A week before the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, where polls show her trailing by an insurmountable lead, Nikki Haley was in Texas pledging to run statewide, as most primary candidates typically do even under the direst of circumstances.
Despite big losses in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada and the big odds she faces in South Carolina, her home state, Ms. Haley shows no signs of backing down. She is still fundraising and expanding her national presence as she promises to lead her party past former President Donald J. Trump.
“He said he would spend more time in the courtroom than on the campaign trail,” she said of Mr. Trump in San Antonio on Friday, referring to the hours he spent in New York last week arguing criminal and civil cases. “But let me tell you what we are going to do. We will be on the campaign trail.”
Ms. Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump, exudes confidence even if her path to victory appears difficult. Many South Carolina polls have her trailing Trump by about 30 points – and after next week’s campaign, things aren’t looking much better.
If Ms. Haley continues her plans to stay in the race beyond South Carolina, as she has promised, here’s how she plans to embrace her long-term candidacy at the national level.
The map
The Haley campaign has announced teams of elected officials, business leaders and prominent community members to lead its efforts in Alaska, California, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Utah and Washington. Her National Women for Nikki Coalition, which includes chapters in all 50 states and Puerto Rico, is well underway and has rejected Mr. Trump’s mandate to bring suburban women to court.
Regardless of the outcome of the South Carolina primary, Ms. Haley has said she will travel to Michigan the day after the South Carolina primary, which will host its own contest on February 27. From there, she plans to crisscross the country before Super Tuesday, the biggest single day of the primary season and the last real chance she will have to prove she can change the course of the nomination. Expected stops include Colorado, Minnesota, Utah and Virginia.
Ms. Haley is betting on her candidacy to appeal to independents and new Republicans in Michigan and 11 Super Tuesday states where Republican primaries are not limited to voters in their own party. But that strategy wasn’t successful in New Hampshire, and it exposed weaknesses among her own base: According to a CNN poll, she received support from only 29 percent of college-educated Republicans nationally, while Trump had 55 percent of the same demographic. Another Morning Consult tracking poll found Ms. Haley trailing Mr. Trump by a wide margin in every Super Tuesday state.
Mr. Trump has made his own push into the Super Tuesday states, announcing nearly 80 endorsements from state parties and elected officials in 14 states. And his team has left little to chance: He and his allies have launched a backroom campaign to change the delegate rules in his favor, and he has said that Ms. Haley’s donors would be “permanently banned from the MAGA camp.”
The message
Ms. Haley and her allies have continually criticized Mr. Trump in national media appearances and in television and digital ads. Their message has remained largely consistent: It is time for a new generational leader who can lead their party beyond the “chaos” of Mr. Trump. But their attack lines underline that they have recently become sharper and more numerous. She has criticized him for disparaging her husband, Maj. Michael Haley; for suggesting he would encourage Russian aggression against U.S. allies in Europe; to distort the number of delegates; and for increasing his influence over party institutions, including the Republican National Committee.
She has continued to criticize Mr. Trump for devoting time and campaign contributions to his legal troubles. She has tried to brand him and President Biden as “grumpy old men.”
But until last week, Ms. Haley had not spent any money on television advertising outside of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Their allied super PAC, Stand for America Inc., had invested only about $144,900 in other states, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm. By comparison, the Trump campaign had spent nearly six times as much nationally, about $855,200.
Karoline Leavitt, Mr. Trump’s national press secretary, pointed to Ms. Haley’s losses and claimed he would not just “crush” her in his own backyard and “destroy her on Super Tuesday.” “Only a birdbrain would stay in this race,” she said in a statement, using Mr. Trump’s offensive nickname for Ms. Haley.
The financing
Mr. Trump’s war chest dwarfs Ms. Haley’s campaign funds. At the end of December, he had cash on hand of more than $33 million, while Ms. Haley had $14.6 million.
But as has been the case since the start of her campaign, Ms. Haley’s ability to raise money is a bright spot. In January, she took in $16.5 million, her highest monthly total to date. It is supported by a number of wealthy donors. Her campaign turned Mr. Trump’s ultimatum to her donors into an opportunity to sell about 20,000 T-shirts that read “Barred. Permanent.” According to her campaign, she raised at least $2.7 million at fundraisers in Texas and California this month, and another $1 million in the 48 hours after Mr. Trump disparaged Ms. Haley’s husband at a rally.
The basic principle
In interviews, some of Ms. Haley’s major donors in Texas and California reiterated her focus on the advanced ages of Mr. Trump and President Biden and cited Mr. Trump’s legal cases as signs that anything is still possible in the race. Mr. Trump spent Thursday in a Manhattan courtroom on criminal charges related to a hush-money payment to a porn star in 2016. A New York judge on Friday ordered him to pay a fine of nearly $355 million, plus interest, after convicting him of was found guilty of conspiracy to manipulate his assets.
“A lot can happen in politics and in our legal system,” said Timothy Draper, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Haley donor. “And the American people usually come to their senses when they go to the polls.”
At Gilley’s Dallas South Side Music Hall, an upscale honky-tonk, Jack Matthews, the owner and prominent developer, said he was finding it easier to raise funds for Ms. Haley now than when she began her campaign. “Some people are afraid to support them because of Trump’s retaliation,” he acknowledged. But many others, he said, “are saying, ‘We need a change.'”
His venue, where Ms. Haley spoke to more than 1,000 people on Thursday night, a year into her presidential bid, has a long campaign history. There, President Biden held a rally in 2020 where his former Democratic rivals for the nomination supported him over the insurgent Bernie Sanders, demonstrating their power to the moderate wing of their party.
Now Ms. Haley is pursuing a Biden-like strategy, but finds herself in Mr. Sanders’ position. Nevertheless, she continued to plead her case.
“Everything he touches, we lose,” Ms. Haley said, portraying Mr. Trump as an agent of “chaos” for Congress, the country and the prospects of a Republican recall in November.
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2024-02-18 10:04:59
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