Nikki Haley says her movement is not anti-Trump. Many of her supporters say otherwise.
FALLS CHURCH, VA. – James Huang didn’t love Donald Trump’s bold personality.
A self-described moderate, he voted for Trump in the 2016 presidential election believing the reality TV star-turned-politician would appoint Cabinet members who would rein him in.
But as president, he “got more and more crazy,” said Huang, a 58-year-old former venture capitalist. And when the 2020 election swung around, Huang knew he could not vote for Trump. Huang also could not bring himself to vote for Joe Biden.
So, he left his ballot blank.
Now, Huang is holding out hope that Nikki Haley can make a dramatic comeback in the GOP presidential race and beat Trump to the party’s nomination. Or, that she will run as an independent in the general election.
“She might not win, but who knows what she could do to pull votes away from Trump,” Huang said at Haley’s Thursday night rally in Northern Virginia ahead of the state’s March 5 primary.
Democrats who believe that Biden has lost his luster together with anti-Trump Republicans are bracing for a redux in 2024 with the Haley campaign on the verge of collapse.
They see disappointing options on the horizon, and many Haley voters say they are weighing alternative ways to express their displeasure. They are considering writing her name on the ballot this November or staying home altogether.
Haley has been zig-zagging the country, railing against Trump in packed hotel ballrooms, in a last-ditch effort to secure enough delegates to justify staying in the GOP race. However, the odds are not in her favor heading into Super Tuesday. Even in states with March 5 contests that Trump lost in the last general election, Haley is trailing the ex-president.
Without a better showing than she had last week in Michigan, where she received less than a third of the primary vote, Haley will be facing difficult choices of her own later this week: whether or not to end her longshot presidential bid, and if she does, whether to throw her support behind Trump.
The somber mood of the Republican electorate is not likely to lose Trump the Republican nomination – but it could cost him the presidency in a matchup against Biden this November.
Haley supporter James A. Wilson, 59, from Mechanicsville, Virginia, said he’s unsure what he’ll do – stay home, write in a candidate or vote for the Democratic nominee – if she loses the Republican nomination.
“I won’t vote for Trump, that’s for sure,” Wilson said at Haley’s rally last Thursday in Richmond. “I’m retired military and January 6 was — that was it for me. I voted for Trump twice but after that, I can’t.”
Trouble ahead for Trump
In recent days, Haley has walked back on a pledge to endorse the former Republican president while simultaneously ruling out a No Labels candidacy and denying that she and her supporters are anti-Trump.
“We had a couple of thousand people in Virginia yesterday, we had 1,500 in Utah,” Haley said during a press roundtable in Washington, D.C. on Friday. “These crowds are not anti-Trump crowds. These crowds are people who want to see an America that they can feel good about again.”
The voters attending Haley’s events don’t necessarily share her view. While her more conservative supporters say they will vote for the GOP nominee, regardless of who it is, Haley’s rally-goers often hold a common goal of preventing Trump from returning to the Oval Office.
Ron Oliver, a 53-year-old Raleigh resident who saw Haley speak there on Saturday, said he has identified as a Republican for most of his life, although he’s no longer affiliated with a party. In November, he says he plans to vote for “whoever’s not Trump.”
“Any viable candidate,” he said. “So if Nikki’s on the ballot, I’m voting Nikki. If somebody else is on the ballot, I’m voting for them. Third choice, Joe Biden. But I’ll never vote for Trump.”
Voters like Oliver are why Democrats are bullish about making North Carolina a battleground state.
Former President Barack Obama had a narrow victory over John McCain there in 2008 but lost North Carolina to Mitt Romney in 2012. Republicans have won the state ever since – with no recent contest coming closer than Trump’s nail-biter of a win over Biden, 49.9%-48.6%, in North Carolina four years ago.
The 2024 race is expected to be similarly competitive. And the mood of conservative voters at a pair of Haley rallies ahead of the state’s presidential primary indicates that Trump could be in trouble.
Linda Angele, a 72-year-old Republican from Davidson, North Carolina, struggled to say whether she could bring herself to vote for him in November.
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I will or not. I don’t — I’ve been a Republican for 50 years,” she stammered, considering the possibility. “I can’t see — I will not vote for Biden. I will not vote for Biden under any — but I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s going to take a lot of convincing.”
‘No unity with Donald Trump’
Haley has been warning at her rallies that with Trump as the party’s nominee, the GOP will lose races up and down the ballot. His grievance-fueled campaigning is driving voters away from the Republican Party, she says, and it will cost the GOP control of the executive and legislative branches in an election year with an unusually favorable Senate map.
In late January, Trump said he would permanently bar Haley’s donors from his political movement. He upped the ante at a weekend rally in Virginia, where he said that MAGA now makes up “96% and maybe 100%” of the GOP.
Last week, his campaign said it would be monitoring the Washington, D.C. primary and blacklisting Republicans who fail to vote.
After moderate Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine endorsed Haley ahead of Tuesday’s primary elections in their home states, conservative Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio signaled in a social media post that he would hold it against them.
“I have a long memory. If you’re fighting Trump and his endorsed candidates politically today, don’t ask for my help in a year with your legislation or your pet projects,” he wrote.
Haley says her biggest concern about having Trump as the nominee is that purple state voters casting a ballot for her in the primary will sit the general election out or vote for Biden.
“Donald Trump can say that we’re unified. This crowd will tell you there’s no unity with Donald Trump. All they hear are threats and the fact that he bars them from being a part of his club. They want to be a part of something positive. They want to be a part of something good. They want to feel good about their country again,” she said. “And they don’t feel good under Donald Trump. He refuses to believe it. Just because he says something doesn’t make it true. He’s got a real problem within the Republican Party.”
All across the country
Rick Poplinski, a 57-year-old from the Minneapolis suburb of Eden Prairie, is among the bloc of voters planning to back Haley in the primary, but who are uneasy about a Biden-Trump rematch in November.
“It’s a little unsettling because I’ve never missed a vote,” Poplinski, who described himself as a right-leaning independent, said. “I have no enthusiasm to vote for anybody else that’s out there right now.”
While Poplinski said he would choose Biden over Trump every time, he expressed concern that many of his neighbors would stay home on Election Day.
Trump came close to winning Minnesota in 2016 but lost to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by just two points. In 2020, he tried again, but lost to Biden by seven points.
The strength of Trump’s support in the state now, particularly among suburban voters, will be tested on Tuesday night. Few Republican presidential primary polls have been conducted of the state’s electorate. The latest one was fielded in late January. It found the ex-president with a more than 60-point lead over Haley in this week’s upcoming election.
If Haley can shrink that margin on Tuesday, it will further fan concerns about Trump’s ability to expand the map by winning over independents in non-traditional swing states.
Trump faces a similar problem in Virginia, where Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin won the governor’s mansion by keeping the former president at arm’s length.
Virginia last voted for a Republican for president in 2004, despite routine pledges from GOP candidates to turn it into a battleground state.
Falls Church resident and Air Force veteran Dan Koprowicz begrudgingly cast his ballot for Biden in the 2020 election. It was his first time voting for a Democrat, and Koprowicz, 55, says he will do it again if it means stopping Trump.
“He’s just toxic, and he brings and brews hatred and animosity between people,” said Koprowicz, a Haley supporter who attended her rally there last Thursday. “He wants to become an autocratic leader. He wants to suspend the Constitution. These are very dangerous things.”
Angele, the decades-long Republican from North Carolina, said she would be deeply disappointed if Trump and Biden were her general election options.
“Three-hundred-sixty-million-plus people, and these are our choices,” she said. “It upsets me.”
Contributing: Sam Woodward, Minnesota elections reporting fellow for USA Today, and Elizabeth Beyer, Virginia elections fellow for the USA Today network.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Nikki Haley says her campaign is not anti-Trump, supporters disagree
