The former vice-president Dick Cheney, a lifelong Republican, will vote for the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, in November’s presidential election, his daughter Liz Cheney said on Friday.
Liz Cheney, who herself endorsed Harris on Thursday, made the announcement when asked by Mark Leibovich of the Atlantic during an onstage interview at the Texas Tribune festival in Austin.
“Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris,” Liz Cheney said to audience cheers.
“Wow,” Leibovich replied.
Like his daughter, Dick Cheney has been an outspoken critic of Donald Trump, notably during Liz Cheney’s ill-fated re-election campaign in 2022.
In a campaign ad for Liz Cheney as she sought a fourth term as Wyoming’s lone congressperson, Dick Cheney called the former president a “coward” for trying to “steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him”.
The ad did little good for his daughter in a deep-red state that once held the Cheney family dear but is now thoroughly in Trump’s corner. By a two-to-one margin, Liz Cheney lost her Republican primary to the Trump-endorsed attorney Harriet Hageman.
Notably absent from Friday’s endorsement announcement was the 83-year-old former vice-president, who has made few if any public appearances over the past year or more.