Liliana Salgado and Nathan Lane
Cheney’s defeat by Harriet Hageman marks a major victory for the former president in his campaign to oust Republicans who supported the impeachment after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol building last year.
The fate of U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who also voted for impeachment and will face another Trump-backed candidate on Tuesday, remains unclear. Polls for the primary, a nonpartisan format in which the top four vote-getters advance to the general election, have not yet closed.
With 18% of expected ballots counted, Hageman led the Republican field with 65.1% of the vote, followed by Cheney with 30.3%, according to Edison Research.
Both Wyoming and Alaska are solidly Republican, making it unlikely that the outcome of either will affect whether President Joe Biden’s Democrats lose their slim majority in Congress. Republicans are expected to take back the House and also have a chance to gain control of the Senate.
Still, Cheney’s ouster is the latest sign of Trump’s lasting influence on the Republican Party. Trump, who has hinted he will run for president in 2024, has made ending Cheney’s career in Congress a top priority among the 10 House Republicans who support impeaching him in 2021.
Cheney, the daughter of former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, used her position on a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack to draw attention to Trump’s handling of the Capitol riot and his false claims about the 2020 election in an attempt to convince fellow Republicans that the former president is a threat to democracy.
Cheney in the House voted to impeach Trump on charges of inciting a riot in the Capitol, while Murkowski in the Senate voted to convict him on that charge. Ultimately, Trump was acquitted.
