By STEVE PEOPLES and MEAD GRUVER
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, Donald Trump’s fiercest Republican adversary in Congress, was defeated in a GOP major Tuesday, falling to a rival backed by the previous president in a rout that bolstered his grip on the celebration’s base.
The third-term congresswoman and her allies entered the day downbeat about her prospects, conscious that Trump’s backing gave Harriet Hageman appreciable elevate within the state the place he received by the most important margin throughout the 2020 marketing campaign. Cheney was already waiting for a political future past Capitol Hill that might embrace a 2024 presidential run, probably placing her on one other collision course with Trump.
Cheney described her loss as the start of a brand new chapter in her political profession as she addressed a small assortment of supporters, together with her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, on the sting of an unlimited discipline flanked by mountains and bales of hay.
“Our work is much from over,” she mentioned Tuesday night, evoking Abraham Lincoln, who additionally misplaced congressional elections earlier than ascending to the presidency and preserving the union.
The outcomes — and the roughly 30-point margin — have been a robust reminder of the GOP’s speedy shift to the best. A celebration as soon as dominated by nationwide security-oriented, business-friendly conservatives like her father now belongs to Trump, animated by his populist enchantment and, above all, his denial of defeat within the 2020 election.
Such lies, which have been roundly rejected by federal and state election officers together with Trump’s personal legal professional normal and judges he appointed, remodeled Cheney from an occasional critic of the previous president to the clearest voice contained in the GOP warning that he represents a menace to democratic norms. She’s the highest Republican on the Home panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, rebellion on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters, an assault she referenced in nodding to her political future.
“I've mentioned since Jan. 6 that I'll do no matter it takes to make sure Donald Trump is rarely once more wherever close to the Oval Workplace — and I imply it,” she mentioned.
4 hundred miles to the east of Cheney’s concession speech, festive Hageman supporters gathered at a sprawling out of doors rodeo and Western tradition pageant in Cheyenne, many sporting cowboy boots, hats and blue denims.
“Clearly we’re all very grateful to President Trump, who acknowledges that Wyoming has just one congressional consultant and now we have to make it depend,” mentioned Hageman, a ranching business legal professional who had completed third in a earlier bid for governor.
Echoing Trump’s conspiracy theories, she falsely claimed the 2020 election was “rigged” as she courted his loyalists within the runup to the election.
Trump and his staff celebrated Cheney’s loss, which can characterize his greatest political victory in a major season stuffed with them. The previous president known as the outcomes “a whole rebuke” of the Jan. 6 committee.
“Liz Cheney needs to be ashamed of herself, the way in which she acted, and her spiteful, sanctimonious phrases and actions in direction of others,” he wrote on his social media platform. “Now she will be able to lastly disappear into the depths of political oblivion the place, I'm certain, she can be a lot happier than she is true now. Thanks WYOMING!”
The information provided a welcome break from Trump’s concentrate on his rising authorized entanglements. Simply eight days earlier, federal brokers executing a search warrant recovered 11 units of labeled information from the previous president’s Florida property.
Cheney’s defeat would have been unthinkable simply two years in the past. The daughter of a former vp, she hails from some of the distinguished political households in Wyoming. And in Washington, she was the No. 3 Home Republican, an influential voice in GOP politics and coverage with a sterling conservative voting file.
Cheney will now be pressured from Congress on the finish of her third and closing time period in January. She is just not anticipated to depart Capitol Hill quietly.
She's going to proceed in her management function on the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6 assault till it dissolves on the finish of the yr. And she or he is actively contemplating a 2024 White Home bid — as a Republican or unbiased — having vowed to do all the pieces in her energy to struggle Trump’s affect in her celebration.
With Cheney’s loss, Republicans who voted to question Trump are going extinct.
In all, seven Republican senators and 10 Republican Home members backed Trump’s impeachment within the days after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress tried to certify President Joe Biden’s victory. Simply two of these 10 Home members have received their primaries this yr. After two Senate retirements, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is the one such Senate Republican on this yr’s poll.
Cheney was pressured to hunt help from the state’s tiny Democratic minority in her bid to drag off a victory. However Democrats throughout America, main donors amongst them, took discover. She raised at the very least $15 million for her election, a surprising determine for a Wyoming political contest.
Voters responded to the curiosity within the race. With somewhat greater than half of the vote counted, turnout ran about 50% increased than within the 2018 Republican major for governor.
If Cheney does finally run for president — both as a Republican or an unbiased — don’t count on her to win Wyoming’s three electoral votes.
“We like Trump. She tried to question Trump,” Cheyenne voter Chester Barkell mentioned of Cheney on Tuesday. “I don’t belief Liz Cheney.”
And in Jackson, Republican voter Dan Winder mentioned he felt betrayed by his congresswoman.
“Over 70% of the state of Wyoming voted Republican within the final presidential election and he or she turned proper round and voted towards us,” mentioned Winder, a lodge supervisor. “She was our consultant, not her personal.”
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Peoples reported from New York. AP writers Thomas Peipert in Cheyenne and Jill Colvin in new York contributed.