After absorbing losses in the Super Tuesday primaries, former governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, announced on Wednesday that she was ending her presidential campaign, losing approximately $120 million in campaign costs.
In handing the party’s nomination to former President Donald J. Trump, a rival with whom she clashed bitterly by the end, she declined to endorse him. Instead, she challenged him to win over her supporters.
"Who gives a sh*t" – Nikki Haley's WEAK excuse for wasting $100M on failed 2024 campaign.@AndyStumpf77 @patrickbetdavid @VincentOshana pic.twitter.com/nwgwAAtIaN
— PBD Podcast (@PBDsPodcast) March 7, 2024
“In all likelihood, Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee when our party convention meets in July. I congratulate him and wish him well,” she said, adding that it was now “his time for choosing.”
Her decision brings to a close the latest struggle over the direction of the Republican Party, a lopsided fight that has stretched back to Trump’s first presidential run in 2016. She had come to represent a slight number of Republicans who saw her as their last, best chance to become the new favorite.
Haley made it clear she was no member of the resistance. Nor could she loosen Trump’s grip sufficiently on most of the party.
If anything, her campaign revealed the extent to which she didn’t relate to the G.O.P. She was not a natural warrior like Trump or Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, another former rival. She failed to connect with rural voters who have propelled Trump, appealing instead to younger people, college-educated voters, and independents.
She absorbed her $120 million loss, including in her home state last month. That streak culminated in Trump’s Super Tuesday blowout, which made clear there was no path forward. Of the 15 states that voted, Haley only won Vermont, to add to her only other primary victory, on Sunday, in the District of Columbia.
In his statement posted to social media before her speech, Trump appeared to signal that he had no intention of being gracious, saying Haley was trounced and had been funded and propped up by Radical Left Democrats.
“I’d like to thank my family, friends, and the Great Republican Party for helping me produce, by far, the most successful Super Tuesday in HISTORY. And would further like to invite all of the Haley supporters to join the greatest movement in our Nation’s history,” Trump said.
