Rep. Liz Cheney overwhelms Wyoming’s only congressional seat thanks to her outspoken condemnation of former President Donald J. Trump and what she described as a threat to democracy by his far-right supporters. It got the most attention in the competition.
But challenger Harriet Hageman, who ousted her in Tuesday’s Republican primary, has a track record of vehemently advocating in Wyoming, particularly on issues related to the state’s rancher, energy and mining interests.
She spent decades fighting environmentalists in America’s least populated states and as a trial attorney opposing federal rules protecting land, water and endangered species. A case in point was the successful challenge of Clinton-era federal regulations to protect millions of acres of national forest from road construction, mining and other development. A federal judge issued an injunction against this regulation in 2003.
Hageman also represents groups seeking to lift the protection of gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act. A state that controls hunting. An unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate in 2018, she Proposed transfer Transfer one million acres of state land to the state. warned It would have led to the sale of valuable hunting, fishing and hiking areas.
“She has a long-standing reputation among conservationists and sportsmen’s groups for being anti-Federalist, especially when it comes to land ownership,” said Dan Smitherman, Wyoming director of the Wilderness Society. “Most of the major conservation groups, and perhaps 50 to 60 percent of the sportsmen’s groups, say that we will defend against her on issues of public lands, and perhaps issues such as wolves and bears. It is assumed.”
At a luncheon last week at the Rock Springs Chamber of Commerce, a community built on fossil fuel mining, Mr. Hegeman promised to become Washington’s champion of those industries if elected.
“I think we need to make the federal government very irrelevant to our daily lives,” Hegemann told the audience.
And she warned that the Democratic climate and tax bill would be “devastating” for Wyoming, calling coal an “affordable, clean and acceptable resource that we should all use.” said.
Hageman spokesman Tim Murtaugh said Tuesday before the polls closed: Too much control over its resource industries and its land. ”
Ahead of Tuesday’s primary, Mr. Hageman, 59, had a nearly 30-point lead in recent polls. This reflects Republican loyalty to Trump in states he won in 2020 with 70% of the vote.
Cheney, 56, angered the former president and many of his party supporters by co-chairing a House committee investigating the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol. That day, she was the last to meet primary voters among House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for inciting her mob. Of the 10 House Republicans who voted against the former president, four retired, four lost primary elections, including Cheney, and two survived to run in this fall’s general election.
“I’m sick of the Jan. 6 committee,” Mr. Hageman said at a rally in Casper in late May when Mr. Trump made the headlines. “And we’re tired of Liz Cheney.”
It wasn’t always. Mr. Hageman is a former close ally of Mr. Chaney. She introduced Cheney as a “courageous constitutional conservative” at the 2016 state convention. That year, Mr. Hageman called Mr. Trump “a racist and a xenophobic.”
But like many Republican officials and ambitious candidates, Hageman also converted and became a staunch supporter of Trump. By 2020, Ms. Hageman openly endorsed Trump when she campaigned to become one of Wyoming’s members of the National Republican Party Committee and won the intraparty election. She previously said Trump had been misled by “lies from Democrats and Liz Cheney’s media friends.”
As her campaign gained momentum this year, she became more emboldened to embrace false claims that Trump was deprived of re-election. There is no doubt that it was manipulated unfairly.” “What happened in 2020 is a farce.” (There is no evidence that fraud was rampant in 2020.)
During a single debate during the June campaign, Mr. Hedeman went into a frenzy after the first two questions focused on Mr. Trump’s role in the January 6th Capitol break-in.Cheney was featured.
“The J-6 situation,” Hageman said, “isn’t what people in Wyoming are talking about.” She added: They are talking about food prices. ”
In traveling thousands of miles through Wyoming, Hageman spreads her message, making the campaign less a Trump referendum and whether she or Cheney more closely represents the state’s core traditions. I tried to make a choice.
She introduced herself as a “fourth-generation Wyomingian.” She explains that she grew up on a ranch near Fort Laramie, where she learned the value of “riding for the brand.”
Despite Cheney’s own roots in Wyoming, and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, and mother Lynne, who were Casper’s high school sweethearts, Hageman threw her rival in Congress. He portrayed her, who served three terms, as a dishonest outsider and captive. of Washington.
“I’m going to take Wyoming’s only congressional seat back from Virginia, which it currently holds,” she said at a rally with Trump.
The daughter of a longtime member of the state legislature, Hageman earned a law degree from the University of Wyoming. She became active in the Laramie County Republican Party and she served as a delegate to the 2016 National Republican Convention in Cleveland. There she was part of a last-ditch effort by her Senator Ted Cruz supporters of Texas to block Trump’s nomination. She called it the “weakest” candidate a Republican could nominate.
Two years later, Hageman ran for governor of Wyoming, but never mentioned Trump in a TV ad. She finished her third in the primary.
Eleven months ago, Trump endorsed Hageman after interviewing and vetted potential candidates at a golf club in New Jersey. By then, she had completely overturned Trump’s suitability for office, declaring him “the greatest president of my lifetime.”