The United States’s democracy is on the ballot this fall—and corporations have a role to play in protecting in.
That’s according to Liz Cheney, the Republican U.S. representative for Wyoming, who spoke Tuesday about what working women need to succeed, her potential presidential bid, and, of course, former President Donald Trump during Fortune’s Most Powerful Women summit in California.
Speaking via livestream with Alyson Shontell, Fortune‘s editor-in-chief, Cheney repeated her belief that election denialism fueled by the former president and propagated by a new class of Republican politicians is putting America’s democracy at stake.
Cheney lost her primary bid earlier this year after she became a vocal critic of Trump. Though many expect Cheney to run for president herself in 2024, she skirted the question at the conference, instead reiterating that she is focused on her work with the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 capitol insurrection.
“It has really demonstrated the breadth and the depth of the effort to overturn the election and to stop the peaceful transfer of power,” Cheney said about the work of the committee. “And it was an effort that at every step of the way the former president was deeply involved in.”
She said that corporations play a “hugely important role” in protecting American democracy. For one, they can choose not to donate to and support politicians who promote lies that election results are fake or rigged.
She pointed to the election in Arizona—in which Gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, U.S. Senate nominee Blake Masters, and Secretary of State nominee Mark Finchem have all echoed Trump’s lies about the 2020 presidential election results—as an example of where corporations can step up.
“Like all voters, corporate America has a real responsibility to be clear about the kinds of politics that they’re going to reward and incentivize, and the kinds of leaders that they’re going to reward and incentivize,” Cheney said.
