Wyoming and Alaska primaries

Republican congressional candidate Harriet Hageman and her husband John Sundahl wave to the crowd at her primary election night party in Cheyenne, Wyoming, on Tuesday.

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

In Alaska, voters were casting ballots in another race the former President is focused on, with Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski squaring off in the first of what’s likely to be two rounds against the Trump-endorsed Kelly Tshibaka.

Former Gov. Sarah Palin, meanwhile, is attempting a political comeback in a special election for the state’s lone House seat.

Here are some top takeaways from Tuesday’s contests in Wyoming and Alaska:

Trump’s intra-party rivals: Trump and his allies have spent the spring and summer turning Republican primaries across the political map into bitter fights in which loyalty to the former President was the central factor.

He lost some high-profile battles, including in Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger held off Trump-back challengers.

But in most open-seat races, Trump’s candidates triumphed. And on Tuesday in Wyoming, Trump, who had endorsed Hageman on the day she entered the race against Cheney, claimed his biggest victory yet.

Cheney chose to go down fighting: In the lead-up to Tuesday’s primary, Cheney insisted she was trying to win.

But her strategy — attempting to convince the Republican electorate in a state the former President won by a margin of 43 percentage points in 2020 to turn on him — suggests she’d made a different choice: to go down swinging.

US Rep. Liz Cheney gives a concession speech to supporters in Jackson, Wyoming, on Tuesday.

Her election night event, on a ranch in Jackson Hole with the sun setting over the Grand Tetons in the background, didn’t feature any television screens for supporters to watch results tabulated in a race Cheney was all but certain to lose.

She told supporters that she could have cozied up to Trump to do what she’d done in the primary two years earlier: win with 73% of the vote. “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.”

Cheney’s decision to use the spotlight of her high-profile House primary to tee off on Trump was never a winning one in Wyoming. But it did endear her to a segment of anti-Trump donors and position her as the GOP’s most strident critic of Trump.

What’s next for Cheney? The morning after her defeat in the Wyoming GOP House primary, the three-term congresswoman told the “Today” show that she is “thinking about” running for president and will make a decision in “the coming months.”

“I’m not going to make any announcements here this morning,” she told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie.

Cheney used her concession speech to preview a continued fight against Trump, without laying out exactly what that means.

“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,” she said. “I’m a conservative Republican. … But I love my country more. So 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.”

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

Overnight, the Cheney campaign filed paperwork with the Federal Election Committee creating a leadership PAC to be called “The Great Task.”

This is the first of several next steps from Cheney, an adviser tells CNN, as she starts to put her election night speech from Wyoming into action and opens a new chapter in the wake of her defeat in her congressional seat.

Waiting on Alaska results — but how long? Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee who has not run for office since then, is attempting a political comeback in the special election to fill the remaining months of the late Rep. Don Young’s House term.

But it will take weeks to sort out whether she wins the runoff election against fellow Republican businessman Nick Begich III, Democratic former state lawmaker Mary Peltola and Republican Tara Sweeney, who previously served as assistant secretary for Indian Affairs at the US Department of the Interior.

The special election is Alaska’s first using the state’s new ranked choice voting system. CNN projected that none of the three candidates will receive more than 50% of the vote in the first round, meaning that the state will tabulate second-choice votes on Aug. 31.

Read more takeaways here.

Alaska’s special election to fill the late Rep. Don Young’s House seat won’t be decided anytime soon: ballots will continue arriving and being counted for more than a week, and the state won’t tabulate its ranked-choice results until Aug. 31. 

But the biggest surprise in the early results in Wednesday’s early morning hours was the strong showing by Democratic former state lawmaker Mary Peltola, who is competing against two Republicans, former Gov. Sarah Palin and businessman Nick Begich III. 

CNN projected earlier tonight that no candidate will reach a majority of first choice votes and that the race will therefore head to ranked choice voting tabulation.

Peltola’s chances in the special election got a major boost when Al Gross, an independent who was one of the four candidates to advance to the runoff, dropped out of the race. Alaska elections officials did not replace him on the ballot, which meant Democratic votes would be funneled almost entirely to Peltola, while two Republicans battled each other.

Peltola, a salmon advocate from the western Alaska bush — a region not connected by road with the rest of the state — is seeking to become the first Alaska Native elected to Congress. 

“I just think it’s high time that an Alaska Native be part of our congressional delegation,” she told CNN in a June interview.

She’s also someone with relationships across party lines, including with the family of Young, who held Alaska’s at-large House seat for 49 years before his death in March. 

Peltola’s father and Young taught school together decades ago, before Young was elected to Congress, she said in June. When she was attending high school in Pennsylvania, she once spent Thanksgiving with Young’s family on the East Coast. 

“Everybody in Alaska had some kind of relationship with Don Young,” Peltola said in June. “It’s just a matter of fact. In Alaska, because our state is so small in population, we’re all connected, and it’s like one degree of separation, practically.”

Peltola aligns with Democrats on most major issues, including abortion rights. But she also touted her record working with Republicans in the state legislature, where she served from 1999 until 2009, overlapping at the end of her tenure with Palin’s governorship. 

“I definitely am not a Democrat who goes 100% with the party platform on every issue. That is not the way I see myself, and that was very evident in the 10 years I spent in the state House,” she said.

The results of the Alaska special general election to fill the remainder of the late Rep. Don Young’s term remain uncertain, as CNN projects none of the candidates on the ballot topped 50% on Tuesday — a necessary feat given the state’s new ranked choice voting rules.

The special general election, which was triggered by Young’s death, marks the first time that Alaska is using ranked choice voting — a process that asks voters to rank their preferred candidates, with the votes for the lowest-finishing candidates coming into play only if no one tops 50%. CNN projected that no candidate crossed that threshold, which means it will be a while until the winner is determined, with the ranked choice voting tabulation scheduled to begin on Aug. 31.

The race to determine who will fill the remainder of Young’s term pits former Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee who has not appeared on a ballot since that election loss, against Nick Begich III, who won the Alaska Republican Party’s endorsement in April and is the product of a powerful Democratic Alaska political family, and former Democratic state Rep. Mary Peltola.

All three candidates and independent Al Gross advanced to the August special general election after a June nonpartisan special primary, but Gross withdrew from the race and encouraged his supporters to back Peltola.

No matter who wins the special general election to fill the remainder of Young’s term, there will be a regular general election, which will also use ranked choice voting, in November to determine who will hold the seat in the next Congress.

Palin, Begich and Peltola were also among the candidates on the ballot for the primary election on Tuesday. All three will advance to the November election, CNN projects, with a fourth candidate to be determined.

Read more about the race here.

Sarah Palin, Nick Begich and Mary Peltola.

Republican Sarah Palin, Republican Nick Begich III and Democrat Mary Peltola will advance to the November election in Alaska’s race for the state’s lone House seat, CNN projects. The fall election will decide who will win the seat for the next full term.

A fourth candidate is yet to be determined. Under Alaska’s nonpartisan primary system, the top four finishers, regardless of party, advance to the general election.

The three candidates are also running in a special election to fill the remainder of the House seat, which has been vacant since Rep. Don Young’s death in March.

Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee, was backed by former President Donald Trump earlier this year. Begich won the Alaska Republican Party’s endorsement in April and is the product of a powerful Alaska political family. Peltola is a former Democratic state representative.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, left, and Kelly Tshibaka, right.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski will advance to the November general election, CNN projects, along with the Trump-backed former Alaska Department of Administration commissioner Kelly Tshibaka, following the state’s nonpartisan primary.

Under Alaska’s nonpartisan primary system, the top four finishers, regardless of party, advance to the general election.

Retired educator Patricia Chesbro, who is endorsed by Alaska’s Democratic Party, will also advance to the November contest, CNN projects.

CNN has not yet projected a fourth winner.

Given the new voting procedure, which Alaskans voted on in 2020, Murkowski avoided a partisan primary contest with Tshibaka and was able to survive a first-round showdown.

Former President Donald Trump endorsed Tshibaka last year, pledging to campaign against Murkowski, the only one of the seven GOP senators who voted to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial who is up for reelection this year. The former President traveled to Alaska to hold a rally for Tshibaka in July.

Murkowski’s family has held her Senate seat for more than four decades. Her father, Frank Murkowski, was elected to the Senate in 1980 and appointed his daughter to fill his seat in 2002 when he was elected governor.

More background: Murkowski has held the seat since, winning her most dramatic victory in 2010, when she lost the Republican primary to Joe Miller but then became only the second person ever (after Strom Thurmond in 1954) to win a Senate seat via a write-in campaign. Moderate on issues like abortion, Murkowski has beat back candidates from the right before. 

But her criticism of Trump could make her vulnerable to Tshibaka in November. Murkowski did not vote for the former President in 2020 and told The Hill she wrote in someone else who lost. Murkowski was censured by the Alaska Republican Party in a resolution following her vote to impeach Trump.

Tshibaka launched her campaign last year, pitching the election as an outsider versus a powerful, longtime insider.

Before joining Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration, Tshibaka worked in the offices of the inspector general for the US Postal Service, Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice. Tshibaka acknowledged she worked in Washington, DC but “fought to expose waste and fraud in government,” seeking to draw a contrast with Murkowski’s extensive experience in the Capitol. 

The November election will be held using ranked choice voting.

Mike Dunleavy, Bill Walker and Les Gara.

Incumbent Republican Mike Dunleavy, Democrat Les Gara and independent Bill Walker will advance to the November election in Alaska’s race for governor, CNN projects.

A fourth candidate is yet to be determined. Under Alaska’s nonpartisan primary system, the top four finishers, regardless of party, advance to the general election.

Alaskans cast their votes in Anchorage on Tuesday.

Its 1 a.m. ET and final polls are closing across Alaska. Some polls in the state closed earlier at 12 a.m. ET.

Here are the key races we are tracking:

The state is hosting a special election to fill the state’s at large House seat, which has been vacant since Rep. Don Young’s death in March. Three candidates, including former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, are on the ballot, with the winner decided by ranked choice voting.

Also running is Republican Nick Begich III — who won the Alaska Republican Party’s endorsement in April and is the product of a powerful Alaska political family as the grandson of the Democratic congressman of the same name, who disappeared on a flight in 1972, and the nephew of former Democratic Sen. Mark Begich — and former Democratic state Rep. Mary Peltola. Independent candidate Al Gross was previously running but withdrew from the race.

The three special election contenders — along with nearly 20 other candidates, most notably Republican Tara Sweeney — are also running in a concurrent primary that will determine the four finalists for the November election that will decide who will win the at-large House seat for the next full term. There is also a gubernatorial primary.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski speaks at a hearing in May.

Additionally, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski is the only senator who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial facing voters this year. Trump has endorsed Kelly Tshibaka, the former commissioner of the Alaska Department of Administration, in the Senate primary. However, due to Alaska’s top four primary system — where all candidates run the same ballot and the top four candidates advance to the general election —it’s likely that both Tshibaka and Murkowski will be on the ballot in November.

CNN’s Gregory Krieg contributed reporting to this post.

Candidates for the special general election Sarah Palin, Nick Begich and Mary Peltola.

Voters in Alaska on Tuesday voted in two separate elections for the same US House seat — the state’s at-large congressional district seat.

That’s because there’s both a special general election to fill the remainder of the late Rep. Don Young’s term and a primary election to decide who will compete in November for the seat’s next full term starting in January.

It’s a complicated process. Beyond voting for the same seat twice in one day, different rules apply to the special general and primary elections.

What will happen in the special general election? The special general election will be the first time that Alaska will use ranked choice voting — which will see voters rank their preferred candidates, with the votes for the lowest-finishing candidates coming into play if no one tops 50% — to determine who will fill the remainder of Young’s term. If no one reaches that threshold, it’ll be a while until we know the winner, with the ranked choice voting tabulation scheduled to begin on Aug. 31.

What will happen in the primary? The primary will use a top-four system, which means that candidates of all parties, and those with no party affiliation, run on the same primary ballot — just as candidates did for the special election’s primary earlier this year. The top four performing candidates will then advance to the November general election for the full term.

Why is this happening? Young’s death led to the special election. He held the seat for 49 years, and following his death, there was a crowded field of 48 candidates who competed in the June special primary election for the seat. Alaskan officials set the special general election to take place on the same day as the already scheduled primary.

Who is running in the special general election? While four candidates advanced to the special general, only three candidates are on the ballot, after independent candidate Al Gross withdrew from the race. On the ballot are: former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin; Republican Nick Begich III, who won the Alaska Republican Party’s endorsement in April and is the product of a powerful Alaska political family; and former Democratic state Rep. Mary Peltola.

Who is running in the primary? Palin, Begich and Peltola are also on the ballot for the regular primary Tuesday, along with 19 other candidates.

Continue reading here.

Polls close at 12 a.m. and 1 a.m. ET in Alaska. The state is holding a top-four primary for its at-large House seat, as well as primaries for the Senate seat currently held by GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump, and for the governorship.

The state is also holding a ranked choice special general election for its House seat to fill the remainder of the late GOP Rep. Don Young’s term, which former Gov. Sarah Palin is running in.

Here’s what to know about the state’s key races:

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, left, and Kelly Tshibaka, right.

Mike Dunleavy, Bill Walker and Les Gara.

Sarah Palin and Nick Begich III.

How ranked choice works: Ranked choice voting lets voters literally rank their choices in order of preference, marking candidates as their first, second and third choice picks (and so on). Voters do not need to mark every candidate, only a first choice or as many as they want. In the special general election, only first-choice votes will be reported on election night. The ranked choice voting tabulation will be conducted on Aug. 31. That means that, except in the unlikely event that one candidate gets a majority of the initial preference votes, CNN won’t be able to project a winner until the end of the month. 

Read more about Sarah Palin’s run here.

Harriet Hageman speaks during a primary election night party on August 16 in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Trump-backed Harriet Hageman, who CNN projects will defeat Rep. Liz Cheney in the Wyoming House race, fired up a rowdy crowd of supporters at her primary night rally, declaring that what the state “has shown today is that while it may not be easy, we can dislodge entrenched politicians who believe they’ve risen above the people they are supposed to represent and serve.”

She said voters in Wyoming have “made it clear – that we are taking our country back.”

People celebrate during the election night party for Harriet Hageman in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Tuesday evening.

“Those Democrats and Republicans who don’t really care which party is in power, just as long as they are. Wyoming has sent the message that if you are going to claim to live in Wyoming, you better damn well live in Wyoming,” Hageman declared. 

Republican Gov. Mark Gordon will face Democratic nominee Theresa Livingston in the Wyoming governor’s race in November, CNN projects.

Gordon, the incumbent, beat out a field of three other primary challengers on Tuesday.

Rep. Liz Cheney speaks Tuesday evening at a primary election day gathering in Wyoming.

Republican Rep. Liz Cheney called out former President Donald Trump and his actions during her concession speech, stating that it is the duty of citizens to “defend the freedom that has been handed down to us.”

Cheney referenced the recent actions of Trump, including spreading false statements about the lawful search by the FBI of his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. She noted how he released the names of FBI agents involved in the search, despite knowing the threats they have faced.

She added, “Our duty as citizens of this republic is not only to defend the freedom that has been handed down to us. We also have an obligation to learn from the actions of those who came before. To know the stories of greats and perseverance.”

Rep. Liz Cheney said she called challenger Harriet Hageman to concede the House primary race, but added that “now the real work begins.”

“Tonight Harriet Hageman has received the most votes in this primary, she won. I called her to concede the race,” Cheney said during a speech from Jackson, Wyoming.

She drew comparisons to Abraham Lincoln, who lost congressional elections before “he won the most important election of all,” the presidency, she said.

She also added that democracy “relies upon the goodwill of all candidates for office to accept honorably the outcome of elections.”

Rep. Liz Cheney said that the path to winning the Republican nomination for her House seat “was clear,” but it would have required her to “go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election.”

“Two years ago, I won this primary with 73% of the vote. I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear,” Cheney said during a speech from Jackson, Wyoming, after CNN projected her defeat. “But it would’ve required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. It would’ve required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic.”

She continued: “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 our republic relies upon the goodwill of all candidates for office. To accept, honorably, the outcome of elections. Tonight Harriet Hageman, has received the most votes in this primary. She won. I called her to concede the race. This primary election is over. But now the real work begins.”

Liz Cheney arrives to speak at an election night event on August 16.

After being projected to lose her primary bid for reelection in Wyoming, GOP Rep. Liz Cheney said a message she received from a Gold Star father more than a year ago has guided her actions.

“He said to me, ‘standing up for truth honors all who gave all’ and have thought of his words every single day since then,” Cheney said in remarks from Jackson, Wyoming.

Cheney said “this is not a game,” adding that “every one of us must be committed” to defending America. She also thanked her staff and said, “our work is far from over.”

“And at the heart of our democratic process are elections. They are the foundational principle of our Constitution,” she said.

Harriet Hageman reacts as she speaks to supporters during a primary election night party on August 16 in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Harriet Hageman will win the Republican nomination in Wyoming’s House race, CNN projects, defeating Liz Cheney, who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump and has helped lead the House Jan. 6 investigation.

Hageman grew up on her family’s small ranch near Fort Laramie, with a population of 207, not far from the state’s border with Nebraska. Long before her fight with Cheney, Hageman gained prominence as a natural resources attorney, specializing in cases protecting the state’s water, public lands and agriculture. 

“One of the things, I think, we need to do is make the federal government largely irrelevant to our everyday lives,” Hageman told voters this week during a stop at the Rock Springs Chamber of Commerce luncheon, highlighting decades of legal work fighting against such policies as protecting gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act and broader plans of national forest conservation. 

Hageman, 59, spent most of her career doing this work at her own law firm in Cheyenne. But now, she is a senior litigation counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a group based in Washington that battles environmental regulations, taxes and campaign finance restrictions. 

She has spent much of the last year driving around the state to build a campaign against Cheney, telling voters that she’s traveled about 40,000 miles since announcing her campaign nearly a year ago. Yet in the final week of the primary, she had no public campaign events, rather meeting privately with groups. 

Three other Republicans rounded out the House primary ballot. 

With Cheney’s defeat, only two House Republicans out of the 10 who supported the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump — and have subsequently been a constant target of his wrath — won their primary races. Read more here.

As polls close across the state of Wyoming and results start to come in, a gathering is taking place in a third floor event center in the Cheyenne Frontier Days, home to one of the largest rodeos in the country located in Cheyenne, Wyoming. 

The room is filled with enthusiastic Harriet Hageman supporters. They are serenaded by an ironic playlist of music by Elton John (“Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting”), Fleetwood Mac (“Don’t Stop”) Lynard Skynard (“Sweet Home Alabama”) and Bruce Springsteen (“Glory Days”).

People are jovial and light. Confidence fills the room as folks nibble on food and sip cocktails. 

The evening started with a prayer and reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance.

At Rep. Liz Cheney’s event at a cattle ranch outside Jackson, Wyoming, CNN’s Jeff Zeleny reports that people are gathered having food and drinks outside.

There is a sense that some friends of Cheney have driven from across the state to support, he said.

Zeleny reports that the crowd does not seem “dispirited,” as Cheney faces a tough challenge from Hageman, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump. Cheney has been one of the Trump’s toughest critics and voted for his impeachment.

Zeleny said the crowd is wondering what she will say in her speech — regardless of the outcome of the election including her plans for 2024. He adds Cheney will likely not make a specific declaration about that but there is a “festive mood about what her future might be,” Zeleny reports. 

James Goldston walks past the hearing room before the House select committee holds its second public hearing on Capitol Hill on June 13.

James Goldston, the veteran television producer who has spent the last several months advising the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, is on hand in Wyoming tonight for Rep. Liz Cheney’s speech.

Goldston, the former president of ABC News, was surveying the scene at Cheney’s campaign event at a cattle ranch outside Jackson. He and a small film crew were taking in the picturesque landscape, with the Grand Tetons in the distance and the Wyoming prairie bathed in the evening sunlight, in what will be a stunning backdrop for a marquee Cheney speech expected later today.

As the vice chair of the committee, Cheney worked closely with Goldston’s team in presenting the findings in a TV-ready fashion to a national audience. They have worked together to edit hours and hours of recordings that have brought to life the insurrection as it unfolded. 

Goldston was not in Wyoming as part of his work as a special adviser to the House committee, CNN has learned, but rather on assignment for his own production company for potential future projects involving Cheney.

“She invited him as a friend and it has nothing to do with committee work,” Jeremy Adler, a spokesperson for Cheney, told CNN.

Goldston declined to comment.

Rep. Liz Cheney arrives with her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, to vote at the Teton County Library on Tuesday, August 16.

It is 9 p.m. ET and polls are closing in Wyoming.

The key race we are tracking: Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, is facing several Republican challengers, including attorney Harriet Hageman, whom former President Donald Trump has endorsed. Cheney has been one of Trump’s harshest critics and was ousted from her House Republican leadership post last year after publicly rejecting for months Trump’s lie that he won the 2020 presidential election. Cheney is also the last of the House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment to face primary voters.

“And those of us across the board — Republicans, Democrats and independents — who believe deeply in freedom and who care about the Constitution and the future of the country, I think have an obligation to put that above party and, I think that fight is clearly going to continue and clearly going to go on,” she said.

Cheney is expected to deliver remarks tonight near Jackson, Wyoming, and intends to make the case that she is at “the beginning of the battle,” advisers told CNN’s Jeff Zeleny, as she calls on Republicans, Democrats and independents to join her fight to protect democracy and the rule of law in America.

A University of Wyoming poll released last week found that Cheney is trailing Hageman by 29 points. Yet one question looming over the Republican primary is how many Democrats and independents will switch parties and vote for Cheney, which even her supporters acknowledge is her only chance to stay competitive.

The Cowboy State is also holding a gubernatorial primary election.

Read more about tonight’s Wyoming primary here.

CNN’s Jeff Zeleny and Gregory Krieg contributed reporting to this post.

Voters cast ballots at a polling location in Cheyenne, Wyoming, on August 16.

Polls are closing in Wyoming at 9 p.m. ET. The immediate political future of Rep. Liz Cheney, one of former President Donald Trump’s most powerful critics in the GOP, is at stake tonight as the last of the House Republicans who voted for his impeachment to face primary voters.

She’s facing a challenge from Trump-endorsed attorney Harriet Hageman, among others, in a state the former President won with nearly 70% of the vote in 2020. His enduring popularity there, coupled with Cheney’s role as vice chair of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, has made the three-term congresswoman and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney a top target of Trump allies.

Trump’s grip on the GOP has been proven again and again since he left Washington. Once considered an up-and-comer in the party, Cheney, a fierce conservative, was booted from House GOP leadership last year over her unyielding opposition to the former President.

Of the 10 House Republicans who voted for his second impeachment, at least seven are not coming back to Congress next year, either because they’re not running for reelection or were defeated in a primary. The two survivors to date, in California and Washington, benefited from their states’ nonpartisan primary system. Cheney has no such cushion, though a late push for Democrats and independents to register for the GOP primary might soften the ultimate count.

More about the primary: Leading Republicans on Capitol Hill have coalesced around Hageman, who has embraced Trump’s false election fraud claims and called the 2020 contest “rigged.” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, another Hageman supporter, on Monday said during an appearance on Fox News that the election in Wyoming is “going to be a referendum on the January 6 committee.”

Cheney’s focus on the committee’s work and her unwavering commitment to, in her words, doing “everything I can to ensure that (Trump) never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office,” has set her apart from the small band of GOP colleagues who also voted for impeachment and are running for reelection. What her pledge entails, in practice, remains to be seen, but chatter about a 2024 presidential run has already begun.

Watch CNN’s John King break down the Cheney vs. Hageman race: