Liz Cheney Loses Wyoming Congressional Republican Primary

The primary elections in Wyoming are a telling moment for the US Republican party. GOP Representative Liz Cheney is vice chair of the January 6 House select committee, whose goal is to investigate the January 6 insurrection. Cheney is one of former President Donald Trump’s biggest critics within the Republican party.

With an estimated 47% of the vote in the Wyoming primaries counted, Cheney stood with only 25,762 votes, her Trump-backed opponent Hageman had nearly double that total, with 50,836 votes. Cheney conceded defeat to Hageman after those overwhelming numbers spelled disaster for the congresswoman.

"This primary election is over, but now the real work begins," Cheney said, referring to her work on the January 6 committee. Cheney had called Hageman to congratulate her. Hageman is a Wyoming-born-and-raised resident who used her connection to the state and her support of Trump to win a landslide victory over Cheney.

Cheney’s decisive defeat in the Wyoming primaries to attorney Harriet Hageman, a Trump-endorsed candidate who used to be a supporter of Cheney and even praised during her first bid for Congress in 2016, is a fervent gesture in a state where Trump won 70% of the vote in 2020.

"Liz, you're fired!" Trump crowed to supporters at a rally in May of this year. "Wyoming deserves a congresswoman who stands up for you and your values, not one who spends all of her time putting you down and going after your president in the most vicious way possible."

The three-term congresswoman and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney had a target on her back, placed there by Trump supporters after she became the former president’s biggest critic in the Republican party, and vice-chaired the January 6 committee, which opponent Hageman blasted as politically motivated, and which Cheney has defended as in pursuit of a truth which she views as worth losing her job over.

“No matter what the outcome, it is certainly the beginning of a battle that is gonna continue and is going to go on, and as a country, we’re facing very challenging and difficult times. We are facing a moment where our democracy really is under attack and under threat,” Cheney told CBS prior to the Wyoming primary election results.

“And those of us across the board — Republicans, Democrats and independents — who believe deeply in freedom and who care about the Constitution and the future of the country, I think have an obligation to put that above party and, I think that fight is clearly going to continue and clearly going to go on,” said Cheney.