2 years ago
JACKSON, Wyo. — Liz Cheney will likely lose her House seat later on Tuesday. But her political future is just getting started.
Hailing from a state that voted for Donald Trump by more than 40 percentage points in 2020, Cheney has been the often-lonely face of intra-party resistance against the former president.
Trump has been hellbent on ushering her out from Congress as a result, throwing his support behind primary challenger Harriet Hageman, an attorney and one-time Cheney ally. The revenge mission appears to be on the precipice of success: Hageman has comfortably led every public poll in the state’s at-large district.
But Cheney's political future is shrouded in mystery. Her campaign even ducked the press when she was casting her ballot, heading at the last minute to a different voting site across town from where most of the media was camped out. Instead, Cheney played pick-and-choose with news outlets to capture the traditional and iconic moment of a candidate casting their vote, with CBS News given advance notice to set up a location 15 minutes away at the Teton County Library with a camera and TV correspondent ready.
A Cheney aide attributed the switch-up to security, saying that her events are not “announced or advised beforehand except the rarest cases where we have been explicit that the time and location should not be published or shared.”
But it fits a pattern of the Cheney campaign running a merry-go-round approach of offering special access to outlets, while keeping others on the back-burner.
Cheney’s status as Trump’s top political enemy stems from being the highest-ranking Republican who voted to impeach him after the Jan. 6 insurrection, coupled with her role on the House select committee investigating the former president’s culpability for that day.
It has caused her once fast-rising House career to dramatically implode, fueling her ouster from GOP leadership and ostracization in the party generally. But Cheney’s efforts to take her message nationally, rather than locally, has prompted widespread speculation that it is now the groundwork of her plans to run for president — a prospect she has not dismissed.
“Nobody would piss off the entire state of Wyoming without another plan,” said Kasey Mateosky, a Republican running to be Teton County Commissioner.
Cheney’s race is the last outstanding primary race of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over his role in the Jan. 6 assault. Only six of those members sought reelection, and just two won their primary races and advanced to their general election — California’s David Valadao, who is in a swing district, and Washington’s Dan Newhouse — sending a clear signal of Trump’s iron grip over the party even out of office.
It is against those national political headwinds that Cheney has staked her future.
To House Republican colleagues and Jackson Hole residents alike, it was clear Cheney knew her role on the Jan. 6 panel — at the appointment of Speaker Nancy Pelosi — would cause irreparable damage inside her party. But she has leaned into the committee’s work anyway, co-chairing dramatic hearings on national TV.
And in a sign her campaign knows she has alienated much of her conservative support in the state, Cheney is seeking to encourage Democrats and independents to register as a Republican and participate in the GOP primary. It makes for an odd coalition of now-supportive liberals — at least two Democratic members of Congress cut videos urging Wyoming Democrats to switch parties to back her — who have long despised the Cheney family and the old guard of the Republican Party.
Cheney has well-outraised her primary challenger, with the support of one-time party leaders like her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, former President George W. Bush and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) — all of whom have seen their standing diminish amid the Trump-fueled takeover of the Republican Party. And while Cheney has spent millions trying to hold her seat, her fundraising has well outpaced what she has spent — leaving potentially millions in the bank for her future political plans.
Crossover voting is notoriously difficult to measure, and it’s even tougher to successfully pull off in any meaningful amounts. But voter registration records in Wyoming have shown at least a nominal increase in Republican registrants over the summer, while Democratic numbers ticked down.
The registration numbers were even more dramatic in Teton County, the bluest, most liberal part of the state. It is in this touristy, resort-filled part of Wyoming — now known for its wealthy out-of-towners pushing its less wealthy locals further out — that Cheney cast her vote on primary day.
Palin vies for a comeback in Alaska
Tuesday’s other big election is in Alaska, where former Gov. Sarah Palin is vying for a political comeback. Palin is running in the special election to fill out the remainder of the late GOP Rep. Don Young’s term.
Palin’s time as a star at the center of the Republican Party burned hot and fast: Over the course of around three years, she was elected governor of Alaska by defeating the incumbent, ascended to the 2008 presidential ticket and ultimately resigned from office in 2009.
Her chance to return is complicated by Alaska’s new election format, with the special election being the first conducted under the new rules. In the state, all candidates now run in an all-party primary, with the top four advancing to a ranked-choice general election.
Palin finished in first in the June primary, followed by fellow Republican Nick Begich, the grandson of the late Democratic congressman of the same name, and former Democratic state Rep. Mary Sattler Peltola. (A fourth candidate who qualified dropped out.)
But results from the primary suggest that a ranked-choice “instant runoff” will be necessary, which would mean a winner won’t be known until state election officials conduct the ranked choice tabulation on Aug. 31. Palin took first place in June with just 27 percent support.
Regularly scheduled primaries for the November general election are also on Tuesday, including for a full term for the state’s at-large House seat. GOP Gov. Mike Dunleavy is also seeking reelection and facing a field that includes former Gov. Bill Walker, who is running as an independent.
And Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is on the ballot, where both she and her Trump-endorsed opponent Kelly Tshibaka are expected to advance to a ranked-choice general election. Murkowski voted to convict Trump on the impeachment charges Cheney supported last year.
The new format in the state is expected to benefit Murkowski, who has a history in drawing a broader coalition of support — including her 2010 victory, where she won a statewide write-in campaign after losing the Republican Senate primary.
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