2022 Wyoming and Alaska Election Results


Republican congressional candidate Harriet Hageman and her husband John Sundahl wave to the crowd during her primary election night in Cheyenne, Wyoming on Tuesday. (Eli Imadali/Reuters)

Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who since the Capitol uprising has become the Republican Party’s most vocal critic of former President Donald Trump, was ousted from her House seat by Harriet Hageman, backed by Trump, CNN reported Tuesday.

As Alaskans wrap up their vote, here are the best takeaways from tuesday contest in The State of the Cowboys:

Trump’s intra-party rivals: Trump and his allies spent the spring and summer turning the Republican primaries on the political map into uphill battles in which loyalty to the former president was the central factor.

He lost high-profile battles, including in Georgia, where Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger fended off Trump challengers.

But in most open-seat races, Trump’s nominees have prevailed. And on Tuesday in Wyoming, Trump, who had backed Hageman the day she entered the race against Cheney, scored his biggest victory yet.

Cheney chose to fight: Ahead of Tuesday’s primary, Cheney insisted she was trying to win.

But her strategy — trying to convince the Republican electorate in a state the former president won by a margin of 43 percentage points in 2020 to backfire — suggests she had made a different choice: swing.

U.S. Representative Liz Cheney delivers a concession speech to her supporters in Jackson, Wyoming, on Tuesday.
U.S. Representative Liz Cheney delivers a concession speech to her supporters in Jackson, Wyoming, on Tuesday. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

His election night, on a ranch in Jackson Hole with the sun setting over the Grand Tetons in the background, featured no television screens for supporters to watch tabulated results in a race Cheney was almost certain to lose.

She told her supporters that she could have convinced Trump to do what she had done in the primaries two years earlier: win with 73% of the vote. Cheney’s decision to use the spotlight of his high-profile House primary to play on Trump has never won in Wyoming. But it endeared her to a segment of anti-Trump donors and positioned her as the GOP’s most vocal critic of Trump.

What’s next for Cheney? The three-term congresswoman hasn’t said what her next policy move will be – including whether she’ll run for president in 2024 as a stooge for Trump. But she used her speech to preview an ongoing fight against Trump, without explaining exactly what that means.

As she left the stage, Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” rang out over the speakers at the event.

Read more takeaways here.