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Media puts Chris Holtmann on hot seat after Ohio State’s loss to Northwestern – 247Sports
- Media puts Chris Holtmann on hot seat after Ohio State’s loss to Northwestern 247Sports
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Progressive Rep. Katie Porter launches bid for Feinstein’s California Senate seat
CNN
—
California Rep. Katie Porter announced a 2024 Senate bid on Tuesday, launching her campaign for Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat in what could be a bruising Democratic primary.
The 89-year-old Feinstein, a member of the Senate since 1992, has not yet made public her own plans for 2024, and her office did not respond to a request for comment on Porter’s announcement. However, many Democrats believe she is likely to retire rather than seek a sixth full term.
Porter, a former law professor who has proven to be a prolific fundraiser since first winning her Orange County-area House seat in 2018, survived a tough reelection bid in 2022, when the redistricting process placed her home in Irvine within a 47th District in which she had to newly introduce herself to about two-thirds of voters.
Porter, who studied under future Sen. Elizabeth Warren at Harvard Law School, is best known nationally for her sharp questioning in House oversight committee hearings. She is also a leading progressive, serving as deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
“California needs a warrior in the Senate – to stand up to special interests, fight the dangerous imbalance in our economy, and hold so-called leaders like Mitch McConnell accountable for rigging our democracy,” Porter said Tuesday in a tweet accompanied by a video announcing her candidacy.
If Feinstein were to retire, it would likely set off a crowded scramble for the high-profile Senate seat in the country’s most populous state.
Other potential contenders could include Rep. Adam Schiff, Lt. Gov Eleni Kounalakis, Attorney General Rob Bonta and US Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, a former longtime member of Congress.
Schiff, who views the senator as a mentor, went to see Feinstein in December to tell her that he was thinking about running, in what a source familiar with the meeting said was intended to show her due respect.
Feinstein has filed 2024 reelection paperwork with the FEC, but has faced criticism recently about her fitness for the job. She rejected those suggestions, telling CNN last year that she feels “absolutely” able to serve fully in her position, adding: “I think that’s pretty obvious.”
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
GOP Rep.-elect George Santos urged to resign seat over ‘résumé embellishment’
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) said that if Santos takes his new seat, it would set a precedent encouraging others to seek public office by falsifying their credentials, while Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) accused Santos of “defrauding the voters of Long Island about his ENTIRE resume.”
McCarthy (R-Calif.) has so far not responded to allegations that Santos misled voters about key details of his biography, which were first reported in a New York Times story last week.
Now that Santos has apologized “if I disappointed anyone by résumé embellishment” — and acknowledged publicly on Monday that he did not graduate from college or work at certain companies that had been listed in his biography — questions remain about what action if any the incoming House majority leader will take. Santos’s win helped Republicans secure a narrow majority in the next term.
Democrats have called for a House ethics probe since the Times report, and the New York attorney general’s office has said it was “looking into a number of issues” surrounding Santos.
The representative-elect has remained defiant about his future: In an interview with New York’s WABC radio, he said, “I will be sworn in. I will take office.”
In his admissions on Monday night, Santos sought to explain his claims by saying that “a lot of people overstate in their résumés,” and he downplayed the impact of his actions. He did briefly address how his wealth has skyrocketed in recent years, allowing him to lend hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign.
Santos told City and State NY that after different jobs, he opened his own firm and “it just worked because I had the relationships and I started making a lot of money. And I fundamentally started building wealth.”
“I decided I’d invest in my race for Congress,” he added. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
The Times report raised questions about whether Santos had fabricated much of his biography and noted that Santos claimed he had worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. Spokesmen for the two companies confirmed to The Washington Post that they had no record of his employment. Santos said in the radio interview Monday that the language in his résumé stated he had “worked ‘for,’ not ‘on’ or ‘at’ or ‘in.’”
He said that he learned a lesson — but that it doesn’t mean “I’m some fictional character.”
Santos also said in an interview with the New York Post that, contrary to his biography that claimed he was a Baruch College graduate, he had not graduated “from any institution of higher learning.”
“We’ve seen people fudge their resume but this is total fabrication,” Castro tweeted, arguing that the congressman-elect should be “investigated by authorities.”
Michael Kranish, Azi Paybarah and Hannah Knowles contributed to this report.
Youngkin announces special election to fill late Rep. McEachin’s seat
Del. Lamont Bagby (D-Henrico) and state Sen. Jennifer L. McClellan (D-Richmond), who ran for governor last year, have both filed paperwork to run for the seat; Bagby is expected to formally announce his campaign later Monday.
Given that each are the top two leaders of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus — Bagby the chair and McClellan vice chair — their likely candidacies could set up a heated rivalry in the deep-blue, majority-minority 4th District, which stretches from Richmond to the North Carolina border.
Joseph Preston, a lawyer, also announced his campaign for the seat on Monday. Preston served one year in the House of Delegates in 2015 after winning a special election to fill the seat of Rosalyn Dance, who was elected to the state Senate. Just months into his House term, Preston then decided to challenge Dance in a primary election for her Senate seat, which he lost.
The 4th District seat is expected to remain safely Democratic; three weeks before he died, McEachin won a fourth term by 30 points against his Republican challenger, Leon Benjamin.
McEachin, who had served in both the Virginia House of Delegates and state Senate during his political career, was first elected to Congress in 2016. Throughout his tenure, the lawyer and ordained minister developed a reputation for fierce advocacy for civil rights and environmental justice, paying keen attention to how climate change and pollutants disproportionately affect disadvantaged or minority communities.
He was diagnosed with cancer in 2013 and developed further complications from treatment in 2018.
Bagby has described him as a mentor.
“Donald McEachin spent his entire career building a incredible legacy for this community that we will never forget. I would not be here without him. Tomorrow I will tell you how I plan to help build on the McEachin legacy for the next generation,” Bagby wrote Sunday on Twitter, teasing his campaign announcement.
McClellan filled McEachin’s seat in the state Senate when he was elected to Congress and noted in a statement after he died that they had been friends for over 20 years.
Laura Vozzella contributed to this report.
Warnock or Walker? Georgia runoff to settle last Senate seat
ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia voters on Tuesday are set to decide the final Senate contest in the country, choosing between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican football legend Herschel Walker after a four-week runoff blitz that has drawn a flood of outside spending to an increasingly personal fight.
This year’s runoff has lower stakes than the two in 2021, when victories by Warnock and fellow Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff gave Democrats control of the Senate. The outcome of Tuesday’s contest will determine whether Democrats have an outright 51-49 Senate majority or control a 50-50 chamber based on Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote.
The runoff brings to a close a bitter fight between Warnock, the state’s first Black senator and the senior minister of the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached, and Walker, a former University of Georgia football star and political novice who has waged his bid in the mold of former President Donald Trump.
A victory for Warnock would solidify Georgia’s status as a battleground heading into the 2024 presidential election. A win for Walker, however, could be an indication that the Democratic gains in the state might be somewhat limited, especially given that Georgia Republicans swept every other statewide contest last month.
In that election, Warnock led Walker by about 37,000 votes out of almost 4 million cast but fell shy of a majority, triggering the second round of voting. About 1.9 million votes already have been cast by mail and during early voting, an advantage for Democrats whose voters more commonly cast ballots this way. Republicans typically fare better on voting done on Election Day, with the margins determining the winner.
Last month, Walker, 60, ran more than 200,000 votes behind Republican Gov. Brian Kemp after a campaign dogged by intense scrutiny of his past, meandering campaign speeches and a bevy of damaging allegations, including claims that he paid for two former girlfriends’ abortions — accusations that Walker has denied.
Warnock, whose victory in 2021 was in a special election to serve out the remainder of GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term, sounded a confident note Monday during a packed day of campaigning. He predicted that he had convinced enough voters, including independents and moderate Republicans who supported Kemp, that he deserves a full term.
“They’ve seen that I will work with anybody that helps me to do good work for the people of Georgia,” said the 53-year-old senator. “I think they’re going to get this right. They know this race is about competence and character.”
Walker campaigned Monday with his wife, Julie, greeting supporters and offering thanks rather than his usual campaign speech and full-throated attacks on Warnock.
“I love y’all, and we’re gonna win this election,” he said at a winery in Ellijay, comparing it to championships he won as an athlete. “I love winning championships.
Warnock’s campaign has spent about $170 million on the campaign, far outpacing Walker’s nearly $60 million, according to their latest federal disclosures. But Democratic and Republican party committees, along with other political action committees, have spent even more.
The senator has paired his push for bipartisanship with an emphasis on his personal values, buoyed by his status as senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. And, beginning with the closing stretch before the Nov. 8 general election, Warnock added withering takedowns of Walker, using the football star’s rocky past to argue that the political newcomer was “not ready” and “not fit” for high office.
Walker, who used his athletics fame to coast to the GOP nomination, has sought to portray Warnock as a yes-man for President Joe Biden. Walker has sometimes made the attack in especially personal terms, complete with accusing Warnock of having his “back bent” and “being on his knees, begging” at the White House — a searing charge for a Black challenger to level against a Black senator about his relationship with a white president.
A multimillionaire businessman, Walker has inflated his philanthropic activities and business achievements, including claiming that his company employed hundreds of people and grossed tens of millions of dollars in sales annually, even though later records indicate he had eight employees and averaged about $1.5 million a year. He has suggested that he’s worked as a law enforcement officer and said he graduated college, though he has done neither.
Walker was also forced to acknowledge during the campaign that he had fathered three children out of wedlock whom he had never before spoken about publicly — in direct conflict with Walker’s yearslong criticism of absentee fathers and his calls for Black men, in particular, to play an active role in their kids’ lives.
His ex-wife has detailed violent acts, saying Walker once held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her. Walker has never denied those specifics and wrote of his violent tendencies in a 2008 memoir that attributed the behavior to mental illness.
Warnock has countered with his individual Senate accomplishments, touting a provision he sponsored to cap insulin costs for Medicare patients while reminding voters that Republicans blocked his larger idea to cap those costs for all insulin-dependent patients. He hailed deals on infrastructure and maternal health care forged with Republicans Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, mentioning those GOP colleagues more than he did Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer or other Democrats in Washington.
After the general election, Biden, who has struggled with low approval ratings, promised to help Warnock in any way he could, even if it meant staying away from Georgia. Bypassing the president, Warnock decided instead to campaign with former President Barack Obama in the days before the runoff election.
For his part, Walker was endorsed by Trump but avoided campaigning with him until the campaign’s final day: The pair conducted a conference call Monday with supporters, according to a Republican National Committee spokesperson.
Walker’s candidacy is the GOP’s last chance to flip a Senate seat this year. Dr. Mehmet Oz of Pennsylvania, Blake Masters of Arizona, Adam Laxalt of Nevada and Don Bolduc of New Hampshire, all Trump loyalists, already lost competitive Senate races that Republicans once considered part of their path to a majority.
Walker has differentiated himself from Trump in a notable way. Trump has spent two years falsely claiming that his loss in Georgia and nationally was fraudulent, despite the fact that numerous federal and local officials, a long list of courts, top former campaign staffers and even his own attorney general have all said there is no evidence of the fraud he alleges.
At his lone debate against Warnock in October, Walker was asked whether he’d accept the results even if he lost. He replied with one word: “Yes.”
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried on hot seat as Senate inquiries, criminal probes move forward
Chicago Mercantile Exchange chief tells ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ he tried to warn about SBF
Sam Bankman-Fried is facing an onslaught of legal repercussions over his involvement in the collapse of FTX, the cryptocurrency trading platform he founded in 2019, with congressional investigations set to take off over the course of the upcoming weeks.
The Senate Agriculture Committee, which is tasked with oversight of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), is planning to hold a hearing on the rapid collapse of FTX this week, with the office of GOP Ranking Member John Boozman of Arkansas giving FOX Business details about the hearing. Boozman’s office said the hearing will feature CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam and focus on “the need to bring transparency and accountability to the crypto market.”
“We have previously held hearings on the CFTC’s role in regulating digital assets, and Chairwoman Stabenow and Ranking Member Boozman introduced legislation on it, but the committee is revisiting the issue in light of the events of the past few weeks,” a spokesperson for Boozman said in a statement.
“The hearing will give us an opportunity to ask Chairman Behnam what the CFTC needs from Congress to establish a regulatory framework that will give consumers greater confidence that their investments are safe,” the statement continued.
FTX FOUNDER SAM BANKMAN-FRIED’S FAMILY BOASTS DEEP TIES TO DEMOCRAT POWER PLAYERS
Sam Bankman-Fried speaks during the Institute of International Finance’s annual membership meeting on Oct. 13. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Boozman’s office also pointed to the senator’s statement on the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act of 2022, the legislation he and Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., introduced following FTX’s collapse.
Earlier this month, the Bahamas-based FTX filed for bankruptcy after a liquidity crisis led to a mass exodus of customers from the platform. Bankman-Fried had allegedly transferred $10 billion worth of customer credit from FTX to sister firm Alameda Research, according to multiple reports.
Amid the company’s demise, Bankman-Fried’s estimated net worth plummeted from more than $15 billion to no material wealth in just days. The former billionaire issued a public apology admitting he had “f—ed up” and the new FTX CEO stated during court proceedings that he had never before seen “such a complete failure.”
TROUBLED CRYPTO BOSS SAM BANKMAN-FRIED, WHO LOST $15B IN A WEEK, FUNNELED MILLIONS TO DEMS, FAR-LEFT CAUSES
“From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented,” the company’s new CEO John Ray III said on Nov. 17.
Ray III previously oversaw the bankruptcy proceedings of failed emery company Enron in early the 2000s. The FTX collapse has also been compared to scandals involving Lehman Brothers and the Ponzi scheme masterminded by former NASDAQ Chairman Bernie Madoff.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, left, is pictured last year alongside other Senate Democratic leaders and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. (Craig Hudson/Bloomberg / Getty Images)
House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and the panel’s top Republican, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., also announced a hearing to investigate FTX. In their joint announcement, the two leaders said their hearings would take place in December and are expected to feature Bankman-Fried as well as other leaders from FTX and Alameda Research.
“The fall of FTX has posed tremendous harm to over one million users, many of whom were everyday people who invested their hard-earned savings into the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, only to watch it all disappear within a matter of seconds,” Waters said on Nov. 16.
INSIDE THE COLLAPSE OF CRYPTO EXCHANGE FTX: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW
And Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, the chairman of the Banking Committee and a member of the Finance Committee, said he was planning to lead investigations of his own, but worried that some lawmakers would have conflicts of interest given their financial ties to the crypto industry. Bankman-Fried alone gave tens of millions of dollars to Democrats ahead of the midterm election and about $10 million to help President Biden get elected in 2020.
“It’s difficult when a whole lot of members here, particularly the more pro-bank, pro-corporate members, have taken money from crypto companies and have sung their praises in the halls of the Senate,” Brown told Fox News on Nov. 17.
“That’s the fundamental problem. That’s why I’m pushing, especially pushing, the [Securities] Exchange Commission (SEC) to crack down and make sure that they are held accountable for what they’ve done,” he said.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is pictured during a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Sept. 28, 2021. (Kevin Dietsch/Pool via Reuters / Reuters Photos)
Bankman-Fried contributed to both Boozman and Stabenow’s campaigns this year, according to Federal Election Commission data. He wired $50,000 to the group Heartland Resurgence which primarily supported Boozman and opposed his Republican challenger during his state’s primary, $20,800 to the Stabenow Victory Fund and maximum individual donations worth $5,800 to each of the lawmakers’ individual campaigns.
Boozman’s campaign previously told FOX Business that it would donate funds received from Bankman-Fried to charity.
Meanwhile, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., a member of the Judiciary Committee, asked several top federal regulators to hand over relevant information regarding FTX and their investigations into the platform. Like Brown, he warned that some politicians tasked with looking into the crisis could be compromised.
“To be clear, Mr. Bankman-Fried funded his lavish donations to the Democratic Party through rampant fraud,” Hawley wrote to the heads of the Department of Justice (DOJ), SEC and CFTC, in a letter on Nov. 18. “The net result was that billions of dollars were stolen from investors and handed over to Democrats and left-wing organizations.”
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Bankman-Fried has reportedly cooperated with authorities in the Bahamas where he remains. The federal government may seek to extradite Bankman-Fried to the U.S. as part of ongoing criminal probes.
The DOJ and SEC are among the U.S. agencies to have initiated probes of their own into the FTX founder.
Stabenow’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Kelly win in Arizona puts Dems 1 seat from Senate control
PHOENIX (AP) — Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly won his bid for reelection Friday in the crucial swing state of Arizona, defeating Republican venture capitalist Blake Masters to put his party one victory away from clinching control of the chamber for the next two years of Joe Biden’s presidency.
With Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote, Democrats can retain control of the Senate by winning either the Nevada race, which remains too early to call, or next month’s runoff in Georgia. Republicans now must win both those races to take the majority.
The Arizona race is one of a handful of contests that Republicans targeted in their bid to take control of the 50-50 Senate. It was a test of the inroads that Kelly and other Democrats have made in a state once reliably dominated by the GOP. Kelly’s victory suggests Democratic success in Arizona was not an aberration during Donald Trump’s presidency.
The closely watched race for governor between Democrat Katie Hobbs and Republican Kari Lake was too early to call Friday night. In the secretary of state’s race, Democrat Adrian Fontes defeated Republican Mark Finchem, a top 2020 election denier.
Kelly, a former NASA astronaut who’s flown in space four times, is married to former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, who inspired the nation with her recovery from a gunshot wound to the head during an assassination attempt in 2011 that killed six people and injured 13. Kelly and Giffords went on to co-found a gun safety advocacy group.
Kelly and Giffords were at an Elton John concert in Phoenix on Friday night when The Associated Press called the race, campaign spokesperson Sarah Guggenheimer said. Maricopa County reported a large batch of results that increased Kelly’s lead and made clear Masters could not make up the difference with the remaining ballots.
“It’s been one of the great honors of my life to serve as Arizona’s Senator,” Kelly said in a statement. “I’m humbled by the trust our state has placed in me to continue this work.”
Kelly’s victory in a 2020 special election spurred by the death of Republican Sen. John McCain gave Democrats both of Arizona’s Senate seats for the first time in 70 years. The shift was propelled by the state’s fast-changing demographics and the unpopularity of Trump.
Kelly’s 2022 campaign largely focused on his support for abortion rights, protecting Social Security, lowering drug prices and ensuring a stable water supply in the midst of a drought, which has curtailed Arizona’s cut of Colorado River water.
With President Joe Biden struggling with low approval ratings, Kelly distanced himself from the president, particularly on border security, and played down his Democratic affiliation amid angst about the state of the economy.
He also styled himself as an independent willing to buck his party, in the style of McCain.
Masters, an acolyte of billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, tried to penetrate Kelly’s independent image, aligning him with Biden’s failure to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and tamp down on rampant inflation.
Masters endeared himself to many GOP primary voters with his penchant for provocation and contrarian thinking. He called for privatizing Social Security, took a hard-line stance against abortion and promoted a racist theory popular with white nationalists that Democrats are seeking to use immigration to replace white people in America.
But after emerging bruised from a contentious primary, Masters struggled to raise money and was put on the defense over his controversial positions.
He earned Trump’s endorsement after claiming “Trump won in 2020,” but under pressure during a debate last month, he acknowledged he hasn’t seen evidence the election was rigged. He later doubled down on the false claim that Trump won.
After the primary, he scrubbed some of his more controversial positions from his website, but it wasn’t enough for the moderate swing voters who decided the election.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. And check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms.
How Liz Cheney lost Wyoming’s lone seat in the House
Cheney’s ouster caps a summer in which Trump has purged the GOP of many of his critics, while elevating candidates — including Hageman — who have parroted his lies about widespread election fraud. Trump-aligned candidates have won primaries for governor in swing states such as Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and Senate in Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Candidates backed by the former President have positioned themselves to take over the election machinery in a series of key states if they win in November.
Primaries in recent months have also brought into focus the role a handful of prominent Republicans, including Cheney and former Vice President Mike Pence, are seeking to play in moving the GOP beyond Trump and his election denialism.
But Wyoming’s results on Tuesday demonstrated the long odds those Trump critics face in a party in which the former President remains the most dominant figure and is teasing a third run for the White House in 2024.
Cheney attempted to assemble a coalition of Democrats, independents and moderate and anti-Trump Republicans — many of them ideological opponents of the neoconservative congresswoman before the last 19 months — to save her seat. Her campaign sent information to registered Democrats in Wyoming about how to change their party registration, and in interviews across the state in the lead-up to the election, a number of Democrats did say they were voting for Cheney.
But the Cowboy State’s electorate is almost entirely Republican. Wyoming has more than 215,000 registered Republicans compared to just 36,000 registered Democrats, according to data from the secretary of state’s office. That’s a drop of about 15,000 registered Democrats from early 2021, but the pool of party-switchers, along with a fall-off of more than 3,000 independent voters who likely became Republicans, was nowhere near large enough to save Cheney from defeat in a Republican Party that had turned against her.
“I think she stood up for what she believes in,” said John Grant, a Republican who cast his ballot for Cheney, even though he suspected she would fall short. “It took a lot of courage to stand against the Republican Party and Donald Trump.”
‘Uneasy from the beginning’
The roots of Cheney’s loss were planted long before Tuesday’s primary. And in some cases, the seeds were planted during the factional battles within the Wyoming GOP that date back to the tea party era, when Cheney was still a resident of Virginia.
The state’s GOP, with no real competition from Democrats, has divided into two factions, with a more moderate establishment wing butting heads with a more conservative faction that has increasingly wrested away control.
The establishment wing retains some power in Wyoming. Gov. Mark Gordon, a part of that wing, won Tuesday. But the conservative faction has seized control of the state Republican Party and many of its local organizations.
“In Wyoming, we don’t necessarily embrace the idea of a big tent,” Wyoming GOP Chairman Frank Eathorne said on Fox earlier this year.
Wyoming Republicans’ reservations about Cheney were first evident in 2016, when she won her House seat after winning just 39% of the vote in the GOP primary against a fractured field. She was cast as too close to the establishment by some rivals, and as a carpetbagger by others — including Tim Stubson, a former state lawmaker who now supports Cheney.
But, she was by far the best-known candidate in the race thanks to the decade her father spent representing Wyoming in Congress prior to becoming secretary of defense and later, vice president.
Cheney had coasted to reelection since then, largely because she had not broken with conservatives on major issues. Stubson said she was on course to do so again, until the aftermath of the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, when Cheney became a leading critic of Trump’s actions and defender of the integrity of the 2020 election.
The makings for a divorce from Cheney were immediately evident. Though Wyoming’s GOP has been fractured by warring factions, one thing that has broadly united those factions is support for Trump. He won Wyoming in 2020 by 43.3 percentage points over President Joe Biden — Trump’s largest margin of victory anywhere in the nation.
“Yes, there may have been an undercurrent there of anti-Liz sentiment, but there is no way she would have had any trouble getting elected,” Stubson said.
“Her relationship with that portion of the party has been uneasy from the beginning, and they probably never totally embraced her because she has been the definition of an establishment Republican. But she was right on the policies,” he said. “In my mind, it’s a sort of binary issue: If she votes for impeachment, it doesn’t matter what she does afterward.”
Voters say Cheney was too focused on Trump
While Trump’s shadow loomed large over the race, conversations with voters across Wyoming over the last week often came across with a sense of disappointment in Cheney, more than a burning sentiment of anger. Several people said they felt Cheney devoted far more time on national issues — to the detriment of her focusing on energy and natural resource priorities of critical importance to the state.
“I want Wyoming to be protected and I don’t feel Liz is doing that job,” said Jenille Thomas, who lives in the coal-mining town of Rock Springs in southwestern Wyoming.
For many Republican voters in Wyoming, though, it was Cheney’s vote to impeach Trump that spurred them to action.
Esther Egan, a 68-year-old who cleans houses and lives in Jackson, said she voted for Hageman because Cheney “bailed on us when we need her the most.”
“They can say whatever they want about Trump, but he did a damn good job. And then she turns tail,” Egan said. “She’s with Nancy Pelosi.”
Catherine Norsworthy, a 68-year-old homemaker in Jackson, said she switched from being an unaffiliated voter to a Republican to vote for Hageman, citing Trump’s endorsement of her.
“I’m not in favor of the January 6 hearings at all,” she said. “I didn’t like her voting against Trump. I’m very pro-Trump. I listen to him.”
Going down swinging
Cheney was by far the most prominent of the 10 House Republicans to vote in January 2021 for Trump’s impeachment. She revealed her decision to do so the day before the House vote, saying in a statement that Trump “summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing.”
The retribution she faced within the GOP built over the following months. In May 2021, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy publicly endorsed removing Cheney from her position as the No. 3 spot in the party’s leadership team.
That same month, the House GOP removed Cheney from her leadership post on a voice vote.
She followed the ouster by telling reporters, in a preview of how she would approach the following year and her reelection campaign: “I will do everything I can to ensure that the former President never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office.”
In July 2021, Cheney accepted a position as one of two Republicans, along with retiring Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, on the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection.
As the committee conducted its probe, Trump set his sights on revenge, endorsing challengers to most of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him.
Trump’s biggest target was Cheney. He endorsed Hageman, a former Republican National Committee member and lawyer who had once been a Cheney ally, on the day she entered the race in September 2021.
For the most part, Trump’s efforts have succeeded. Four of the 10 have retired. Three more, in addition to Cheney, lost their primaries. Only two survived their primaries, and California Rep. David Valadao and Washington Rep. Dan Newhouse did so in part because their states hold all-party open primaries.
As those retirements piled up and those primaries unfolded, Cheney was busy playing a leading role on that committee, in its interviews of former Trump administration officials and in its public hearings in which the panel has revealed some of its findings.
She has also sought out opportunities to confront the GOP’s direction. She delivered a searing rebuke of Trump and her party’s leadership in a late June speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
“We are confronting a domestic threat that we have never faced before — and that is a former President who is attempting to unravel the foundations of our constitutional Republic,” Cheney said then. “And he is aided by Republican leaders and elected officials who have made themselves willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man.”
Weeks after that speech, Cheney was elusive when asked about the possibility of running for president in 2024. She told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview that she will “make a decision on 2024 down the road.”
In an interview with CNN’s Kasie Hunt earlier this month, Cheney made clear she would not temper her criticism of Trump at all — even if it costs her the House seat that her father once held and that she has held since 2017.
“We’re in a situation where former President Trump has betrayed the patriotism of millions and millions of people across our country, and many people here in Wyoming, and he’s lied to them,” she said. “And what I know to do is to tell the truth, and to make sure that people understand the truth about what happened and why it matters so much.”
Even as polls showed Cheney was on her way to a resounding defeat, she stuck to a message focused squarely on Trump.
Her campaign bought ad time on Fox for a spot featuring Dick Cheney, in which he called Trump a “coward” who lies to his supporters and “tried to steal the last election” using violence.
What’s next
It didn’t take long for the outcome of Tuesday’s primary to become clear. Cheney had been badly defeated, and conceded the race to Hageman quickly.
She told supporters that she’d won the primary with 73% support two years ago, and “could easily have done the same again.” But doing so, she said, would have required embracing Trump’s lies about election fraud.
“That was a path I could not and would not take,” Cheney said.
“No House seat, no office in this land, is more important than the principles that we are all sworn to protect. And I well understood the potential political consequences of abiding by my duty,” she said.
After a primary that Cheney and her allies knew she was set to lose, the question is, what’s next for the Wyoming congresswoman who had in a short time rocketed up the House Republican ranks?
She did not answer that question Tuesday night, at her election night event on a ranch in Jackson Hole. But overnight, her campaign filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission creating a leadership PAC to be called “The Great Task” — a nod to Abraham Lincoln, who spoke at Gettysburg of the “great task” facing the country. And on Wednesday morning, she told NBC’s “Today” show that she is “thinking about” running for president and will make a decision in “the coming months.”
In her election night speech, Cheney previewed a continued fight against Trump: “I have said since January 6 that I will do whatever it takes to ensure that Donald Trump is never again near the Oval Office, and I mean it. This is a fight for all of us, together.”
“I ask you tonight to join me: As we leave here, let us resolve that we will stand together, Republicans, Democrats and independents, against those who would destroy our republic,” she added.
As she left the stage, Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” blared over the event’s speakers as the sun set over the Grand Teton mountain peak.
This story and headline have been updated.
Sarah Palin advances to November general election for Alaska House seat, NBC projects
U.S. House candidate former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin speaks during a “Save America” rally at Alaska Airlines Center on July 09, 2022 in Anchorage, Alaska.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will advance to the November general election for the state’s sole seat in the U.S. House, NBC News projects.
Republican Nick Begich and Democrat Mary Sattler Peltola will also appear on the fall ballot, NBC projects. It was too early to call the fourth contender.
A win would mark a political comeback of sorts for Palin, who became a household name when she was tapped to be the vice-presidential running mate in John McCain’s failed 2008 White House bid against Barack Obama.
A darling of the defunct right-wing Tea Party movement, Palin abruptly resigned as governor in 2009.
Palin was also competing against both Republican and Democratic candidates to serve the remainder of the term for the seat in Congress that was vacated by the death of GOP Rep. Don Young in March.
The special election was conducted using the new ranked-choice voting system. NBC projects no candidate will win a majority of the votes in the first round. Results in that race are not expected to be fully tabulated until later this month.
Palin, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, came first in the primary race in June. Like the former president, Palin has worked as a political commentator and a reality-TV figure since she gave up the governorship.