Results of Yesterdays Local'National Elections and What it means for the GOP

Good morning. with New York Times and Adamfoxie. We have the latest results from last night’s primaries — and their larger meaning for the Republican Party.

Liz Cheney’s concession speech in Jackson, Wyo.Kim Raff for The New York Times

The party of Trump

Last night offered the latest evidence of Donald Trump’s continued influence over the Republican Party. In today’s newsletter, we’ll give you the results and also offer some larger perspective on the overall success rate of Trump’s endorsements this year.

First, here are the main results:

Liz Cheney — Trump’s highest-profile critic within the party — resoundingly lost her primary race for Wyoming’s lone House seat. Cheney received 29 percent of the vote, compared with 66 percent for Harriet Hageman, the Trump-endorsed candidate who has not held elected office before. (Here’s a Times profile of Hageman, and an analysis about what Cheney’s loss means for the G.O.P.) In Wyoming’s Republican primary for secretary of state, the office that oversees elections, the winner was Chuck Gray, a state legislator whom Trump endorsed. Gray, like Trump, has falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. In Alaska, Sarah Palin, the state’s former governor whom Trump endorsed, and two rivals — Mary Peltola, a Democrat, and Nick Begich, a Republican — advanced to the November election for Alaska’s open House seat to replace Don Young, who died in March. Alaska also held a Senate primary, but its results are unlikely to matter much. The state uses open primaries in which the top four vote getters advance to the general election. Both the incumbent — Lisa Murkowski, who voted to convict Trump in his impeachment trial for the Capitol attack — and Trump’s preferred candidate, Kelly Tshibaka, advanced. Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, which may favor a moderate like Murkowski.

Here are the latest vote counts from Alaska and Wyoming.

Trump’s 2022 record

The 2022 primary schedule is winding down, with only six states yet to hold elections, including Florida next week. The full picture of Trump’s influence is becoming clear.

He has become the rare defeated president to wield enormous sway over his party, with the ability to end careers (like Cheney’s, perhaps) and to turn once-obscure candidates into winners. Trump even persuaded other top Republicans, like Representative Kevin McCarthy and Senator Ted Cruz, to endorse Cheney’s opponent.

But Trump’s influence is not complete. The success rate of his endorsements in competitive elections hovers around 80 percent, and some incumbents (like Murkowski, perhaps) have proven strong enough to overcome his criticism of them.

The Times’s Maggie Haberman notes that Trump sometimes makes endorsements without thinking them through, including in multicandidate races with more than one candidate who supports his agenda. “Trump tends to treat politics like a scoreboard, as opposed to a strategic effort,” Maggie said.

This chart, by our colleague Ashley Wu, summarizes Trump’s record in the 2022 primaries so far.

Data up to Aug. 15. Based on initial endorsements and excludes uncontested candidates and Trump-endorsed incumbents. | The New York Times

Trump’s biggest successes include races in which he has helped defeat incumbents who defied him, including four of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him over Jan. 6. Trump has also transformed some campaigns without an incumbent, allowing his endorsee to win a crowded field. Examples include J.D. Vance in the Ohio Senate primary; Mehmet Oz in the Pennsylvania Senate primary; and Kari Lake in the Arizona governor primary.

If anything, our chart above understates Trump’s influence, because it does not include officials who resigned partly out of a fear that a more Trump-friendly candidate might beat them. The Ohio and Pennsylvania Senate seats, as well as those in Missouri and North Carolina, seem to be examples. The senators who chose not to run for election in these states — like Rob Portman in Ohio — were not even regular Trump critics. They instead tended to be establishment Republicans who tried to avoid talking about him.

Of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, four also did not run for re-election. Overall, only two still have a chance to remain in Congress next year.

With all this said, Trump is not omnipotent. The races where his endorsed candidates have lost this year tend to fall into one of two categories: Either his chosen candidates were facing incumbents with a strong enough connection to voters to survive, or the Trump-backed candidates seemed too flawed to win.

Georgia falls into the first category. There, both Gov. Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, survived primary challengers despite their refusal to help Trump’s attempt to reverse the 2020 election result.

The Alabama senate race falls into the second category. Mo Brooks, a House member involved in the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, was struggling so much that Trump withdrew his endorsement late in the campaign and later switched to Katie Britt, who already seemed on course to win. Other Trump endorsees who lost their races include Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, who has been accused of insider trading and sexual misconduct; and Charles Herbster, a candidate for Nebraska governor whom multiple women accused of groping.

Trump endorsed Tim Michels, left, who won the Republican primary for governor in Wisconsin.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

The bottom line

Even if Trump does not become the Republican presidential nominee again, he continues to shape the Republican Party. He has helped push out of Congress some of the Republicans who have voted for bipartisan legislation this year. He has also pushed out some of those who have called out his lies about his election and criticized his encouragement of the Jan. 6 rioters.

In their place are candidates who have signaled they might be willing to commit election fraud to keep Democrats from taking office, regardless of the vote count.

“These primary fights aren’t between the ‘pro-Trump’ wing versus the ‘anti- or Never-Trump’ wing of the G.O.P.,” Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report has written, referring to most races. “In both style and substance, the current G.O.P. remains Trump’s party.”

For more: Cheney is a victim of conservative cancel culture, Stephanie Muravchik and Jon Shields write in Times Opinion. And Jonathan Martin and Blake Hounshell explain how Cheney thinks about her place in history.

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