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Abraham Kenmore, Florida Phoenix
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley told supporters Wednesday she can still win her home state’s GOP contest Feb. 24 and vowed to keep going beyond that, never mind what the polls and pundits are saying.
“The political elites in this state and around the country have said we need to let Donald Trump just have this,” Haley said, prompting boos and shouts of “No!” from a crowd of more than 500 people. “We’ve only had two states that have voted. We have 48 to go.”
It was Haley’s first campaign event back in South Carolina since the field narrowed to her and Trump.
She continued to cast the voting results so far as a win for her. Haley received a little under 20% of the vote in Iowa, placing third behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and 32 percentage points behind Trump. After DeSantis dropped out, she received 43% of New Hampshire’s tally on Tuesday, which was still a double-digit loss.
But she contends Trump is feeling threatened, since she started at 2% in the polls.
“He should feel threatened,” Haley said to start her roughly 40-minute speech.
Haley joked about a recent incident where Trump appeared to confuse her with Nancy Pelosi when discussing the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. What’s more important than that mental blip, Haley said about why people should vote for her instead, is that Trump focuses more on settling scores than how he’s going to make Americans’ lives better.
Both Trump and President Joe Biden represent four more years of chaos, she said.
“This is a choice between more of the same and going forward,” she said. “More of the same is not just Joe Biden. It’s Joe Biden and Donald Trump.”
She contends most voters don’t want that 2020 rematch.
“When you look at Joe Biden and Donald Trump, what do they talk about?” she said. “They talk about the past. They talk about grievances. They’re focused on their investigations, both of them. We don’t have time for that chaos. We just don’t.”
She was interrupted by a protester of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, who shouted, “How many kids have you killed?” before being rapidly hustled out of the hotel conference center.
“You know, I’ve never minded protestors like that,” Haley said, noting that her husband, who’s in the Army National Guard, and all other military personnel fight for that freedom of speech.
Hope for Trump in court
James Island resident Lyn Williams said Haley’s the best choice.
“The alternatives are awful,” she said. “She’s the only candidate I’ve heard use the word ‘compromise.’”
Williams, who works in the financial industry, said she voted for Trump in 2016 and sat out the 2020 election. She thinks the criminal investigations into the former president may prevent him holding another term, giving her hope for Haley’s candidacy.
“I don’t think Mr. Trump will be available,” she said.
Jon and Evelyn Persinger came from Mount Pleasant to support Haley.
“She is the leader we have been praying for,” she said. “Someone who is normal, that has the Republican agenda, but doesn’t have Trump.”
“All the good policies without the bad attitude,” he chimed in.
Both said they’re Republicans. Evelyn works as a software engineer and Jon works in IT. For them, leadership is the key issue.
He too said Trump’s legal issues could catch up to him, giving Haley a shot.
“Who knows, it could end up being a brokered convention or something like that,” she said.
That seems to play into accusations by Trump’s supporters, including former GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who dropped out following a fourth-place finish in Iowa.
“What we see right now with her continuing in this race is the ugly underbelly of American politics, where the megadonors are trying to do one thing when we the people say another,” the Ohio entrepreneur said during Trump’s celebration Tuesday night in New Hampshire. “The only thing they’re rooting for is an ugly thing that we don’t want to see happen.” That is, he said, for Haley to stay in long enough for Trump’s legal challenges to play out.
‘Barred from MAGA’
Haley is polling about 35 percentage points behind Trump in South Carolina, according to the poll aggregating site 538.
Before Haley took the stage, the Trump campaign released another list of endorsements from South Carolina elected officials past and present as evidence of his overwhelming support in her home state. The latest list of more than 50 endorsements included the last two holdouts of South Carolina’s congressional delegation: U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace of Charleston County — who Haley campaigned for in her 2022 primary fight over a Trump-backed Republican — and U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan of Laurens, who’s not seeking re-election this year.
Their backing earlier this week means all but one of South Carolina’s GOP delegation are lined up behind Trump over Haley.
“Welcome home to Trump Country, Nikki,” Austin McCubbin, the Trump campaign’s South Carolina director, said in the release.
But Haley made clear she’s undeterred.
Earlier Wednesday, her campaign announced a $4 million investment to launch her first two advertisements in South Carolina, along with details of two more rallies scheduled in South Carolina this weekend.
From the stage, Haley announced collecting more than $1 million in donations in the hours since the polls closed in New Hampshire. Though that’s impossible to verify immediately, the assertion likely irked Trump, who posted a threat to Haley donors on his social media site Truth Social.
Anyone contributing to Haley’s campaign “from this moment forth, will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp,” he wrote.
Uphill battle
In 2016, the last time Republicans had a nominating contest, six candidates remained in the field by the time South Carolinians went to the polls. Trump won that contest by 10 percentage points over the candidate Haley endorsed, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who placed second.
This time, Trump and Haley are the only major candidates left.
More than a dozen Trump supporters gathered outside of Haley’s speech in protest, including Ken Moran of Georgetown.
He called Haley a neoconservative and accused Trump’s first United Nation’s ambassador of aligning with Democrats on advocating for foreign intervention.
Moran likened her to former President George W. Bush, adding he’s embarrassed that he voted for the 43rd president.
“That’s the same cloth she’s cut from,” he said, adding she should drop out. “We should be unifying and coming together as a party for the biggest win since Ronald Reagan.”
But Haley has the money to keep going.
She continues to have the support of Americans for Prosperity Action, the candidate-backing arm of the group founded by prominent conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, which threw their weight behind Haley in late November.
“This is still an uphill battle,” Emily Seidel, an AFP Action senior advisor, said in a statement to SC Daily Gazette. “Now all eyes turn to South Carolina, where (Haley) has a steeper road ahead.”
This story was published earlier by the South Carolina Daily Gazette, an affiliate of the nonprofit States Newsroom network, which includes the Florida Phoenix.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.
