TIME announced Monday that it would be narrowing down its nominees for 2022 Person of the Year in a bid to generate buzz around the 95-year award. Finalists included anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, R., and Twitter CEO Elon Musk.
Other nominees for the world’s “most influential” person, according to TIME, include Finance Minister Janet Yellen, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Cheney became a media star this year with her work on the Jan. 6 House Select Committee, becoming the highest-profile Republican in Congress to speak out against former President Trump. She was defeated in her main race by Republican Harriet Hageman, easily re-elected as Wyoming’s only US representative.
Musk also has a chance to be named TIME’s Person of the Year again — for the second year in a row. Franklin D. Roosevelt is the only person to have been named Person of the Year three times. Other finalists included gun control advocates, the Supreme Court and protesters in Iran.
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DeSantis, who was reelected as Florida governor in a landslide last month, is widely viewed as a possible candidate for 2024 and a challenger to Trump. Trump has already announced his third bid for the White House.
Previous winners were controversial on the right and left. TIME named President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris its 2020 Person of the Year, taking the opportunity to slam “Hurricane Trump” for “ripping through America, tearing up institutions, chewing up norms and spitting them out.”
However, Musk’s 2021 win as TIME’s Person of the Year prompted a sharp reaction from progressives, with a Democratic adviser saying Musk’s election was an “absolute disgrace.”
TIME’s Person of the Year will be officially announced this Wednesday, according to NBC.
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Jeffrey Clark is an assistant editor at Fox News Digital. He previously worked as a speechwriter for a cabinet secretary and a Fulbright teacher in South Korea. Jeffrey graduated from the University of Iowa in 2019 with a degree in English and History.
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