In 2018, pure sources legal professional Harriet Hageman ran for governor of Wyoming on a pledge to “reform federal land administration and entry” and battle burdensome federal laws.

Public lands have been a hot-button issue in midterm elections throughout the West that 12 months. Searching and conservation teams had rallied to defeat an anti-public lands bill a 12 months earlier, launched by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), that might have offered off 3.3 million acres of federal land in 10 Western states, together with Wyoming. And the Trump administration was advancing its assault on public land and environmental protections — what in the end proved to be the most anti-conservation record of any administration in historical past.

In August 2018, the conservation group Wyoming Wildlife Federation hosted a candidate discussion board for the state’s gubernatorial race. When requested about her imaginative and prescient for federal land administration, Hageman voiced her assist for transferring management of public lands to states, starting with 1 million acres in Wyoming as a part of a pilot venture, Excessive Nation Information reported on the time.

Hageman’s remark induced a stir inside Wyoming’s searching, outside recreation and conservation communities. After the discussion board, the Wyoming Hunters and Anglers Alliance, then a rising searching and public lands advocacy group, endorsed Mark Gordon, Hageman’s opponent, and the present Republican governor. The group cited the candidates’ views on public land switch in its choice, in response to Excessive Nation Information.

Hageman in the end positioned third within the main discipline, securing simply 21% of the vote to Gordon’s 33%. Dwayne Meadows, who on the time was govt director of the Wyoming Wildlife Federation, an affiliate of the Nationwide Wildlife Federation, informed HuffPost that Hageman and different candidates’ hostility towards public lands swung the election in Gordon’s favor.

“I feel it did affect it,” he mentioned of the result. “I actually do.”

4 years later, Hageman is again on the marketing campaign path, operating to oust GOP Rep. Liz Cheney. Solely this time, her file and views on the federal property are barely a part of the dialogue. As an alternative, the race has largely change into a referendum on former President Donald Trump and Cheney’s participation on the Home choose committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.

“The voters in Wyoming are so enamored with Trump that anyone who assaults him, reminiscent of Cheney has, that turns into the central subject, the place abruptly folks aren’t serious about what else Hageman would deliver to the plate,” mentioned Cheyenne resident Earl DeGroot, a self-declared reasonable Republican, sportsman and member of Preserve It Public, Wyoming, a coalition of public lands advocates.

“This complete race is boiling right down to Cheney’s work on the Jan. 6 committee,” he added. “I feel there’s so much at stake, and folks aren’t wanting on the points.”

Public lands and handle them is a big subject in Wyoming, as it’s in all Western states the place the federal authorities owns a big share of land. Practically half of Wyoming is federally owned and its outside recreation {industry} generates roughly $4.5 billion yearly in client spending. A survey by Colorado Faculty earlier this 12 months discovered that 88% of Wyoming residents take into account points involving clear water, wildlife and public lands when deciding who to assist for elected workplace. Moreover, 78% mentioned they’d visited nationwide public lands greater than twice previously 12 months, and 71% mentioned they assist creating extra protected federal websites.

John Gale, conservation director at Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, mentioned public lands are “critically necessary” for searching, fishing and outside entry and have been a “unifying pressure” in recent times. However in Wyoming and elsewhere, false claims of a stolen 2020 election have sucked the oxygen out of the room, he mentioned.

“In a spot like Wyoming, public lands used to function prominently,” Gale mentioned. “The politics of the day have distracted from these points, so they don’t seem to be even a spotlight in any respect. And I feel it’s disheartening to see this lack of deal with actually necessary points that affect folks again house.”

For 3 a long time, Hageman has been sparring with environmentalists, suing federal companies over land use choices and advocating for transferring management of federal lands to states. It’s a file of anti-conservation, anti-government zealotry that when earned her the nickname “Wicked Witch of the West” amongst environmentalists — a title she embraced.

Come subsequent 12 months, Hageman might be Wyoming’s new at-large congresswoman and, if she has it her means, a member of the Home committee with jurisdiction over power growth, public lands and wildlife. Polls have proven Hageman with a commanding lead over Cheney. The winner of the GOP main on Aug. 16 is all however assured to sail to victory within the November normal election.

At the beginning, Hageman has tied her Senate bid to Trump — a transfer that has required a dizzying stage of flip-flopping. In 2016, Hageman known as Trump “racist and xenophobic” and worked unsuccessfully to strip him of the Republican presidential nomination. Now vying for Congress in a darkish crimson state, she is touting her endorsement from Trump, calling him “the best president of my lifetime” and vowing “to do everything in my power to Make America Nice Once more — Once more.”

Hageman has additionally adopted Trump and Republicans’ lead in viciously attacking Cheney for her efforts to carry Trump accountable for inciting the violent mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol in January 2021.

“We’re fed up with the Jan. 6 fee and people individuals who assume that they will gaslight us,” she shouted at a “Save Wyoming” rally with Trump in June, drawing uproarious applause. “And we’re fed up with Liz Cheney.”

The identical 12 months that she condemned Trump, Hageman endorsed Cheney’s congressional bid, calling her a “pal” and a “confirmed, brave, constitutional conservative,” as CNN’s KFile reported. She additionally decried “concerted efforts to pressure true conservatives to take a seat down and shut up” earlier than including, “these efforts have by no means labored on me and I do know that they won’t work on and don’t have any impact on Liz Cheney.”

With Hageman, Wyoming would get greater than a loyal Trump convert to switch a high nemesis of Trump who, as Hageman accurately forecast in 2016, hasn’t backed down within the face of monumental stress from her celebration. They’d additionally get a 59-year-old lawyer and rancher who was carrying the anti-environment, anti-government torch and denying the clear realities of local weather change lengthy earlier than Trump ever got here alongside.

“I’ve been preventing for you, and successful, in opposition to the Environmental Safety Company, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest Service and the Division of Agriculture,” Hageman mentioned on the June rally.

Hageman’s marketing campaign didn’t reply to HuffPost’s requests for an interview.

Hageman grew up on a ranch exterior Fort Laramie, in jap Wyoming, and graduated with a legislation diploma from the College of Wyoming in 1989. She talks usually in regards to the federal authorities and Washington bureaucrats being the best menace to Wyoming’s financial system and way of life.

Over time, Hageman has repeatedly gone to bat in opposition to federal regulators on behalf of farmers, ranchers, {industry}, water districts, and state and native governments. She is at the moment senior litigation counsel on the New Civil Liberty Alliance, a conservative Washington, D.C.-based agency that has waged authorized battles in opposition to federal emissions and different environmental guidelines, COVID-19 mandates and gun restrictions.

Hageman’s highest-profile authorized battle occurred within the early 2000s when she was a key participant in Wyoming’s battle in opposition to the Clinton administration’s so-called “roadless rule.” Signed in 2001, the conservation rule prohibits constructing roads and harvesting timber on 58.5 million acres of nationwide forest lands throughout the nation. In 2003, a federal choose in Wyoming blocked the rule from taking impact. A separate courtroom reinstated the rule in 2006, solely to have the Wyoming choose once more invalidate it in 2008. A federal appeals courtroom upheld the rule in 2011.

Like many conservatives, Hageman is a vocal critic of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), one of the crucial necessary legal guidelines for shielding imperiled crops and animals. In 2009, she represented a coalition of agricultural pursuits and searching guides in a lawsuit in opposition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the administration of grey wolves in Wyoming.

Hageman argues that the ESA has change into a instrument for “radical environmentalists” to “cease growth, management land and water use, and stop the development and upkeep of much-needed infrastructure tasks.” And he or she has warned that conservationists need to “herald all of the endangered species from everywhere in the world and launch them” in Wyoming.

“They’ll merely transfer the folks off and herald lions, elephants and cheetahs,” she said in 2011.

Hageman’s authorized profession has aligned her with a few of the nation’s most radical anti-federal lands advocates. She served for years on the board of litigation for Mountain States Authorized Basis, a right-wing, industry-funded group as soon as described because the “litigating arm of the Wise Use Movement.” William Perry Pendley, a conservative lawyer with extreme anti-government and anti-environmentalism views, served because the group’s president for almost three a long time earlier than the Trump administration tapped him to steer the Federal Bureau of Land Administration. The so-called “wise-use motion” was a gaggle of anti-government organizations that gained momentum in the 1980s and pushed to boost mining, drilling and logging on federal lands whereas portray environmentalists as home terrorists.

In 2016, Hageman was a keynote speaker on the American Lands Council’s (ALC) annual convention in Salt Lake Metropolis. The Utah-based nonprofit advocates for the “timely and orderly transfer of federal public lands to prepared states for native management that may present higher public entry, higher environmental well being, and higher financial productiveness.” Ken Ivory, a Republican state consultant from Utah and longtime chief of the pro-land-transfer motion, co-founded ALC in 2012 and led it till 2016.

On the convention, Hageman insisted that the U.S. is “transferring to the purpose the place the federal authorities is dictating just about each side of our lives.” America will change into a socialist nation if we don’t rein within the federal authorities, she declared.

“Why do we’d like all these federal companies?” she requested. “We’re sovereign.”

Hageman has dismissed local weather change as a “scam” and helped advance the right-wing disinformation campaign in opposition to President Joe Biden’s conservation aim of defending 30% of the nation’s lands and waters by 2030. She has repeated conspiratorial speaking factors in regards to the “30×30” initiative being an enormous federal “land seize.” And in her August 2021 opinion piece, Hageman declared with out proof that 30×30 is “deliberately designed to make us but once more depending on international, and infrequently hostile, governments for our power sources” and can “shortly and negatively affect our lifestyle, housing prices, meals manufacturing, and the setting.”

The Biden administration has dismissed such claims and mentioned it’s dedicated to “collaboration, assist for voluntary and locally-led conservation and honoring of tribal sovereignty and personal property rights.”

It’s unclear if Hageman’s flip-flop on Trump and Cheney boils right down to easy political opportunism. Or if she got here round after the Trump administration took a wrecking ball to environmental safeguards and prioritized fossil gasoline manufacturing above virtually every part else. Perhaps it’s each.

What is obvious is that by June 2020, Hageman had accomplished a full 180. That month she was a keynote speaker at an anti-federal lands event that Trump’s Inside Division hosted at its headquarters in Washington, D.C. The occasion was organized by the American Agri-Girls coalition and titled “Federal Land Insurance policies: The Good, the Unhealthy and the Ugly.” For greater than two hours, Hageman and Myron Ebell, a distinguished local weather change denier and advocate of shrinking the federal estate, have been amongst those that grumbled in regards to the quantity of land the federal authorities owns and railed in opposition to federal land administration companies, together with the one they have been standing in. Hageman plugged her pitch for pilot tasks that might give states the authority to handle giant swaths of public land as they see match and earn revenues off these sources over 20- to 25-year durations. She additionally expressed her appreciation for the Trump administration’s land administration priorities.

“Proper now, we’ve an administration in place that wishes to alter issues and perceive the importance of those points,” Hageman mentioned. “However I don’t know who’s coming after him and neither do you. We have now to be sure that we’re doing issues at the moment that may have long-term impacts by way of federal land administration.”

Unsurprisingly, Hageman has condemned Biden’s each transfer, together with on power and environmental insurance policies, portray him a “puppet of the unconventional Left.” She has additionally accused Cheney of “teaming up” with Biden and different Democrats who she says are waging a “war” in opposition to Trump and harming Wyoming’s fossil gasoline {industry}.

Hageman usually knock Cheney for being vice-chair of the Jan. 6 committee however not a member of the Home Pure Assets committee, which has oversight over federal land administration companies. That “demonstrates that she doesn’t have our greatest pursuits at coronary heart, she has her finest pursuits at coronary heart,” Hageman informed right-wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza in a June interview.

However for all Hageman’s speak about Cheney being some form of liberal ally, the incumbent is something however. She has confirmed a dependable pro-industry, anti-environment vote, sustaining an abysmal 6% lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters. In 2017, she voted in favor of a invoice that might have made it simpler for Congress to pawn off management over federal lands to states. She additionally supported Pendley’s nomination to steer the Bureau of Land Administration, calling him a “patriot” who “is aware of as a lot as anybody about land and useful resource points.”

Throughout Trump’s 4 years in workplace, Cheney voted in step with his place 93% of the time, in response to a FiveThirtyEight analysis.

Cheney’s marketing campaign declined to answer HuffPost’s questions in regards to the race, however in an e mail identified that she serves as a vice chair of the Congressional Western Caucus, an all-Republican physique that promotes drilling, mining and different growth throughout the West. Moreover, the e-mail famous she has launched laws to, amongst different issues, reform environmental evaluations and to “protect private property rights from potential federal overreach that might be part of the Biden Administration’s 30×30 initiative that might lock up public lands.”

In some ways, Cheney and Hageman are in lockstep of their assist for extraction and growth on public lands, Dwayne Meadows mentioned. Nonetheless, he and DeGroot agree that Hageman poses an even bigger menace to federal lands in Wyoming and throughout the West.

“If Hageman wins, you will get somebody who doesn’t get up and is pragmatic about public lands points,” Meadows mentioned.

DeGroot added, “It’s fairly frankly a alternative between a rock and a tough place.”

Mark Squillace, a professor of pure sources legislation on the College of Colorado Boulder, taught Hageman within the Eighties on the College of Wyoming. He informed HuffPost he remembers her as “sensible, self-confident and well-spoken.” And though he doesn’t bear in mind having an impression of her political opinions again then, these leanings and her opposition to environmental laws didn’t come as a shock.

What did come as a shock was Hageman’s “embrace of Trump’s lies in regards to the 2020 election and her overt hostility to Liz Cheney for voting her conscience,” Squillace mentioned.

“I feel Harriet is formidable and he or she noticed a gap when Cheney determined to interrupt from Trump,” he added.

Hageman has toed the celebration line in regards to the 2020 presidential election. Throughout a debate in June, she falsely claimed that there are “critical questions on” outcomes — there aren’t; Biden gained — and plugged “2000 Mules,” the discredited documentary by D’Souza that purports to point out election fraud in a number of key swing states.

Squillace sees Hageman’s marketing campaign as symbolic of an even bigger political transformation within the state — one he has struggled to make sense of.

“The Wyoming I lived in again within the Eighties and ’90s was a much more tolerant place,” he mentioned. “Certain, it was conservative, however its politics have been libertarian, supporting folks like [former Republican Sen.] Al Simpson and looking out favorably on issues of private autonomy like abortion rights. I don’t recall many Republicans again then embracing the positions of the right-wing ideologues that appear to have gained favor in Wyoming at the moment.”

If Hageman defeats Cheney — restricted accessible polling has proven Hageman main by as a lot as 22 percentage points — will probably be much less due to her pure useful resource credentials, and extra that she handcuffed herself to Trump and his lies in regards to the 2020 election.

That’s not distinctive amongst Republican candidates in 2022; it’s a trend. However there could also be no race within the nation the place such a method is extra more likely to work.