The truth about whether ‘Nikki Haley Republicans’ can hand Kamala Harris a win

Ashley Bartley was deeply disappointed when Nikki Haley said she would vote for former president Donald Trump in November.

“I was involved in many text strings, email exchanges, just asking, like, what is she doing? How could she do this to us?” Bartley told The Independent.

Bartley is not a normal Haley supporter. As a Republican state legislator in Vermont, Bartley served as a co-chairwoman of Haley’s campaign in one of the few contests that Haley won in her campaign for the Republican nomination for president.

But her disappointment does not mean that Bartley is an automatic vote for Kamala Harris, even in a state with a history of liberal New England Republicans.

“I think vice president Kamala Harris is going to continue to get votes simply because she's not Donald Trump, and a lot of individuals were supporting Nikki Haley because she was not Donald Trump,” Bartley said, adding that her constituents are worried about the same thing other voters are, namely crime and the cost of living.

“They feel that the state that we grew up in just isn't as safe as it works was, and I know that, and that's regardless of party, and I think that these are things that need to be addressed by the Vice President.”

Harris actively courted the support of anti-Trump Republicans throughout her campaign. One operative told The Independent: “It’s going to be more Republicans than you’ve seen vote for a Democrat in decades.” Earlier this week, Harris campaigned with former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan in hopes of giving a permission structure for Republicans to vote against Trump.

Some Republicans like Jill Sigal, who worked in George W Bush’s administration but did not vote for Haley, said she was enthused when she went to a Country Over Party event in Bucks County, Pennsylvania last week.

“I wasn't sure I was going to go, and then I'm like, I'm going,” she said. “And I told my family. I called them as I was walking, from the event to my car. I called my sister because I was so, so happy to see the intense enthusiasm at that rally. It was, was magnificent at every point. I mean, everybody was chanting, ‘USA, USA, country over party.’ I mean, it was truly an extraordinary event”

But Harris will still need to work for Republican votes. And many operatives on Haley’s campaign and her public-facing supporters are still unsure.

Preya Samsundar, who was a spokesperson for the pro-Haley super PAC SFA Fund, told The Independent that the Harris campaign has not done much in terms of reaching out to Haley voters.

“They had a lot of issues, on their end, just trying to get things established to turn over a campaign that was largely focused on trying to keep Joe Biden in place, and now having to make Kamala Harris acceptable to everyone else,” she told The Independent. When Haley dropped out of the campaign in March, President Joe Biden made overtures to Haley voters.

But Samsundar noted how Haley has been a team player and regularly defended Trump.

“ You know, there isn't a lot from these individuals that show that they're supporting Republicans elsewhere,” she said. Indeed, many Republicans who support Harris support Democrats downballot. In Cheney’s case, she has openly supported Democratic Senate candidate Colin Allred, who is running against Senator Ted Cruz.

Kim Rice, who was a co-chair for Haley’s New Hampshire team and a former speaker pro tempore in New Hampshire’s legislature, said that Harris had a chance to reach out to Haley voters but missed it when she picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate.

“She had an opportunity to go with a moderate Democrat or far left progressive, and she chose the far left progressive who is more like her,” she told The Independent. “ So that did not give me any comfort in the fact that she was trying to win over moderates or any Republicans.”

At the same time, she said that Trump is not reaching out to voters like her.

“I think I would like to see him utilize Nikki, I think it would benefit his campaign, but sometimes I think his ego gets in the way of that,” she said.

“There's just a very vast difference between what Governor Haley was trying to accomplish and what these other Republicans have have been doing over the last several years, and continue to do today,” Samsundar told The Independent.

Evan Roth-Smith, the lead pollster at Blueprint, a Democratic outlet, told The Independent that there is a chance that some of these voters can get behind Harris.

“Theyy've already chosen to vote against Donald Trump once,” he said. “And all you need to do is, is to get them to do it again, right, in the general election.”

Blueprint conducted a poll showing that Haley voters say their main concern is that Trump is erratic and that he is too selfish and too old to lead.

“Even though they have these strong character objections to Donald Trump, and even though they have relatively nice things to say about Kamala Harris's character on policy matters, they still align with the Republican Party in many instances and with Donald Trump in many instances,” he said. He added that many of these Republicans care about a robust foreign policy and that many Haley voters didn’t like that Trump blew up the budget.

“So we see the most productive line of argument for getting these voters comfortable on policy with Harris to be things like economic policy and being conscious about the deficit,” she said.

Rina Shah, a Republican who voted for Haley and is now voting for Kamala Harris, said she is trying to convince Republicans to cross over once more when they did not think they would have to vote for a Democrat in 2024 after they probably did in 2020 to kick out Trump.

“ I voted for Nikki Haley in the primary, very proudly cast that vote, excited at that possibility of extinguishing Trump and the flame of Trumpism with it,” she said.

“She's not somebodywho's going to come have Thanksgiving dinner with you,” Shah said about Harris. “She is not somebody that you may even want in the White House past 2028. But the reality is, we want to get rid of Trump once and for all. This is how we do it.”

Roth-Smith, for his part, compared the chance for crossover appeal with Haley voters to how Trump failed to win over supporters of Bernie Sanders.

“In the end, you know there wasn't really a policy overture from the Trump camp,” Roth-Smith said. “We could do those kinds of things as Democrats to to to persuade Nikki Haley voters, because it's a similar situation.”

This article was amended on October 24. A previous version Jill Sigal attended Vice President Harris’s event with Liz Cheney. She attended a separate event last week in Bucks County.