Live from Music Row Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. –  host Leahy welcomed Tennessee Star National Correspondent Neil McCabe to the newsmakers line.
During the third hour, McCabe discussed his recent conversation with Wyoming State Senator Anthony Bouchard’s GOP primary run for 2022 where he will attempt o unseat Republican House Leader Liz Cheney. He explained how through researching this story he had stumbled upon a dynamic that proved Wyoming, as well as several other states, has an establishment zone close to a blue city which aids in the election of a candidate that does not fully represent the whole state’s values.
Leahy: Now on the newsmaker line the national correspondent for the Star News Network with another breaking story Neil McCabe. Neil, there’s going to be a challenge in the primary in Wyoming for Congresswoman Liz Cheney tell us about that and your exclusive story at tennesseestar.com
McCabe: Yeah, that’s right Mike. Good morning Crom. I spoke to Wyoming State Senator Anthony Bouchard. He never was a supporter of Liz Cheney, but finally, when she stood up in support of impeaching Trump the second time and voting with the Democrats he had had enough. And so he is launching his bid for the 2022 GOP primary. And that’s an at-large seat. There is only one Congressman for Wyoming. And so we’ll see how it plays out.
One of the things he said to me was Trump wins with 70 percent of the vote in 2020, and Wyoming. And that was his highest percentage of any of the states. And so why is the only congressman from Wyoming voting to impeach the guy? It’s you know, it’s frustrating. There are other problems people have had with Liz Cheney. Obviously, she’s tied to her father’s policies that neoconservatives and her dear father being former Vice President Dick Cheney is.
She’s also sort of drawing support. Trump was at 70 percent. I think if you round it up she was at like 67 or 68 percent herself. But she’s drawing from what’s called the front range corridor, which is in the southeast corner of Wyoming. And that’s basically becoming a suburb of Denver. Wyoming is becoming a little bit bluer Mike. And that’s sort of where Cheney is drawing her biggest support.
Carmichael: That last piece is kind of interesting because it sounds to me because of the differences in tax law from Colorado and Wyoming. How far is it from Denver?
McCabe: Well, it’s probably about an hour.
Carmichael: That’s not very far from a city the size of Denver. Perhaps the people of West Wyoming while they still can annex at part of the state to Colorado. (Leahy laughs) and I’m actually being 75 percent serious here because what you don’t want is to have a suburb kind of like Northern Virginia. Now the population of Northern Virginia is really Washington D.C. bureaucrats and lobbyists.
And they are now populated enough to define what the rules and the values are for the entire state of Virginia. So to have a three-county area in Wyoming determine how the rest of Wyoming should live, if I was in Wyoming I would actually bring that up and give that part of Wyoming to Colorado. Make them persona non grata.
McCabe: So in the meantime, Bouchard is going to run and try to take Cheney down. He has a background in gun rights. He was the founder of Wyoming Gun Owners, which he founded in 2010. He ran twice for that state senate seat before winning in 2016. He was considered the top gun lawyer lobbyist or I guess conservatives or lobbyists. I guess we should call him a gun rights advocate. He was an advocate, not a lobbyist.
And it’s funny too because we are learning that these conservative states like Georgia or Wyoming or Colorado or Montana all have sort of an establishment in that state. And he actually had trouble with gun rights laws in Wyoming. And that’s not what you’d expect. And so I think what you’re going to see is Cheney is going to have a really tough challenge. She has another constituency not just in the Denver suburb in Wyoming but obviously, she has a constituency in the national mainstream media.
And she’s going to get some national money and some Chamber of Commerce money. And so there’s going to be a lot of people who want to keep her around. I think the other nine House Republicans aren’t going to be so lucky. Their vote to impeach Trump was basically their decision to return to private life.
Leahy: Exactly. Looking at the map here from downtown Denver, Colorado straight North on I-25 to Cheyenne, it’s a straight shot. Cheyenne is the capital or the home of (Inaudible talk)
McCabe: (Inaudible talk)
Leahy:Â Cheyenne is just across the border. It’s 100 miles. And if If you were to live south of Cheyenne right near the border that’s about another 15 miles you could work in the northern suburbs of Denver. From the northern suburbs of Denver to the Wyoming border just south of Cheyenne’s about 65 miles. So that’s a commute. So I think there’s a lot of that going on.
Carmichael: Well, that’s what he said.
McCabe: Absolutely and it’s a dynamic. It’s a dynamic that I wasn’t even tuned into before I started working on this story because I was I was trying to figure out how Cheney would think that you could possibly get away with it. My guess, I didn’t do the research, is that she is getting Denver money.
Carmichael: What will the establishment Republicans those who are behind Cheney, what will the what do you think their strategy will be to keep her as the Republican candidate for November of 2022?
McCabe: Well, I mean obviously they’re going to play the gender card. And she is the most senior House Republican who is a female. I imagine they’re going to turn Bouchard and anyone else who goes against her turn them into male chauvinist pigs.
Carmichael: No. No. No, Neil, you are the best person that we talked to every week. I’m disappointed.
Leahy: What’s your answer Crom?
Carmichael: They will run about three more people in the primary against Cheney to divide the vote.
McCabe: Right.
Carmichael: That’s how they’ll do it.
McCabe: That’s how they saved Lindsey Graham.
Carmichael: Well, I’m only really talking about right now. The way to defeat a single person running against Liz Cheney is to have five people all with the same message run against Liz Cheney so that those five people divide up the vote. And there can only be one person in that five who actually cares about what they’re saying. The other four could just be lip-synching.
McCabe: When Jack Kennedy first ran for Congress, there was an Italian guy who’s running against him and that district included the north end of Boston, which is the big Italian neighborhood. So the Kennedy’s got another Italian guy with the exact same name to run against him. (Leahy laughs)
Carmichael: Oh, wow.
Leahy: Wow, that’s clever.
McCabe: Exact same name.
Leahy: How many Bouchard’s are there?
Carmichael: Let me say this. Neil, that is a story. You need to incorporate that into your story on Liz Cheney. That is a marvelous marvelous fact. That is just astounding. That is. That’s cool?
McCabe: I think the other thing to consider is that I really come down to in the Trump era, I ask myself what is the cowardly choice? And what we’re seeing is yeah, there were ten House Republicans who voted voted to impeach Trump. There weren’t 30 or 40 and that’s because most House Republicans realize or 95 percent of them rather realize that their voters would be really ticked off.
And we saw the same thing in the Senate on that Rand Paul motion. So you know there’s a lot of big talk Senate Republicans. I’m thinking of (Inaudible talk) and I’m thinking of Burr and they fell in line. Because the coward’s choice was to acquit Trump last year and the coward’s choice this time around is going to be to acquit Trump again. At least for the Republicans.
Leahy: When you say cowards you mean the people that really don’t like Donald Trump, but can’t take the political heat. I want to tip my hat to you for another exclusive for The Tennessee Star. You get these great exclusives. They just show up and they are fantastic.
Listen to the full third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Anthony Bouchard” by Anthony Bouchard.Â
