About Last Night: Liz Cheney and Half-Baked Alaska Edition

Wyoming and Alaska get their turns with the 2022 midterm primary season, with some big political names, hot button issues, an attempted political comeback, and one hot mess of a voting process included.

First in Wyoming, the question wasn’t would Representative Liz Cheney lose her seat, but by how much. With the over/under set at 30 points, Cheney couldn’t even hold that line, losing 66%-29% to one-time ally Harriet Hageman who had the unbeatable dual threat of a Trump endorsement and not being Liz Cheney.

Wyoming Tribune Eagle:

Cheyenne attorney Harriet Hageman easily beat Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in the Republican side of the fight for Wyoming’s lone seat in Congress.

On the Democratic side, Lynnette Grey Bull won her party’s primary. She will be running against Hageman in the Nov. 8 general election.

Early Wednesday morning, the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office reported results from all 23 counties. In the final, unofficial tally, Hageman received 113,025 votes to Cheney’s 49,316.

Even before the county numbers began showing up online, the other members of Wyoming’s congressional delegation quickly weighed in with their congratulations to Hageman, who pre-primary polls had consistently forecast as the winner.

Hageman was joined by family, friends and some supporters here, as media outlets far and wide reported, just an hour after polls closed in Wyoming, that she was the winner. As the results were discussed on television at Hageman’s election party, the crowd cheered and hollered in celebration.

Many said in interviews they were there to congratulate her in person, and had known she would beat the incumbent by a landslide.

“By our vote today, Wyoming has put the elites on notice – we are no longer going to tolerate representatives who don’t represent us,” Hageman said in her victory speech. “Wyoming has made clear that we are done being governed by the Washington, D.C., uniparty – those Democrats and Republicans who don’t really care which party is in power, just so long as they are.”

Cheney acknowledged Hageman had won and said she had called her rival. Cheney also continued her comments against former President Donald Trump and those like him who have denied the results of the 2020 election that he lost.

“Two years ago, I won this primary with 73% of the vote. I could easily have done the same again,” Cheney said in televised remarks. “But it would have required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election.

“Tonight, Harriet Hageman has received the most votes in this primary. She won. I called her to concede the race,” Cheney said. “This primary election is over. But now the real work begins.”

Other political leaders in the state made statements congratulating Hageman in the minutes after Cheney accepted defeat. U.S. Sen. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis, both R-Wyo., each said they were looking forward to her joining them in Washington to represent the Equality State.

“Harriet will be a tremendous ally in the fight to unleash American energy, combat inflation and secure our southern border,” Barrasso said. “Along with Cynthia Lummis, the three of us will be a strong, conservative and effective team for the people of Wyoming.”

A news release from Lummis said the lawmaker “extended her congratulations to Harriet Hageman on her primary win for Wyoming’s lone seat in Congress.” In the emailed announcement, Lummis said of “my friend” Hageman that she will now hold the seat that Lummis herself occupied for eight years.

Hageman has been leading incumbent Cheney in nearly every poll released ahead of the election, including the latest completed by the University of Wyoming. The survey was conducted through the last week of July and into the first week of August, and found that 57% of GOP primary voters surveyed supported Hageman. Cheney polled at 28%.

Liz Cheney became enemy number one to vast swaths of the GOP for not only going against Donald Trump but being the standard bearer of anti-Trump Republican establishment opposition — such as it is — to the former president from her perch as vice-chair of the January 6th committee. even as most other Republicans refused participation. While that made her a media favorite and drew praise from the anti-Trump folks, Cheney knew like everyone else that was probably political suicide in one of the reddest states in the country. For primary GOP voters having a very safe seat meant they could fully express all the rage they wanted to at Cheney without any political concerns for the general election. The MAGA faithful will be gleeful, while there will be handwringing among the commentariat over “what does it mean when Liz Cheney did the right thing garble garble…”

It means the right and wrong thing doesn’t matter in a safe seat primary if you go against your own party. If this is shocking to you, welcome to politics; pull up a chair and take notes, you have a bunch of things to learn. Liz Cheney gets her political martyrdom and moral victory, the GOP get a generic, automatic yes-voting member of congress who probably won’t have a headline outside Wyoming in her entire congressional career after this. And the world keeps turning.

Cheney will probably run for president next — seeing as she politically will have nothing else to do — where she will get lots of “in a normal political party”-type op-eds, non-Trump fundraising money, and Republican polling support they would have to recalibrate the James Webb Space Telescope to notice. Media talking heads will have hot takes about what Cheney does and doesn’t “deserve” for her principled stand against Trump.

“Deserves” in the words of William Munny “Got nuthin to do with it”. Cheney stopped short of telling the GOP in general and Trump followers in particular “I’ll see you in hell” right before they put her political career down, but it was implied.

Meanwhile up north, the results of Alaska’s foray into ranked choice voting is…you won’t know for a while:

CNN:

The results of the Alaska special general election to fill the remainder of the late Rep. Don Young’s term remain uncertain, as CNN projected 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 August 31 — the deadline for overseas ballots to arrive.

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.

Palin’s attempt at a political comeback comes 13 years after she resigned the Alaska governor’s office in 2009 during her only term. Since then, she has been a conservative media figure and has endorsed and campaigned with various Republican candidates, but she has been largely detached from Alaska politics.

Though Palin was the best-known candidate in the race by far and had the backing of former President Donald

Trump, who carried Alaska by 10 points in 2020, rival candidates and political observers in the state previously said the ranked choice voting process could hurt her chances in the special general election. She also faced opposition from voters still angry that she quit the governor’s office.

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.

Yes you read that right, there are two elections, at the same time, for the same seat. To add to the delay and confusion, the “second choice” tabulation won’t happen until August 31st. Huzzah, progress.

Meanwhile, Alaska also is working through some things in their senate delegation:

Trump has also set his sights on Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who was among the seven Republican senators who voted to convict him during his second impeachment trial. Trump is backing former Alaska Department of Administration commissioner Kelly Tshibaka; he traveled to the state to hold a rally for Tshibaka in July.
However, Alaska’s non-partisan primary system — like the House race, the top four finishers, regardless of party, advance to the general election — means that both Murkowski and Tshibaka will advance to the general election, CNN projected. Democrat Patricia Chesbro will also advance, and a fourth candidate has not yet been projected.

Ranked choice voting is a hot topic with some folks looking for a better way to do elections, but the Alaska experiment is not looking like the poster child for the method some hoped it would be.