Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., is projected to lose her primary on Tuesday to Donald Trump-backed Harriet Hageman, ABC News reports, after Cheney built her political profile — and her campaign — around criticizing the former president as an existential threat to American democracy.
Cheney’s defeat was largely expected, given the partisan makeup of her seat and polling that showed her trailing Hageman. Trump won Wyoming in the last presidential election with some 70% of the vote. Still, Cheney’s defeat marks Trump’s biggest win in his revenge tour against intraparty detractors and a warning sign for other anti-Trump Republicans thinking of crossing him.
The race between Cheney and Hageman, both of whom staked out conservative policy platforms, played out largely along national themes and loyalty to Trump.
Cheney focused on criticizing Trump over his role in last year’s deadly Capitol insurrection, casting her reelection bid as a fight to maintain the GOP’s principles.
Hageman, meanwhile, echoed Trump’s unfounded election fraud claims and berated Cheney — whom Hageman had previously advised — as a lawmaker more focused on toppling the de facto GOP leader.
Cheney boasts a famous last name and significantly outraised Hageman. But over time it became clear that the three-term lawmaker was the underdog as polls showed Wyoming Republicans increasingly favoring her opponent.
In a sign of Cheney’s increasingly unsteady footing with members of her own party, her campaign started an outreach effort to voters to explain how they could change their party registration the day of the primary to vote for her — though operatives said there was little hope there were enough Democrats to change Cheney’s fate.
Cheney’s defeat marks a bookend to a meteoric rise and swift fall for an erstwhile GOP star.
Representative Liz Cheney, arrives for hearing at the Capitol in Washington, July 12, 2022.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images, FILE
She was first elected in 2016 and became the No. 3 Republican in the House in late 2018, a climb that fueled rumors she had an eye on the speakership one day.
However, after last year’s insurrection, she became the highest ranking House Republican to back impeaching Trump and ultimately became the vice chair of the special committee investigating the Capitol riot.
Her consistent criticisms of Trump infuriated many other House Republicans who accused her of derailing their messaging strategy, and some voters in Wyoming who viewed Cheney as an absentee representative more focused on the former president than state issues.
Still, Cheney refused to modulate her messaging — given, she said, the danger Trump represented — and indicated that she would continue her focus on combating election conspiracies even after her expected loss.
“Like many candidates across this country, my opponents in Wyoming have said that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen. No one who understands our nation’s laws, no one with an honest, honorable, genuine commitment to our Constitution would say that. It is a cancer that threatens our great Republic,” she said in her closing ad. “If we do not condemn these lies, if we do not hold those responsible to account, we will be excusing this conduct and it will become a feature of all elections. America will never be the same.”
Hageman, meanwhile, is expected to coast in the general election in one of the country’s reddest states and be a staunch Trump ally in the House.
“Absolutely the election was rigged. It was rigged to make sure that President Trump could not get reelected,” Hageman said at a campaign event earlier this month. “What happened in 2020 is a travesty.”