Liz Cheney state primaries result: Wyoming rep, Palin and Murkowski to learn their fate as Trump gloats

In the race to unseat his arch-rival, Liz Cheney, former President Donald Trump enthusiastically gave his endorsement to her oponent Harriet Hageman.

Eric Garcia, The Independent’s Washington bureau chief, writes:

This evening, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska both face their primaries.

The two women’s political situations are strikingly similar. Both represent largely rural Republican states, and both hold seats once occupied by their fathers: Murkowski’s father Frank Murkowski selected her to replace him when he became governor, while Cheney was preceded by her father Dick, former House minority whip and later vice president, who occupied the seat throughout the 1980s.

Both have earned Donald Trump’s ire with their criticisms of him, too. Cheney was one of ten House Republicans who voted to convict Trump for his role in the January 6 riot, while Murkowski joined six other Republican senators to convict him.

But the parallels only go so far. Where Cheney will likely see her career in elected office come to an end, Murkowski is all but guaranteed to advance to the general election, despite the fact she has a Trump-backed primary challenger.

The Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center of the University of Wyoming conducted one of the most recent polls of the voter intentions in today’s Republican primary. Here is a summary of the findings of the survey:

Wyoming Republican primary candidate Harriet Hageman is leading incumbent Liz Cheney by nearly 30 points in the primary race for Wyoming’s lone seat in the US House of Representatives, according to a new survey by the University of Wyoming’s Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center (WYSAC).

The survey was conducted July 25-August 6, yielding 562 responses from Wyoming residents identified as likely voters in the August 16 Republican Party primary. The margin of error for the primary survey is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Just over one-quarter, 28 per cent, of GOP primary voters support incumbent candidate Cheney, while 57 per cent support Hageman. Candidate Anthony Bouchard polled at 2 percent, while candidates Denton Knapp and Robyn Belinskey both polled below 1 per cent. Ten percent of likely GOP voters say they are still undecided.

“The race for the Republican nomination appears to be a referendum on Cheney, as it usually is when an incumbent seeks re-election,” says Jim King, professor of political science at UW.

Among survey respondents expecting to vote for Cheney, 66 percent indicated their vote was an expression of support for the incumbent congresswoman. In contrast, 29 per cent of respondents expecting to cast ballots for another candidate said they were supporting that candidate, while 41 per cent said their vote was in opposition to Cheney.

On Thursday, just days before Tuesday’s primary in Wyoming, congresswoman Liz Cheney released a closing plea to voters, as the anti-Trump Republican made a final case for casting a vote for her instead of her Trump-backed, election-denying opponent, Harriet Hageman.

“America cannot remain free if we abandon the truth. The lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is insidious — it preys on those who love their country,” Ms Cheney said in the video released Thursday. “It is a door Donald Trump opened to manipulate Americans to abandon their principles, to sacrifice their freedom, to justify violence, to ignore the rulings of our courts and the rule of law.”

“This is Donald Trump’s legacy, but it cannot be the future of our nation.”

Watch the full video below:

Alaska voters get their first shot at using ranked voting in a statewide race Tuesday in a special US House election in which Sarah Palin seeks a return to elected office.

Also, Republican US Sen Lisa Murkowski faces 18 challengers in a primary in which the top four vote-getters will advance to November’s general election.

The special election and regular primaries for US Senate, US House, governor and lieutenant governor and state legislative seats are on opposite sides of a two-sided ballot. It could take until 31 Aug to know the winner of the special election.

Read the full report from The Independent below:

Elections in Wyoming and Alaska on Tuesday could relaunch the political career of a former Republican star and effectively end the career of another — at least for now.

Here’s what to look out for:

Jim and Faye Palin, the ex-in-laws of Sarah Palin, have said that they’ll be hosting a party for the opponent, Nick Begich, of the former Alaska governor’s.

Mr Begich, who is running against Ms Palin for Alaska’s lone seat in the House, received Ms Palin’s former in-laws support months ago, after the two announced in a pair of Facebook posts that they’d be backing him and not their former daughter-in-law.

“We know many of our elected officials and candidates on a first name basis. It also makes it hard sometimes in picking who to vote for,” said Jim Palin in one of the posts shared on the Republican candidate’s Facebook page. “This election, Nick Begich is getting my vote.”

It was also revealed that the mother of Ms Palin’s ex, Todd Palin, contributed $250 on 19 May to Mr Begich’s campaign, Business Insider reported.

They hail from their states’ most prominent Republican families. They have been among the GOP’s sharpest critics of former President Donald Trump. And after the Jan. 6 insurrection, they supported his impeachment.

But for all their similarities, the political fortunes of U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming are poised to diverge on Tuesday when they’re each on the ballot in closely watched primary elections.

Rudy Giuliani is a target of the criminal investigation being led by authorities in Georgia over the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results, The New York Times reported on Monday.

The former New York City mayor and atttorney to Donald Trump was one of the top pushers of bogus conspiracies about the 2020 election and appeared before several panels of state lawmakers in Georgia to demand that they decertify the results showing Joe Biden the winner. Now, his actions could make him the first Trump associate to be criminally indicted for the scheme to thwart Mr Biden from becoming president.

On Monday night, the New York Times Editorial Board published an op-ed that shone a light on two Republicans, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, both of whom are facing primary challenges on Tuesday as they square up against opponents backed by former President Donald Trump.

“Indeed, their political fates are in question solely because they stood up to Mr. Trump when it would have been much safer and politically expedient not to,” writes the board.

Read the full editorial board piece here.