There comes a moment in the life of every career politician when moral imperatives intersect with the demands of political expediency. Most cede to the latter, but Liz Cheney definitely isn’t most politicians.
Depending on which side of the fence you’re on, Cheney is either an authentic American hero or a vile villain. It takes some unusual twists and turns to shape that kind of journey.
As of 2022, Liz Cheney has a net worth of $15 million. So let’s take an up close and personal look at how all of that played out for the senior representative from Wyoming.
Early Days
As the daughter of eventual vice president Dick Cheney, it was perhaps fated that Cheney would go into politics. She was born in Wisconsin in 1966, but the family ended up splitting time between Wyoming and Washington, D.C. when her father got elected to Congress.
Liz Cheney earned a bachelor’s degree from Colorado College in 1988, then went on to get a law degree from the University of Chicago. She then worked for the state department and a law firm before running for congress, and she’s been the US representative for Wyoming’s at-large congressional district since 2017.
Courting Controversy
For most of her initial political career, Cheney has followed in her father’s footsteps, playing the traditional political role of a staunch conservative Republican.
Her split with the leadership of the party’s far right-wing began when Donald Trump took office, and that division has gotten sharper especially when Trump was defeated by Joe Biden in the presidential election.
Unlike most Republicans who continued to mouth the party line that the election had been stolen from Trump, Cheney freely acknowledged that Trump lost. She viewed any efforts to overturn the results with disdain, especially the January 6th insurrection last year at the Capital.
That put her right in the center of Trump’s vengeance bullseye, and his ire increased exponentially when Cheney assumed a prominent leadership position on the committee investigating the specifics of what happened on January 6th.
As a result, there’s no middle ground for most people when it comes to how they feel about Liz Cheney. For conservative Republicans and Trump supporters, she’s evil incarnate, and to a large extent she’s become a pariah among conservatives.
Not surprisingly, those in the middle and on the other end of the spectrum consider her a hero. They see Cheney as an essential truth-teller who supports democracy, and they applaud her honesty when it comes to the extensive digging the January 6th committee has done.
As a result, Cheney’s political future is very much up in the air. She’s about to face the voters in Wyoming in an upcoming Republican primary, and it’s widely assumed that she’ll lose, given how conservative the state has been.
It’s anyone’s guess what role she’ll assume after that, but there’s no doubt that Liz Cheney will go down as a significant figure in American history for the role she’s played in the events of the last couple of years.
Personal Life
Cheney’s personal life has been stable and without controversy for some time. She married Philip Perry, a fellow lawyer, in 1993, and the couple has five children. Her husband’s net worth is estimated to be around $1.5 million.
