by A combative Nikki Haley brought her presidential campaign back to South Carolina on Wednesday after a disappointing loss the night before in New Hampshire, telling a boisterous crowd in a cavernous ballroom in North Charleston that she would fight Donald J. Trump for the Republican nomination.
“The political elites in this state and across the country say we just have to let Donald Trump have this,” he told his supporters, who scoffed at the idea. “Listen. We’ve only had two states that have voted. We have 48 more.”
No place is more immediately important than South Carolina, where she served two terms as governor before being chosen to serve as Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations. But just because it’s her home state doesn’t mean it’s friendly territory. As Haley sought to revitalize her campaign here on the ground, Republicans, as diverse as local party officials and the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, increased pressure on her to drop out. While she argued for the need to move forward, the former president significantly solidified her support.
As he spoke, Trump’s campaign released a new list of endorsements in South Carolina that now includes the state’s two senators, most of its House members, its governor and lieutenant governor, and much of its State House: more of 150 names in total. .
“Welcome home to Trump Country, Nikki,” scoffed Austin McCubbin, Trump’s South Carolina director.
Some of Haley’s closest allies and confidants continued to insist Wednesday that Haley had lived up to her own expectations: She had winnowed the field and was now in the running for two people she wanted, with plenty of time until the Feb. 1 primary. . 24 to spread her message to a broader electorate and draw contrasts between her and Trump.
“Those of us in South Carolina have seen people doubt her, and we have seen her overcome those doubts,” said Kim A. Wilkerson, retired president of Bank of America in South Carolina and chairwoman of the board of directors of University from Clemson, Ms. Haley’s alma mater.
But those doubts seemed to grow like a snowball, and the drumbeat for their retreat only grew louder.
“Republican voters have sent a clear message: they want to see the Republican Party unite around our eventual nominee, who will be President Donald Trump,” Georgia GOP Chairman Josh McKoon and the state’s Republican delegates wrote in a joint statement. statement on Wednesday. “It’s hard to see how Ambassador Haley can get the nomination.”
Even the chief strategist for Haley’s super PAC, SFA Fund, Mark Harris, acknowledged Wednesday that it needed to expand its support state by state to remain viable, with South Carolina being the next big target.
“We have to do better with Republicans; We have to do better with the conservatives,” he said Wednesday. “We definitely have to grow in those key demographics to give us a realistic path to the nomination.”
Harris said Haley and her super PAC would be in the race for the long haul. He pointed to the 17 Republican delegates he has amassed with second place in New Hampshire and third place in Iowa. Until later in the process, when the winner of the most states takes all of that state’s delegates, Ms. Haley can continue to increase her delegate count, giving her leverage to claim the nomination if circumstances, such as a criminal conviction for any of the 91 felony charges she faces, push Trump out of the race.
But Republicans in South Carolina and across the country worried that the strategy would only anger Trump and his supporters, effectively disqualifying it from consideration, this year or in the future.
Donors who don’t align could also find themselves at odds with Trump. In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday night, Trump promised: “Anyone who makes a ‘contribution’ to Birdbrain” (Trump’s nickname for Haley) “from this point forward will be permanently banned from the MAGA field.” .”
Chad Connelly, former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party who has remained neutral in the race, openly expressed his concerns: “Nikki is very well-liked here and Trump is loved,” he said. “He’s going to shoot it.”
History would tell Haley that the weeks leading up to the South Carolina Republican vote can be difficult. After Senator John McCain of Arizona won the New Hampshire primary in 2000, he invaded South Carolina, predicting that the state’s open primary would draw Democrats and independents to his cause. Instead, a whisper campaign by supporters of George W. Bush, then governor of Texas, spoke darkly and falsely of a black daughter fathered by McCain out of wedlock. (He and his wife had adopted a daughter from an orphanage in Bangladesh.)
McCain’s loss in South Carolina put Bush back on track to win the nomination.
On Tuesday night, Trump hinted at a brutal campaign to come.
“Just a little note for Nikki,” he said in his victory speech, while mocking Ms. Haley’s dress. “She’s not going to win. But if she did, those people would be investigating her within 15 minutes, and she could already tell them five reasons.”
Hollis Felkel, a veteran Republican political consultant in South Carolina who worked for Bush’s 2000 campaign and goes by Chip, said Trump supporters were already working to get as many state lawmakers and senators on board as possible. to the former president’s column, and to let legislators know that there is a list of those who are not. The dirty tricks of the 2000 campaign weren’t exactly “the stuff of legends,” he said, but they were “pretty bad.”
“We’re now dealing with a whole different level of vitriol, and politics has gotten exponentially uglier” since 2000, he said. “She will be hit from all sides with every insinuation and with every grudge left from when she was governor.”
In recent days, online influencers with close ties to the Trump campaign have begun posting misogynistic and highly sexualized videos and images of Ms. Haley on social media. One of the videos, produced by a group called Dilley Meme Team, uses “deep fake” technology to express sexual innuendos in her own voice. A second, released while New Hampshire voters were still at the polls Tuesday, raises allegations of marital affairs that she has consistently denied but that have dogged her since she was governor.
“The people of South Carolina are much better than South Carolina politics,” said Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokeswoman for Haley’s campaign. “Nikki Haley has shown that she fights and wins for the people, no matter what kind of garbage the political class throws at her.”
And Haley escalated her own attacks on Trump’s mental faculties, his age and his courage.
“Get up on the debate stage and let’s go,” he said at his rally. “Bring it, Donald, show me what you’ve got.”
On Wednesday morning, he delivered his usual speech via Zoom to the Republican Party in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where caucuses are scheduled for Feb. 8.
Haley’s campaign ran two ads in South Carolina media markets, the first attacking Mr. Trump and President Biden as “a revenge that no one wants,” he second extolling her record as governor.
Meanwhile, the work of raising money to keep the campaign going against a tide of Trump support continued apace. A major fundraiser is planned for January 30 in New York City, whose co-hosts include billionaire financier Kenneth G. Langone and investors Henry Kravis and Stanley Druckenmiller. Another is available for Houston shortly after.
Privately, however, his supporters are divided into two camps, according to donors, fundraisers and donor advisers who spoke primarily on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. First, there are those who diligently fulfill their fundraising obligations, despite believing that Trump’s nomination is all but assured and that he will likely back out within weeks.
And there are those (mainly donors whose resistance to Trump is absolute) who are still completely on board, believing that Haley needs the financial resources to wrest the nomination from Trump, or at least to keep her campaign alive in the United States. in case something happens to him.
“Just keep her in this race,” said Fred Zeidman, a Texas businessman and one of Haley’s strongest supporters. “She’s the last one standing.”
As for her super PAC, Harris said she consulted with her biggest backers after the New Hampshire loss. “They are excited and we fully believe we will have the resources we need,” he said.
Timothy C. Draper, a venture capitalist and early Haley supporter who has been a major contributor to the PAC, said in an email Wednesday that “Democratic women who are likely to vote for Nikki should register as Republicans now.” to bring him enough delegates to win. the primary.”
Draper’s perspective hits on a dynamic that many donors pointed out Wednesday: Haley is running in the Republican primary but somehow acting as a third-party candidate, drawing support from both sides. This bodes poorly for Ms. Haley, but also suggests weaknesses for both Trump and President Biden.
“There are all kinds of warning signs for Trump,” said Eric Levine, a New York lawyer who will co-host the Jan. 30 fundraiser. “He got very bad, very bad polls among independents and moderate Republicans. These are the same voters he will need to win the swing states.”
But after New Hampshire, Haley’s underdog campaign may be in need of life support. Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, urged the party to “unite around our eventual nominee, which is Donald Trump.” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, endorsed it, as did Sens. John Kennedy of Louisiana and Deb Fischer of Nebraska.
Pete Hoekstra, party chair of Michigan, where Haley’s campaign has set its sights after South Carolina, also endorsed Trump, saying in a statement: “We can start focusing our efforts on BEATING Joe Biden, rather than do it within the party”. struggle.”
A Democratic state representative in South Carolina, JA Moore, said he wanted Haley to stay in the race and sharpen her attacks on Trump unless she dropped out and endorsed Biden.
But, he warned, “they are going to crush it here.”
Ken Bensinger and Jazmín Ulloa contributed reports.
