Liz Cheney looks poised to lose her House seat as Wyoming votes Tuesday
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Former President Donald Trump’s top critic in the House – Rep. Liz Cheney – seems poised to lose her seat as voters head to the polls Tuesday in Wyoming.
In a final poll in the run-up to Republican primary day, Cheney was behind the Trump-backed Harriet Hageman by 29 points – with University of Wyoming pollsters even accounting for Democrats and independents who might switch parties to vote for her.
Trump threw his whole weight behind the race – vowing to get revenge for Cheney’s criticism, impeachment vote and top role on the House select committee on January 6.
On election eve, Trump called into a tele-rally for Hageman and called the race ‘one of the most critical primary elections in the history of our country.’
‘The whole world is watching this one,’ the former president said.
He called Hageman – who was critical of Trump during his 2016 election and supported Sen. Ted Cruz – a ‘person I’ve gotten to know very well’ and a ‘friend.’
Then he turned his attention to Cheney.
‘This is your chance to send a message to the RINOs and the fake news media, the radical left lunatics, that we have unfortunately too many in our country, and you’re going to elect Harriet, and you’re going to tell warmonger Liz Cheney – so bad, so negative – Liz, you’re fired,’ Trump said.
Trump said that ‘few members of Congress in history have personally caused more damage to our republic than Liz Cheney.’
The Trump-backed lawyer Harriet Hageman (left) looks poised to unseat Rep. Liz Cheney (right), as voters in Wyoming head to the polls Tuesday to vote in the state’s Republican primary. The winner of the race will almost certainly win the election in November, in the ultra-red state
Former President Donald Trump (center) held a rally for Harriet Hageman (left) in late May and called into a tele-rally for her Monday night where he railed against Rep. Liz Cheney
A hand-painted sign in Casper, Wyoming that stands in opposition to the re-election of Rep. Liz Cheney, the most prominent GOP Trump critic in the House of Representatives
Another anti-Liz Cheney sign appeared on a billboard outside Cheyenne. Polling last week showed Cheney 29 points down in the pivotal primary race
‘The Democrats use her for sound bites, they like to say “Republican Liz Cheney” and then they go into these horrendous anti-Republican, anti-country sound bites,’ Trump said. ‘It’s been a disaster.’
‘She’s aided and abetted the radical Democrat Party in their unhinged, lawless and dangerous witchhunt – a witchhunt that never ends,’ the former president complained.
He added that Cheney’s pushed a ‘phony’ and ‘grotesquely false and fabricated hysterical partisan narrative’ about what happened on January 6.
Cheney is one of just two Republicans serving on the House select committee on January 6 – and the only one running for re-election in a political atmosphere that hasn’t been hospitable to anti-Trump GOP candidates.
The daughter of the former Republican vice president has remained steadfast in her criticism, saying in a campaign ad last week that her party’s embrace of Trump’s ‘big lie’ – his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him – is a ‘cancer.’
‘The lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is insidious,’ she said in the video.
A sign showing support for Rep. Liz Cheney in her re-election fight appears on an RV trailer in Crowheart, Wyoming just days before the pivotal primary that Cheney is expected to lose
Harriet Hageman (right) campaigns alongside Donald Trump Jr. (left) in June in Jackson, Wyoming
Harriet Hageman (center) talks to supporters at a campaign event in early March, alongside Republican Sen. Rand Paul (right)
She added that the false claims are a ‘door Donald Trump opened to manipulate Americans to abandon their principles, to sacrifice their freedom to justify violence, to ignore the rulings of our courts and the rule of law.’
Cheney’s been asked if she’s doing this to run for president.
‘I’ll make a decision on 2024 down the road,’ she told CNN in late July.
Her light Wyoming campaign trail schedule – reportedly due to security threats – also plays into this theory.
‘Because of threats to her safety, Cheney’s campaign events are never publicized, and reporters are only selectively alerted. Security is heavy and paranoia runs deep in Cheney World, probably for good reason,’ wrote This Town author Mark Leibovich in The Atlantic last week.
The only details a spokesperson could provide to DailyMail.com about how she’ll spend election night was confirming she planned to speak.
No word on whether she’ll cast her ballot in-person.
The House is out of session so members are likely to be in their home states.
Hageman has been doing the more typical gripping-and-grinning associated with winning an election.
She held a rally with Trump in late May, and appeared alongside Donald Trump Jr. in June. She’ll hold an election night event in Cheyenne.
‘You have been the best president in my lifetime in addressing the regulatory burden we deal with,’ she told Trump after he delivered remarks on the call Monday night.
That specific praise comes from her career as a lawyer, often fighting government regulations and environmentalists – earning her the nickname from some, ‘the wicked witch of the west.’ A 2009 profile of Hageman in High Country News also pointed out that the moniker came from her habit of wear goth-like outfits of all black.
But beyond the wonky compliment, Hageman has also embraced Trump’s election lies, which he continued to go on about in the Monday night call, saying that Democrats don’t want voter ID laws ‘because they want to cheat.’
‘Because that’s what they do,’ Trump grumbled.
It’s a different Hageman from the 2016 version who supported Cheney – who was running for the House for the first time – and was actively working against Trump.
Hageman went to the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland as a delegate for Cruz and was part of a group of Republicans who wanted to ‘unbind’ delegates in a last-ditch effort for Trump to lose the nomination.
The effort didn’t work and when The New York Times highlighted Hageman’s participation in it in September 2021, she said she had been fooled.
‘I heard and believed the lies the Democrats and Liz Cheney’s friends in the media were telling at the time, but that is ancient history as I quickly realized that their allegations against President Trump were untrue,’ she told the paper.
‘He was the greatest president of my lifetime, and I am proud to have been able to renominate him in 2020. And I’m proud to strongly support him today,’ the House hopeful added.