul described Gibbons as a “liberty minded, fiscal and constitutional conservative.” Gibbons ended up in fourth place, capturing 12% of the vote.
Paul both traveled to Alabama to campaign for Mo Brooks and held a tele-townhall for him, putting him on the opposite side of the race of McConnell and even Trump.
He pitched Brooks as someone who is “unfraid … who’s willing to stir the pot.” Brooks lost the late June runoff by 26 points.
“The establishment’s on the rise,” Paul conceded in June as he watched Brooks fall to Katie Britt, a more mainstream Republican Senate candidate in Alabama favored by McConnell.
Paul backed a Senate candidate in Oklahoma, Nathan Dahm, who ended up in third place in the primary with just 12%. Very early on, he threw his support to Mike Moon for an open congressional seat in southwest Missouri. Moon finished in fourth place with just 9%.
He cut an advertisement for Jeremy Munson in a special Minnesota House race. Munson finished with 24% of the vote, 52 points behind the victor, Brad Finstad.
Paul’s robust political activity allows him to keep his face and his message in front of an audience well beyond Kentucky, in case he’s tempted to run for president again. His PAC has spent just over a half million dollars since last summer and had just $169,000 left at the beginning of July.
But Paul’s presence hasn’t proven to move many voters.
Cheney likely would have lost without Paul’s involvement, but the outcome does hand him an elusive victory.
When Cheney mounted an ill-fated U.S. Senate bid in Wyoming back in 2013, Paul came out publicly for incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi, mocking Cheney as a resident of Virginia. Cheney eventually abandoned her bid for that race but settled on her pursuit of her current House seat in 2016.
Paul endorsed her lesser known opponent then as well, though Cheney easily won that race by 18 points.
