Liz Cheney, a vocal critic of Donald Trump within the Republican Party, appears poised to lose her seat as representative from Wyoming on Tuesday in a primary contest against a candidate endorsed by the former president.
Polls indicate Cheney will lose to attorney Harriet Hageman in a state that Trump won by the largest margin in the 2020 election.
Win or lose, Cheney — the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney — has vowed to stay on the political stage as she ponders running for president in 2024. In the short term, however, Cheney appears poised to lose to Hageman, a lawyer for the cattle industry that has benefited from the fury of the Trump movement in its campaign to oust Cheney from Congress.
“I’m still hopeful that the polls are wrong,” said Landon Brown, a state representative in Wyoming and a staunch Cheney supporter. “It would be a shame if she loses. She would show how Donald Trump has the Republican Party hijacked.”
The primaries in Wyoming and Alaska will be yet another test of Trump’s political strength and his nationalist ideology before the November legislative elections. So far, the former president has been largely successful in molding the GOP in his image, with his candidates winning primaries in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania.
Tuesday’s primary comes just eight days after FBI agents raided Trump’s Florida mansion to retrieve 11 boxes of classified documents. Republicans were initially quick to declare their support for the former president, though over time, as more details emerged, reactions became more mixed.
In Alaska, a recent change in election rules has given another Republican Trump critic, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a chance to survive the former president’s fury even as she voted to impeach him in his second impeachment trial. .
Under changes to Alaska’s election rules, the four candidates with the most votes, regardless of party, will advance to the election in November, where voters will have to rank them in order of preference.
In total, seven senators and 10 Republican representatives joined Democrats in trying to impeach Trump after supporters of the former president attacked the Capitol in an attempt to prevent Joe Biden from being certified as the winner of the presidential election.
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