Tuesday night's election results in Wyoming confirmed what much of the political world expected. He lost his seat in Congress to former President Donald Trump's first challenger, Harriet Hegeman.
Cheney, the daughter of a former Vice President, has gone froma 93% chance of voting for Trump to being one of his fiercest opponents over the past two years. became. She refused to follow his efforts on her behalf to overturn the 2020 presidential election. She refused to vote to decertify election results in key battleground states where he lost, voted to impeach him for inciting insurrection, and most importantly, House Speaker Nancy PelosiAttack on the Houses of Parliament onJanuary 6, 2021.
In her concession speech from Jackson, Wyoming, on Tuesday night, Cheney reminded her supporters that she easily won reelection last time. She said the path to victory was clear this time, but she couldn't join Trump's lies to further the idea that legitimate elections could be overthrown by intimidation and violence.
"If we don't hold those responsible accountable, then we are condoning this act and it will be a hallmark of every election," Cheney said. “America will never be the same.”
Her unwillingness to continue to submit to Trump and her responsiveness to his attacks on American democracy made her We made it something of a hero in the liberal world, but it didn't quite work in Ruby Red Wyoming.
"Wyoming Republicans turned against Liz Cheney because they felt she had been unfaithful," Stephanie Anderson, a professor of political science at the University of Wyoming, told her TIME. Told. "And loyalty is a very important value to Wyoming people. It's part of their identity." she added.
In fact, a Casper Star Tribune pollof Republican voter candidates conducted last monthfound that only 30% of respondents voted for Hagemann in favor of Trump. 60% said it was because they didn't acknowledge Cheney's role at the January 6 committee meeting, whereas they said they planned to.
Cheney's national profile rose significantly this summer with her eight hearings from the Commission on 6 January. From theinitial hearings in early June,tomust-watch TV,the Commission has produced compelling evidence pointing to Trump's responsibility in the deadly attack. The Justice Department informedthat some of the former federal prosecutors tried to block the peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden. The president, who had expressed doubts about Attorney General Merrick Garland indicting former federal prosecutors, began to reconsider that assumption.
A turning point came in July at a hearing for former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. He testified that the Secret Service told President Trump on his January 6th that many of his supporters had come to his rally. The rally near the White House was heavily armed. Trump urged them to go to the Capitol anyway. The 26-year-old former employee also said Trump tried to march with them to the Capitol even after White House Counsel Pat Cipollone warned staff that Trump would be indicted for "every crime imaginable." told the panel. Cheney led Hutchinson's interrogation.
At each session, 56-year-old Cheney was the star, and soon he released his opening and closing statements filled with sharp soundbites throughout his segments on Twitter and broadcast news. . Some of her most memorable lines are directed at Republicans who continue to support Trump. "There will come a day when Donald Trump will be gone," she said at one hearing. "But your disgrace will remain." It wasn't something to call Many Wyoming Republicans agree with Trump's false claim that the election was stolen, believing Biden legitimately won the election, according to a recent University of Wyoming studyOnly 16% of Hagemen voters. By contrast, 94% of his Cheney supporters believe he won fair and square. But those voters were far too few for Cheney to hold out.
"The people of Wyoming deserve leaders who reflect their views and values," Hegeman, 59, said in her statement last year before launching the campaign. "But Liz Cheney has betrayed us for her personal war with President Trump, who won Wyoming twice by majority."
Wyoming political source Opponents of Cheney also tried to portray her role on his Jan. 20, according to Reuters. Her 6 Commission shows she is out of touch with her own voters. "Part of their message is that Cheney is too focused on Washington and not enough on Wyoming," Jim King, a professor of political science at the University of Wyoming, told Time.
Even her supporters in the state recognized that Cheney's duties on Capitol Hill gave her opponents a substantial advantage. “The amount of time she spends there during the Jan. 6 hearings is taking away from her ability to campaign here in Wyoming,” State Rep. Landon Brown told TIME last month. "And to see Harriet doing no other work than basically traveling around Wyoming, that's not a good sign."[51][52] It didn't keep her out of the race. According to The New York Times,she had to hire private security because she was inundated with death threats.
The danger of violence and the possibility of being booed at public events important to local political candidates has discouraged her from going out that she could otherwise have attended. I was. For example, last month she skipped Cheyenne Frontier Days. This is the world's largest open-air rodeo that Wyoming politicians are actually required to attend.
But Cheney's closest friends believed she was right, given Trump's biting words and the resentment against her that hearoused in his followers. I say I refused to be discouraged from doing what I believed in.
"Everybody knows who she is," former Senator Alan Simpson, a Republican from Wyoming, tells her TIME. "She's a feisty and brave person. She's full of Donald J. Trump. So what if she loses? She's a patriot. She's ready for this fictional character to run again." I see her undressed when she's playing.Of course he hates her.And he's no sweet old fart.He's a vengeful man."
But while Trump will certainly emerge victorious after Cheney is ousted from office, many experts doubt she will be in the spotlight any time soon. still has one term left in office, and at least two more January 6th hearings are scheduled for September. She also took steps that hinted at her future on the national stage,
in the final weeks of the campaign, when Cheney's father and former Vice President Dick Cheney 45th President. "In his 246-year history of our country, no one has been a greater threat to our country than Donald his Trump," Elder Cheney said in an ad paid for by his daughter's campaign. I said looking straight ahead.
"Liz is fearless," he continues. "She will never back down from the fight. There is nothing more important than what she does, and she will succeed, than lead the effort to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office again."
Given Trump's popularity in Wyoming, it was not a message expected to be loved by Cheney, a likely Republican primary voter. If anything, there may have been more resonance with Cheney-supporting national audiences in her quest to drive not only Trump but Trumpism out of the country.
Whether it will lead to a future presidential election, as some have speculated, or another lever of influence remains to be seen. It's hard to imagine Cheney making a big step forward.
"This primary is over," Cheney said Tuesday night.
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