The primaries in recent months have also brought into focus the role that a handful of prominent Republicans, including Cheney and former Vice President Mike Pence, are seeking to play in moving the GOP beyond Trump and his electoral refusal. But Wyoming’s results on Tuesday showed the long odds facing Trump’s critics in a party where the former president remains the most dominant figure and is teasing a third run for the White House in 2024. Cheney has tried to assemble a coalition of Democrats, independents and moderates and anti-Trump Republicans — many of whom were ideological opponents of the neoconservative lawmaker 19 months ago — to save her seat. Her campaign sent information to registered Democrats in Wyoming about how to change their party registration, and in interviews across the state ahead of the election, some Democrats said they were voting for Cheney. But the Cowboy State’s electorate is almost entirely Republican. Wyoming has more than 215,000 registered Republicans compared to just 36,000 registered Democrats, according to figures from the secretary of state’s office. That’s a drop of about 15,000 registered Democrats from early 2021, but the pool of party switches, along with a drop of more than 3,000 likely-turned-Republican independent voters, wasn’t big enough to save Cheney from losing to a Republican. Party that had turned against her. “I think she stood up for what she believed in,” said John Grant, a Republican who voted for Cheney even though he suspected she would fall behind. “It took a lot of courage to stand up to the Republican Party and Donald Trump.”
“Anxiety from the start”
The roots of Cheney’s loss were planted long before Tuesday’s primary. And in some cases, the seeds were planted during factional battles in the Wyoming GOP dating back to the tea party era, when Cheney was still a resident of Virginia. The state’s Democratic Party, with no real competition from Democrats, has split into two factions, with a more moderate wing of the establishment butting heads with a more conservative faction that has increasingly wrested control. The establishment wing retains some power in Wyoming. Gov. Mark Gordon, part of that wing, won Tuesday. But the conservative faction has seized control of the state Republican Party and many of its local organizations. “In Wyoming, we don’t necessarily embrace the idea of a big stage,” Wyoming GOP Chairman Frank Eathorne told Fox earlier this year. Wyoming Republicans’ reservations about Cheney were first evident in 2016, when she won her House seat after winning just 39 percent of the vote in the GOP primary against a fractured field. Some of her opponents cast her as too close to the establishment and others — including Tim Stubson, a former state legislator who now supports Cheney. But she was by far the best-known candidate in the race thanks to the decade her father spent representing Wyoming in Congress before becoming secretary of defense and later vice president. Cheney has since been re-elected, largely because she had not broken with conservatives on major issues. Stubson said she would do it again, until the aftermath of the January 6, 2021 riot on Capitol Hill, when Cheney became a leading critic of Trump’s actions and a defender of the integrity of the 2020 election. The grounds for a divorce from Cheney were immediately apparent. Although the Wyoming GOP has been torn apart by warring factions, one thing that has broadly united those factions is support for Trump. He won Wyoming in 2020 by 43.3 percentage points over President Joe Biden — Trump’s largest margin of victory anywhere in the country. “Yes, there may have been an anti-Liz undercurrent there, but there’s no way he would have had a hard time getting elected,” Stubson said. “Her relationship with that part of the party was awkward from the beginning, and they probably never fully embraced her because she was the definition of an establishment Republican. But she was right about the policies,” he said. “In my mind, it’s kind of a binary issue: If he votes to impeach, it doesn’t matter what he does next.”
Voters say Cheney was too focused on Trump
While Trump’s shadow loomed large during the race, conversations with voters across Wyoming last week often came across a sense of disappointment in Cheney, more than a burning sense of anger. Several people said they felt Cheney spent too much time on national issues — at the expense of her focus on energy and natural resource priorities critical to the state. “I want Wyoming to be protected and I don’t feel like Liz is doing that job,” said Jenille Thomas, who lives in the coal mining town of Rock Springs in southwestern Wyoming. For many Republican voters in Wyoming, however, it was Cheney’s vote to impeach Trump that spurred them to action. Esther Egan, a 68-year-old house cleaner who lives in Jackson, said she voted for Hageman because Cheney “got us involved when we needed her the most.” “They can say what they want about Trump, but he’s done a really good job. And then she turns around,” Egan said. “He’s with Nancy Pelosi.” Kathryn Norsworthy, a 68-year-old homemaker in Jackson, said she switched from an unaffiliated voter to a Republican to vote for Hageman, citing her support from Trump. “I’m not at all in favor of hearings on January 6,” he said. “I didn’t like that he voted against Trump. I’m very pro-Trump. I listen to him.”
Going down swinging
Cheney was by far the most prominent of the 10 House Republicans who voted in January 2021 to impeach Trump. She revealed her decision to do so a day before the House vote, saying in a statement that Trump “called this mob, rallied the mob and ignited this attack. Everything that followed was his doing.” The backlash he faced within the GOP built over the coming months. In May 2021, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy publicly approved Cheney’s removal from her position as No. 3 on the party’s leadership team. That same month, the House GOP removed Cheney from her leadership position by voice vote. She followed the impeachment by telling reporters, in a preview of how she would approach next year and her re-election campaign: “I will do everything in my power to make sure the former president never gets near the Oval Office again.” In July 2021, Cheney accepted a position as one of two Republicans, along with retired Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger, on the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 riot. As the committee conducted its investigation, Trump set his sights on revenge, backing challengers to more than 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him. Trump’s biggest target was Cheney. He endorsed Hageman, a former Republican National Committee member and attorney who was once a Cheney ally, on the day she entered the race in September 2021. For the most part, Trump’s efforts have succeeded. Four out of 10 have retired. Three others, besides Cheney, lost their primaries. Only two survived their primaries, and California Rep. David Valadao and Washington Rep. Dan Newhouse did so in part because their states run open primaries for all parties. As those retirements piled up and those primaries unfolded, Cheney was busy playing a leading role in that committee, in its interviews with former Trump administration officials and in its public hearings in which the committee revealed some of its findings. He has also looked for opportunities to challenge the direction of the GOP. She delivered a scathing rebuke of Trump and her party leadership in a speech in late June at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. “We are facing a domestic threat that we have never faced before — and this is a former President who is trying to unravel the foundations of our constitutional Republic,” Cheney said at the time. “And he is aided by Republican leaders and elected officials who have become willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man.” Weeks after that speech, Cheney was elusive when asked about running for president in 2024. She told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview that she would “make a decision about 2024 down the road.” In an interview with CNN’s Kasie Hunt earlier this month, Cheney made it clear she won’t tone down her criticism of Trump at all — even if it costs her the House seat her father once held and has held since 2017. “We’re in a situation where former President Trump has betrayed the patriotism of millions of people across our country, and many people here in Wyoming, and lied to them,” he said. “And what I know how to do is tell the truth and make sure people understand the truth about what happened and why it matters so much.” Even though polls showed Cheney headed for a resounding defeat, she stuck to a message that focused squarely on Trump. Her campaign bought advertising time on Fox for a spot with Dick Cheney in which she called Trump a “coward” who lies to his supporters and “tried to steal the last election” using violence.
What’s next
It didn’t take him long to clarify the result of Tuesday’s qualifiers. Cheney was badly beaten and conceded the fight to Hageman quickly. She told her supporters that she won the primary with 73% backing two…
