Nikki Haley to Exit Republican Presidential Race
Former South Carolina governor expected to urge Trump to try to earn the support of those who backed her
Nikki Haley plans to suspend her Republican presidential primary bid in a speech Wednesday morning, people familiar with her plans told The Wall Street Journal.
The former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador is expected to make an appearance to deliver brief remarks in the Charleston area around 10 a.m. ET. Her decision arrived the day after Super Tuesday, when she won only Vermont among 15 states that held GOP contests.
Haley won’t announce an endorsement Wednesday, the people said. She will encourage Donald Trump, who is close to having the delegates needed to win the GOP nomination, to earn the support of Republican and independent voters who backed her.
She is expected to emphasize that she will continue to advocate for the conservative domestic and foreign policies she supports and caution against some of the dangers, such as isolationism and a lack of fiscal discipline, that she sees coming from Washington.
Haley was the first major candidate to challenge Trump for the nomination and the last to stand down, showing determination even as she came under significant attack by the former president and his supporters.
Her campaign on Monday referenced Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister known as the “Iron Lady” who is a role model for Haley, as it tried to motivate its Super Tuesday voters.
As she exits the race, it is hard to know whether Haley is part of the party’s future or a last gasp of more traditional Republicanism that favors a hawkish foreign policy, fiscal discipline and limited government.
The 52-year-old could still have a future in presidential politics, but her sharp criticism of Trump in the final two months of her campaign will likely make that challenging while he still has a hold on the party.
Polls show Haley had strength among suburban women and independents, both key demographics in winning general elections. That is a key reason she often led Trump significantly in hypothetical matchups against President Biden.
Her campaign used such polling to argue she was the safer bet for the party than Trump to take on Biden in November. As her campaign drew to a close, Haley repeatedly argued that the former president wouldn’t win the general election.
In a statement late Tuesday, Haley’s campaign noted her wins while scoffing at Trump’s characterization of the party as united. “Today, in state after state, there remains a large block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump,” spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas said. “That is not the unity our party needs for success.”
Haley pledged earlier in the campaign to endorse the party’s eventual nominee but has since refused to reaffirm that commitment when asked about Trump. “What I will tell you is that I have serious concerns about Donald Trump. I have more serious concerns about Joe Biden,” she said in a Journal interview in late February.
She pointed to the 91 criminal charges Trump faces for matters including his handling of classified documents and efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
“This may be his survival mode to pay his legal fees and get out of some sort of legal peril, but this is like suicide for our country,” she said in the February interview. “We’ve got to realize that if we don’t have someone who can win a general election, all we are doing is caving to the socialist left.”