There was no fanfare, no flackery. Not even a whispered leak of advance self-promotion.

But on Wednesday, in an auditorium at Duke University, a very specific type of news was matter-of-factly made by a very conservative Republican hardliner who once was one of Washington’s biggest newsmakers.

Frankly, Liz Cheney hasn’t been heard from much ever since she alienated her Grand Old Party’s invertebrates by showing them how to lead by choosing country over party – and telling the toughest truths about former President Donald Trump’s scheming to sabotage our democracy and overturn our 2020 election. And she’s battling still to prevent Trump from trying to sabotage again if he loses – and somehow making it stick.

So, Cheney quietly made news Wednesday in Durham, N.C., by answering a professor’s direct question with a direct answer. Will she announce who she will endorse for president in 2024? She said she’ll vote for the Democrat, Kamala Harris – and explained why:

“As a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this. And because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.”

This quickly became big news. After all, in 2020, after Joe Biden chose Harris as his vice president, Wyoming’s then-Rep. Liz Cheney tweeted: “Kamala Harris is a radical liberal who would raise taxes, take away guns & health insurance, and explode the size and power of the federal gov’t. …We won’t give her the chance.”

So far, the staunch conservative Cheney is the most famous Republican who says she’ll vote to give the progressive Harris a chance – to keep Trump away from the Oval Office.

Soon Cheney’s breaking news was gushing out of the Great News Funnel. But there was more.

On Friday, Cheney went to Texas and announced that her dad, former Vice President Dick Cheney, perhaps America’s best-known arch-conservative Republican, will also vote for Democrat Harris. And Liz Cheney also endorsed a Texas Democrat, Rep. Colin Allred, in his bid to defeat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.

The Cheneys, dad and daughter, may well give courage and comfort to some of your finest family, friends and neighbors, who really want to do the right thing – but think voting for a progressive Democrat is being a traitor to their party. Actually it’s the traitors to our country and democracy we must worry about.

Liz Cheney’s recent memoir and warning call, “Oath and Honor,” reveals many stories about how famous Republicans caved in after being pressured by Trump, who incited the violent mob that broke into the Capitol trying to prevent the certification of the 2020 election.

Cheney’s book also surfaced a tale that added vivid historic perspective to Trump’s 2020 crimes against our democracy. She quoted a letter that the wife of a Washington newspaper owner wrote to her sister-in-law after attending the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson, America’s third president. It was the first time our new nation’s presidency was transferred from one party to another. She marveled that it happened peacefully:

“I have this morning witnessed one of the most interesting scenes a free people can ever witness. The changes of administration, which in every government and in every age have most generally been epochs of confusion, villainy, and bloodshed, in our happy country take place without any species of distraction or disorder.”

Author Liz then proudly recalled what happened on Election Night of 1976, when President Gerald Ford called Democrat Jimmy Carter to concede defeat. But Ford had lost his voice. So he handed the phone to his chief-of-staff, and 35-year-old Dick Cheney read to Carter a gracious statement in which Ford said “we must now put the divisions of the campaign behind us and unite the country.” Quite a contrast to Biden’s 2021 inauguration, which Trump declined to attend.

Now here’s the rest of the story – a part Liz probably never knew: As Newsday’s Washington bureau chief, after writing a book on that campaign, I told Cheney I wanted to write a reflective piece about what makes America’s democracy and peaceful transfer of power a symbol that’s respected around the world. On Inauguration Day, I wanted to be standing alone in the Oval Office doorway at noon at that unique moment when the world’s most powerful office was between two masters. Liz, your dad agreed and helped make it happen.

At noon, Jan. 20, 1977, the Oval Office was silent. But the voice of the new boss taking the oath could be heard on the TV sets in other West Wing offices. A door opened and in came a longtime secretary, Nell Yates, who had been working there since Eisenhower was president in the 1950s. She looked at the desk, left, returned with a couple of books that she put on the desk between book holders. A bare desk looks sort of cold, she told me. Now, as power was transferred on Inauguration Day 1977, she told me, the desk, the Office, and America’s presidency at least looked welcoming.

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