Liz Cheney Risks Losing Primary to a Trump-Endorsed Candidate Over Her Role in 6 January Panel

The former Republican president has made it his goal to ensure that Cheney is not re-elected in 2022 following her decision to vote for Trump's second impeachment and agreeing to take part on the Democrat-sponsored committee digging up evidence of insurrection and fraud against the ex-POTUS and his allies.

House Republican Liz Cheney's (R-WY) reelection as a lawmaker in Wyoming is facing the prospect of an ugly fight on the stage of primaries against Harriet Hageman – a GOP candidate now endorsed by Donald Trump and many other Republicans – all due to Cheney's participation in the US House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, several lawmakers and officials pointed out in comments for the Hill.

"I think that the race itself will be really ugly. I would say probably in the next month or two we're going to see things get much more aggressive out here", Campbell County Commissioner Mark Christensen said.

A main reason for concern is the Republican electorate in the state, which is not only highly conservative, but also strongly supported Trump in the last election, according to a Cheney ally, state House lawmaker Landon Brown. The former president earlier vowed that he would spare no effort to end Cheney's career as a GOP lawmaker because she criticised him and became the vice chair of the 6 January committee.

"I certainly think that’s gonna hurt her, especially here in Wyoming where you've got an extremely conservative base. I think this will probably be the bloodiest race in Wyoming's history", Brown said.

Some polls show that Hageman overcoming Cheney by as much as 20%, while others suggest she can secure the nomination in 2022 despite significant opposition from within her own party. Cheney has not backed down on her commitment to the 6 January committee in the face of a possible electoral loss. On the contrary, she has suggested that a vote against her in primaries would be a vote in favour of perpetuating Trump's "big lie", referring to the latter's baseless and consistent claims that Democrats committed voter fraud in 2020 to steal the election.

Trump and his allies in the GOP have increased pressure on Cheney to convince as many Republican voters as possible to switch their support to Hageman. Some voters, it has been suggested however, could abandon Cheney on grounds unrelated to party infighting. An unnamed adviser to Hageman has asserted that in what was referred to as her crusade against Trump, Cheney had lost touch with her constituents and their needs.

"Voters in Wyoming care about Wyoming issues. They care about Joe Biden’s war on their energy economy, they care about inflation in Wyoming. They want an actual representative, and Liz Cheney spends 100 percent of the time talking about Jan. 6", a Hageman campaign adviser declared to the Hill.

House Democrats primarily established the US House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, and were joined by several Republicans later branded by Trump and his followers as 'RINOs', a label that stands for "Republicans in name only."

The House committee seeks to identify those responsible for the deadly events of 6 January. On that day, in what many are increasingly referring to as a failed coup, a group of Trump supporters forcibly entered the Capitol building in a failed attempt to thwart the certification of the 2020 US presidential election results. The violence and vandalism led to at least five deaths and widespread damage.

The Jan 6 committee is more recently focusing on the communications and actions of Trump and his allies. The panel threw a wide net of subpoenas for former White House officials, lawmakers and their telecom data. The committee has also invited several people to testify, and has held several Trump allies in contempt of Congress for failing to appear.