Editor’s note: after the publication of this story Liz Cheney conceded defeat to Harriet Hageman in Wyoming’s GOP primary.
Harriet Hageman was not a fan of Donald Trump during his first presidential run. Trump, she said, was “the weakest candidate” in the Republican primary field. She even worried some voters would be turned off by “somebody who is racist and xenophobic.”
Today Hageman is expected to unseat incumbent Liz Cheney as the GOP nominee for Wyoming’s sole district in Congress thanks, in large part, to Trump’s support.
By the 2020 GOP presidential primaries, it was evident she had changed her tune. “(Trump) was the greatest president of my lifetime, and I am proud to have been able to renominate him in 2020,” Hageman told The New York Times last year.
Hageman’s story — and the fate of Cheney, a thoroughly conservative Republican who fell out of favor for opposing Trump — is a microcosmic example of what has happened in the GOP since 2016. Republican leaders have gone from begrudging allies of Trump to his acolytes and apologists. And those who do not kowtow to the former president are seeing their political careers disappear.
From ‘never-Trump’ to ‘forever-Trump’
Hageman was a Cheney fan before becoming a Trump follower. When Cheney unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 2014, Hageman held a leadership role in her campaign, according to Ballotpedia. She supported Cheney again in 2016 when she ran for Wyoming’s sole House seat.
“I am proud to introduce my friend Liz Cheney,” Hageman said at the time, per CNN. “I know Liz Cheney is a proven, courageous, constitutional conservative, someone who has the education, the background and experience to fight effectively for Wyoming on a national stage.”
Although it’s unclear exactly when Hageman changed her mind on Trump and Cheney, Cheney’s vote to impeach Trump seems to have been a turning point in their relationship. Cheney’s role as one of two Republicans on the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 likely severed any remaining ties.
Some in Wyoming know Hageman as the “Wicked Witch of the West” because she regularly challenged federal oversight of land and water use. Whether Trump thinks Hageman has supernatural abilities to win on Tuesday is not clear, but he recruited and endorsed her in an apparent attempt to get back at Cheney, according to Politico.
Now Hageman is casting Cheney as a Washington insider. “Cheney cast her lot with the Washington, D.C., elites and those who use their power to further their own agenda at our expense,” her campaign website says. “She doesn’t represent Wyoming and she doesn’t represent conservatives.”
Hageman has also won the support of Republicans in Congress. She has the endorsement of over 100 senators and representatives, while Cheney only has Sen. Mitt Romney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger in her corner. Hageman’s victory in Tuesday’s primary is all but assured: a recent University of Wyoming poll has her leading Cheney by a commanding 29 points.
This is not a moment, it’s a movement
Hageman’s conversion story is hardly unique. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Utah’s own Sen. Mike Lee, plus others, preceded her. This was on full display just last week, when Trump’s supporters in Washington and on conservative media launched a full-scale repudiation of the FBI after news broke about the search warrant served at Trump’s estate.
If primary results tell us anything, it is that opposing or joining Trump is the most likely election predictor. Of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, four are retiring, and three have lost primaries — with Cheney a likely addition to that group — while Trump-endorsed candidates and election deniers have cruised to victory.
Will the GOP ever turn the page?
In the wake of the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 hearings and mounting legal troubles, some of Trump’s followers have drawn some distance from him.
On Monday, Fox News host Laura Ingraham — a reliable advocate for Trump in conservative media — surprised Americans by questioning whether voters are ready to “turn the page” on the former president.
“The country I think is so exhausted,” Ingraham said on “The Truth with Lisa Boothe” podcast. “They’re exhausted by the battle, the constant battle, that they may believe that, well, it’s time to turn the page if we can get someone who has all Trump’s policies who’s not Trump.”
The evidence, however, says otherwise. Cheney voted with Trump’s agenda 93% of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight. Her conservative credentials are as good as they can get. Yet her likely defeat in Tuesday’s primary signals that Wyoming Republicans are less concerned with her conservative bona fides than her loyalty — or lack thereof — to one man: Donald Trump.