Romney and other Trump critics to raise money for Liz Cheney’s re-election effort

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(Reuters) – U.S. Senator Mitt Romney, one of former President Donald Trump’s top Republican critics, will help raise money for Representative Liz Cheney, who is fighting for her political survival after voting to impeach Trump and challenged his false claims of stolen elections.

Romney is the star guest at a fundraiser for Cheney on March 14 at the home of Bobbie Kilberg, a well-connected Virginia Republican who aligned himself against Trump during his bid for the White House in 2016, according to an invitation seen by Reuters.

In addition to Romney, the list of attendees includes an array of establishment Republican figures and Trump critics, including former Congresswoman Barbara Comstock, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, lobbyist Charlie Black and former Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney’s father.

The event comes as Cheney prepares for a tough primary battle for Wyoming’s only congressional district in August against a Trump-endorsed lawyer, Harriet Hageman. The race, which will almost certainly determine the winner of the general election in the deeply conservative state, is widely seen as an indicator of the former president’s grip on the Republican Party.

Cheney was the target of Trump’s ire and sidelined by most Republicans after voting in January to impeach Trump on charges of inciting an insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6 and of having helped lead an ongoing congressional committee to investigate the attack. Last year, Republicans voted to remove Cheney from his leadership position in the United States House of Representatives.

Cheney is not in financial trouble, having finished September with more than $3.6 million in the bank. But she faces a challenge to her survival in Wyoming, where her own party’s militant base has opposed her. Over the weekend, Cheney won just six votes in a poll conducted by the Republican Wyoming State Central Committee, with Hageman getting 59.

Billionaire Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr. were due to co-host a pair of fundraisers for Hageman on Wednesday, Politico reported last month. Hageman had about $245,000 in the bank in September.

(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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