Nikki Haley, a former U.N. ambassador and governor of South Carolina, will suspend her presidential campaign Wednesday morning, according to several people familiar with her plans, leaving Donald Trump with no major opponents left on his path to becoming the 2024 Republican nominee.<\/p>\n
The only woman in the Republican race and Trump\u2019s final remaining major GOP rival, Haley campaigned on her foreign policy experience and general-election appeal, casting her candidacy as a generational change that could bring more voters into the Republican fold. She was the first candidate to announce a challenge to Trump and outlasted a large field of rivals who were viewed as more viable opponents to become the final candidate standing between him and the nomination, but her message struggled to appeal to a base that overwhelmingly supports the former president.<\/p>\n
Haley\u2019s decision was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and was confirmed by multiple sources familiar with her decision, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share plans that have not been announced. Haley does not plan to announce an endorsement Wednesday, the people said.<\/p>\n
She will deliver remarks Wednesday morning in Charleston, S.C., and will encourage Trump, who is close to having the delegates needed to win the GOP nomination, to earn the support of Republicans and independent voters who backed her.<\/p>\n
While Haley fell short of Trump in all but two nominating contests, polls showed her strength with suburban women and independents \u2014 key groups in the general election. Haley throughout her campaign repeatedly highlighted that hypothetical head-to-head polls showed her leading President Biden by a significant margin, in large part due to such voters.<\/p>\n
Haley remained in the race through Super Tuesday, when 15 states voted and Trump won landslide victories in most contests. Her only wins during the primary season came in D.C., where she handily defeated Trump, and Vermont, where she narrowly scored her second victory. But Tuesday\u2019s vote further solidified Trump\u2019s lead in the race.<\/p>\n
Haley\u2019s departure officially clears the path for Trump, who many in the party had already seen as the presumptive nominee after dominating the first few nominating contests. By the end of the race, Haley\u2019s campaign had become a rallying point for the disparate anti-Trump forces in the party, including some wealthy donors, activists and others whose influence has been limited in recent years. Her defeat reflects Trump\u2019s enduring grip on the party, even as he faces 91 criminal charges across four indictments \u2014 a factor he has used to build support from Republicans in his campaign.<\/p>\n
Haley, the first prominent woman of color to seek the GOP nomination, came in third in the Iowa caucuses and was banking on a strong showing against Trump in the New Hampshire primary. But Trump defeated her by about 11 percentage points, consolidating support from several former rivals in the run-up to that primary, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.<\/p>\n
The former ambassador then suffered an embarrassing second-place finish to \u201cNone of these candidates\u201d in the Nevada presidential primary, which Trump skipped. And she fell in defeat by about 20 percentage points in her home state of South Carolina, where influential state Republicans \u2014 including Rep. Nancy Mace, who Haley previously helped save from a Trump-backed challenger, and Scott, who Haley appointed to the Senate as governor \u2014 endorsed Trump over her.<\/p>\n
Haley launched her campaign in February 2023. The daughter of Indian immigrants, she sought to focus her pitch on her experience on the world stage and consensus-building on divisive issues such as abortion. Haley also sought to appeal to the conservative base on many issues \u2014 for instance, calling transgender athletes\u2019 participation in girls\u2019 sports the \u201cwomen\u2019s issue of our time,\u201d and rejecting identity politics. The 52-year-old often pointed to her potential in a general election race \u2014 and to polls showing she could perform more strongly against Biden than her rivals could.<\/p>\n
Haley was initially viewed as an underdog candidate, facing several challengers who polled better in the race\u2019s early stages, including DeSantis. But last fall, thanks in part to well-received debate performances and a winnowing field, she emerged in some polls as the top GOP challenger to Trump, opening a narrow path to advancing in the race.<\/p>\n
Long seen as a disciplined and scripted candidate, Haley had avoided creating controversy for months, largely flying below the radar as Trump and DeSantis traded barbs. But in late December, she drew a backlash in both parties when she failed to mention slavery after facing a question at a town hall about the cause of the Civil War. She acknowledged the next day that the conflict was about slavery, but her comments continued to haunt her campaign.<\/p>\n
She also confronted attacks during the race from Trump and others that were criticized as sexist. Trump said last year that Haley was \u201coverly ambitious\u201d and \u201cjust couldn\u2019t stay in her seat.\u201d With her win in D.C., Haley became the first woman to win a Republican primary in U.S. history, and she won over young girls on the campaign trail \u2014 often at her most animated encouraging them to be \u201cstrong girls.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Haley\u2019s campaign gained momentum, the attacks from Trump intensified. The former president, who has a history of using his opponents\u2019 backgrounds to exclude or seek to ostracize, began lobbing racially charged attacks at Haley, giving her a nickname that appeared to be yet another racist dog whistle. Trump also reposted a false \u201cbirther\u201d claim about Haley that incorrectly suggested she was ineligible to be president or vice president because her parents were not U.S. citizens when she was born. Ahead of the South Carolina primary Trump mocked Haley\u2019s husband, a service member who is currently deployed overseas, for his absence on the campaign trail, enraging Haley and her allies.<\/p>\n
Trump also attacked Haley on policy, suggesting that she would be weak on border security and protecting Social Security. In many ways, Haley ran on a traditional platform reminiscent of many Republican candidates who sought the presidency before Trump\u2019s rise. She stressed a muscular approach to foreign policy, including aiding Ukraine in its war against Russia, and fiscal restraint on domestic matters.<\/p>\n
Haley drew fresh attention late last year from wealthy donors eager to stop Trump, and she garnered larger crowds on the campaign trail in the months before the first primary votes were cast. She also won the support of the powerful political network backed by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, which dispatched its flagship political organization to help Haley. But it would prove incapable of overcoming Trump, and the organization ended its financial support of her campaign after her loss in South Carolina.<\/p>\n
Her political and policy shifts and lack of specifics \u2014 particularly over Trump at the start of her campaign and around abortion \u2014 drew attacks from those who claimed she was trying to have it both ways. When he first ran in 2016, Trump criticized Haley, but she joined his administration the next year and later vowed not to run against him in 2024. Then she disavowed the pledge.<\/p>\n
Haley\u2019s attacks on the former president intensified in the final months of the race. After the Iowa caucuses, she ramped up her criticism, while still maintaining that they had a good working relationship during his first term and that they agreed on many policies. She questioned Trump\u2019s mental fitness after he confused her and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi at a campaign rally, blamed him for Republican losses in the last three elections, and portrayed both Trump and Biden as \u201cgrumpy old men.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some Republican campaigns such as DeSantis sought to paint Haley as too moderate to be the GOP nominee, criticizing her for citing Hillary Clinton as an inspiration to run for office and for writing in a social media post that George Floyd\u2019s death \u201cneeds to be personal and painful for everyone.\u201d She brought together an unlikely coalition of supporters, including Democrats frustrated with Biden\u2019s age, and appealed to independent voters in the early states.<\/p>\n
Biden\u2019s campaign branded her a MAGA extremist, pointing to her record on abortion, which includes signing a 20-week ban as governor, even as she advocated for finding consensus on the issue.<\/p>\n
Late in the race, Haley expressly rejected the notion that she could be Trump\u2019s running mate if he ultimately won the Republican presidential nomination.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have said from the very beginning, I don\u2019t play for second. I don\u2019t want to be anybody\u2019s vice president. That is off the table,\u201d Haley was overheard telling a New Hampshire voter.<\/p>\n
After her home state loss, some Haley allies began shifting their discussion of her effort, with an official at SFA Fund, a pro-Haley super PAC, saying \u201cthere are other reasons to run than winning\u201d and suggesting she was setting up a movement for the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not fighting for a Republican Party of the past. I\u2019m fighting for a Republican Party of the future \u2026 What I have said for way too long, is the Republican Party only talks to people that look and act like them,\u201d Haley told reporters just days before suspending her bid. \u201cThe Republican Party I want is the Republican Party that goes to places that Republicans have never talked about. It goes to African Americans, goes to Hispanics, really identifies with suburban women, talks to the younger generation, and brings them into the fold with a future that talks about new things.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the final weeks of her campaign, Haley argued her margins against Trump \u2014 at times around 40 percent of the primary vote, despite his dominance and quasi-incumbent status \u2014 were a warning sign for November, continuing to argue she had the best path against Biden, who she led by double digits in several hypothetical match up polls.<\/p>\n
\u201cRepublicans can\u2019t think that it\u2019s everybody else\u2019s fault because people aren\u2019t Republican. Maybe it\u2019s Republicans fault that we\u2019re not communicating something that makes people want to come to us,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Hannah Knowles and Maeve Reston contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Nikki Haley, a former U.N. ambassador and governor of South Carolina, will suspend her presidential campaign Wednesday morning, according to several people familiar with her plans, leaving Donald Trump with no major opponents left on his path to becoming the 2024 Republican nominee. The only woman in the Republican race and Trump\u2019s final remaining major […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1803,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}