Nikki Haley announces withdrawal from Republican primary race against Donald Trump

Nikki Haley, the last candidate standing for the Republican presidential nomination against Donald Trump, announced Wednesday that she is withdrawing from the race for the White House. The announcement, advanced by the major U.S. media outlets, comes hours after the conclusion of Super Tuesday, a day in which 15 states voted in their primaries and which resulted in Trump’s overwhelming victory in 14 of them. If before there appeared to be few obstacles left for the former president, Super Tuesday has cleared his path to run in the November election against his old acquaintance on the Democratic side, President Joe Biden.

Haley delivered her withdrawal speech in Charleston, the city she had chosen as her campaign headquarters. Haley was the only woman among the 14 Republican candidates who started the primary race. Among her credentials were her term as governor of South Carolina (2011-2017) and as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a position she was appointed to by Trump when he was in the White House. “The time has now come to suspend my campaign. I said I wanted Americans to have their voices heard. I have done that. I have no regrets,” she said as reported by CNN.

Haley managed to elicit attention by launching her candidacy with a critique of the advanced age of those who will, barring any surprises, be the two contenders in the November election: Biden, 81, and Trump, 77, who she said should take cognitive assessment tests. Haley turned 52 in January. She then crafted her message to appeal to moderate Republican voters and the undecided, who are united by the powerful reason, she said, of the fear of Trump’s return to the helm of the world’s leading power. Other attacks focused on Trump’s “disrespectful treatment” of war veterans (including Haley’s husband) and the idea that his presidency brought chaos and instability to the United States. She also tried to sell herself as the only Republican capable of defeating Biden in November.

But nothing — not even a more aggressive discourse toward her opponent in recent weeks — helped her dent Trump, who aimed his customary contempt and insults toward Haley (he called her “knucklehead” at one point), and who has proven to be stronger than ever within the Republican Party. Haley, who lost by 20 points in a place as significant as South Carolina, where she governed with remarkable popularity ratings, had to settle for a couple of consolation victories: she won last weekend in the staunchly Democratic District of Columbia and in Vermont, in what was the big surprise (and the only excitement) generated by Super Tuesday. Vermont is a small state, contributing only 17 of the 2,429 delegates to the Republican national convention, which will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in July. At the time of her withdrawal, Haley had accumulated 89 delegates to Trump’s 995.

The percentages achieved in open primaries such as those in South Carolina (40%) or New Hampshire (42%) could be indicative of the problems that await Trump in November, when the vote will not be limited to Republicans. They also served to underline the huge fracture in the party, divided between the minority of traditional conservatives — in the lineage of Ronald Reagan, with their optimism and faith in institutions, markets, and the role of the United States as the world’s policeman — and the majority that blindly follows Trump in his isolationist pessimism and the populist nationalism of the MAGA movement. If these ideas were once on the fringes of Republicanism they have been placed, nine years after the emergence of their leader on the American political scene, at the center of a party torn in half.

Powerful donors

Throughout her campaign, Haley had the support of conservative donors who were reluctant to see Trump in the White House again. Given it is taken for granted that Haley will not endorse Trump, her withdrawal presents two questions: will her supporters vote for the former president, will they give their support to Biden, or will they abstain in November? The second question is more urgent: where will all the money that backed her campaign go? Some of Haley’s biggest donors, such as Charles Koch, had already abandoned her in the face of the evidence that the end of her road was near. The Trump campaign has already begun to maneuver to attract some of those generous contributions to its own coffers, while advocates of the alternative of a third party to avoid the quagmire of a repetition of the Trump-Biden duel hold on to the idea that Haley wants to fly that flag.

That option, though, is as remote as Haley putting herself forward to complete the Republican ticket as Trump’s running mate, an option she has already publicly ruled out. Asked what made her hold on for so long, following the withdrawal of Ron DeSantis, who threw in the towel in January after the Iowa caucuses, analysts responded that Haley was taking advantage of the national spotlight being pointed at her to put together a solid candidacy for the 2028 election. Four years is, now more than ever, an eternity in American politics so that may be another story.

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