Trump foes Liz Cheney, Lisa Murkowski face primaries, Sarah Palin
A billboard outside Cheyenne, Wyo., calls on voters to cast their ballots for Harriet Hageman, who is running against incumbent Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in the Republican primary election Aug. 16, 2022.
Thomas Peipert | AP
Two prominent congressional Republicans who made enemies of former President Donald Trump are set Tuesday to defend their seats against his hand-picked primary challengers in Wyoming and Alaska.
Frequent Trump critic Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming is expected to lose by a wide margin. The once-high-ranking Republican’s standing in the party collapsed after she voted to impeach Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and then took a leading role on the House select committee investigating the insurrection.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who also voted to convict Trump over the riot, is expected to survive her own primary fight, possibly thanks to the state’s primary voting system that lets the top four candidates continue on to the general election. If she advances past Tuesday, observers anticipate her moderate politics will give her an edge.
Meanwhile, Trump has backed former Alaska governor Sarah Palin as she stages a political comeback attempt in a special election for the state’s U.S. House seat.
The Wyoming and Alaska primaries come as Trump has flexed his power over the Republican Party to try to purge it of insufficiently loyal members, especially those who backed his second impeachment. Of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in 2021, four have announced their retirement and three have lost their races.
Wyoming
Unlike most of them, Cheney has not shied away from her impeachment vote in order to try to convince Republicans in her overwhelmingly pro-Trump state to keep her in Congress.
Rather, Cheney has made it a central feature of her campaign, framing her vocal opposition as a moral imperative that transcends the goal of political self preservation.
“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who has posed a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” said Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, in one of multiple campaign ads focused on Trump.
The tactic has put Cheney at odds with much of the GOP, which has stuck with Trump after the violent Capitol riot by hundreds of his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.
That mob, which stormed the U.S. Capitol and forced members of Congress to flee their chambers, believed the then-president’s false claims that his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud. Trump continues to spread election conspiracy theories and falsely assert the election was rigged.
On Tuesday, Cheney’s principled opposition to the “Big Lie” appears likely to cost her her job. Harriet Hageman, Trump’s pick to unseat the incumbent Cheney, is ahead in the polls by hefty double-digit margins. Hageman has echoed Trump’s false claims about the 2020 race.
Cheney’s campaign has far outraised Hageman’s. But in a state that went 70% for Trump in…
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