WASHINGTON — As one of the nation’s biggest Democratic donors, the film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg helped make Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton into Hollywood darlings. But this year, he is backing a surprise candidate: Representative Liz Cheney, the staunchly conservative Wyoming Republican.

To help Ms. Cheney bolster her chances in Wyoming’s upcoming Republican primary — she is facing a Trump-backed opponent — Mr. Katzenberg and his wife have donated more than $43,000 to her campaign and groups supporting her.

“Cheney is the most important politician in America right now,” said Dmitri Mehlhorn, a political strategist who advises the LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, a major Democratic donor whom Mr. Mehlhorn said had quietly begun supporting Ms. Cheney.

The billionaire hedge fund manager Seth Klarman, an independent with liberal views on social policies who has given to Ms. Cheney’s campaign in recent months, said in an email to potential donors that the congresswoman was “perhaps the strongest voice in the Republican Party speaking out about the importance of upholding the Constitution.”

Ms. Cheney is one of very few politicians to whom Jane Fraser, a registered Democrat who is the chief executive of Citigroup, has given directly during this election cycle. A spokesman for Ms. Fraser declined to comment. Citigroup was the first major bank to offer employees paid travel to receive abortion services this year.

Of course she also gets plenty from crusty old Republicans, too.

Ms. Cheney’s re-election campaign raised more than $10 million through the end of March, substantially more than Ms. Hageman. Some of those donations came from veterans of Republican administrations like Michael Chertoff, who was homeland security secretary under President George W. Bush, and Theodore B. Olson, who was solicitor general for Mr. Bush and also worked for President Ronald Reagan.

Mr. Chertoff and Mr. Olson co-hosted a fund-raiser this year for Ms. Cheney with Bobbie Kilberg, who was a White House aide under Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and George H.W. Bush, at a Northern Virginia hotel.

Muh "based" legal immigrants

Khanh Nguyen, a Silicon Valley engineer who has given repeatedly to California Democrats like Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Adam B. Schiff, describes himself as a centrist with a smattering of liberal-leaning viewpoints. But as an immigrant from Vietnam, where he recalled violence and strongman politics as the norm, he said he was appalled by the events of Jan. 6.