Nikki Haley wins the D.C. Republican primary and gets her first 2024 victory
WASHINGTON
Nikki Haley has won the Republican primary in the District of Columbia, notching her first victory of the 2024 campaign.
Her victory Sunday at least temporarily halts Donald Trump’s sweep of the GOP voting contests, although the former president is likely to pick up several hundred more delegates in this week’s
Super Tuesday races.
Despite her early losses, Haley has said she will remain in the race at least through those contests, but she has declined to name any primary she felt confident she would win. After her loss in her home state of South Carolina, Haley remained adamant that voters in the places that followed deserved an alternative to Trump despite his dominance thus far in the campaign.
The Associated Press declared Haley the winner
Sunday night after D.C. Republican Party officials released results. She won all 19 delegates at stake.
“It’s not surprising that Republicans closest to Washington dysfunction are rejecting Donald Trump and all his chaos,” Haley spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement, noting that Haley became the first woman to win a Republican primary.
Washington is one of the most heavily Democratic jurisdictions in the nation, with only about 23,000 registered Republicans in the city. Democrat Joe Biden won the district in the 2020 general election with 92% of the vote.
Trump’s campaign issued a statement shortly after Haley’s victory sarcastically congratulating her on being named “Queen of the Swamp by the lobbyists and DC insiders that want to protect the failed status quo.”
Haley held a rally in the nation’s capital on Friday before heading back to North Carolina and a series of states holding Super Tuesday primaries. She joked with more than 100 supporters inside a hotel ballroom, “Who says there’s no Republicans in D.C.; come on.”
“We’re trying to make sure that we touch every hand that we can and speak to every person,” Haley said.
As she gave her standard campaign speech, criticizing Trump for running up the federal deficit, one rallygoer bellowed, “He cannot win a general election. It’s madness.” That prompted agreement from Haley, who argues that she can deny Biden a second term but that Trump can’t.
While campaigning as an avowed conservative, Haley has tended to perform better among more-moderate and independent-leaning voters.
Four in 10 Haley supporters in South Carolina’s GOP primary were selfdescribed moderates, compared with 15% for Trump, according to AP VoteCast.