Nikki Haley suspended her presidential campaign on Wednesday after being soundly defeated across the country on Super Tuesday, leaving Donald Trump as the last remaining major candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination. Haley didn\u2019t endorse the former president in a speech in Charleston, South Carolina. Instead, she challenged him to win the support of the moderate Republicans and independent voters who supported her.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him. And I hope he does that,\u201d she said. \u201cAt its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people.\u201d Haley, a former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador, was Trump\u2019s first significant rival when she jumped into the race in February 2023.<\/p>\n
She spent the final phase of her campaign aggressively warning the GOP against embracing Trump, whom she argued was too consumed by chaos and personal grievance to defeat President Joe Biden in the general election. Her departure clears Trump to focus solely on his likely rematch in November with Biden. The former president is on track to reach the necessary 1,215 delegates to clinch the Republican nomination later this month.<\/p>\n
Haley\u2019s defeat marks a painful, if predictable, blow to those voters, donors and Republican Party officials who opposed Trump and his fiery brand of \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d politics. She was especially popular among moderates and college-educated voters, constituencies that will likely play a pivotal role in the general election. It\u2019s unclear whether Trump, who recently declared that Haley donors would be permanently banned from his movement, can ultimately unify a deeply divided party.<\/p>\n
Haley planned to address donors on a Zoom meeting Wednesday afternoon, according to two people familiar with the plans. Trump on Tuesday night declared that the GOP was united behind him, but in a statement shortly afterward, Haley spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said, \u201cUnity is not achieved by simply claiming, We\u2019re united.'\u201d \u201cToday, in state after state, there remains a large block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump,\u201d Perez-Cubas said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is not the unity our party needs for success. Addressing those voters\u2019 concerns will make the Republican Party and America better.\u201d Haley has made clear she doesn\u2019t want to serve as Trump\u2019s vice president or run on a third-party ticket arranged by the group No Labels. She leaves the race with an elevated national profile that could help her in a future presidential run.<\/p>\n
Swiftly following her speech Wednesday, Trump\u2019s campaign in a fundraising email falsely claimed that Haley had endorsed his candidacy and did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the message. Earlier this week, Haley said she no longer feels bound by a pledge that required all GOP contenders to support the party\u2019s eventual nominee in order to participate in the primary debates.<\/p>\n
In a social media post, Trump continued to mock his former rival, while at the same time extending an invitation to \u201call of the Haley supporters to join the greatest movement in the history of our Nation. BIDEN IS THE ENEMY, HE IS DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY,\u201d he wrote. \u201cMAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!\u201d On Wednesday, Biden welcomed any voters who had backed Haley, acknowledging Trump\u2019s previous rejection of her supporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cDonald Trump made it clear he doesn\u2019t want Nikki Haley\u2019s supporters. I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign,\u201d Biden said in a statement. \u201cI know there is a lot we won\u2019t agree on. But on the fundamental issues of preserving American democracy, on standing up for the rule of law, on treating each other with decency and dignity and respect, on preserving NATO and standing up to America\u2019s adversaries, I hope and believe we can find common ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
A group that had targeted independents and Democrats to vote for Haley over Trump in Republican primaries is now pushing those voters to back Biden in November. On Wednesday, Primary Pivot said it was \u201cpivoting\u201d again with a new initiative \u2013 Haley Voters for Biden \u2013 which might ultimately amount to basically encouraging Democrats to revert back to supporting their party\u2019s likely eventual nominee.<\/p>\n
By staying in the campaign until now, Haley drew enough support from suburbanites and college-educated voters to highlight Trump\u2019s apparent weaknesses with those groups. In AP VoteCast surveys conducted among Republican primary and caucus voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, between 61% and 76% of Haley\u2019s supporters said they would be so dissatisfied if Trump became the GOP nominee that they wouldn\u2019t vote for him in the November general election.<\/p>\n
Voters in the early Republican head-to-head contests who said they wouldn\u2019t vote for Trump in the fall represented a small but significant segment of the electorate: 2 in 10 Iowa voters, one-third of New Hampshire voters, and one-quarter of South Carolina voters. Haley leaves the 2024 presidential contest having made history as the first woman to win a Republican primary contest. She beat Trump in the District of Columbia on Sunday and in Vermont on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
She had insisted she would stay in the race through Super Tuesday and crossed the country campaigning in states holding Republican contests. Ultimately, she was unable to knock Trump off his glide path to a third straight nomination. Haley\u2019s allies note that she exceeded most of the political world\u2019s expectations by making it as far as she did.<\/p>\n
She had initially ruled out running against Trump in 2024. But she changed her mind and ended up launching her bid three months after he did, citing among other things the country\u2019s economic troubles and the need for \u201cgenerational change.\u201d Haley, 52, later called for competency tests for politicians over the age of 75 \u2013 a knock on both Trump, who is 77, and Biden, who is 81.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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