Michigan primary could point to future
Haley defies calls to exit Republican race
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley says it’s not “the end of our story” despite Donald Trump’s easy primary victory in South Carolina, her home state where the one-time governor had long suggested her competitiveness with the former president would show.
Defying calls from South Carolina Republicans to exit the race, Haley planned to travel Sunday to Michigan, which holds its primary on Tuesday.
With his win Saturday in the first-in-the South contest, Trump has now swept every primary or caucus on the GOP early-season calendar that awards delegates. His performances have left little manoeuvring room for Haley, his former UN ambassador.
“I have never seen the Republican party so unified as it is right now,” Trump said in a victory night celebration in Columbia.
The Michigan contest is the final major race before the American election calendar broadens dramatically on Super Tuesday, March 5. That’s when more than a dozen states will hold elections with thousands of delegates at stake.
Michigan’s presidential primary will offer a serious test of President Joe Biden’s ability to navigate dissent within the Democratic party over his response to Israel’s war with Hamas.
Biden is facing minimal opposition from Democrats and his grip on the nomination is not in doubt. But primary voters in Michigan can pick “uncommitted,” which could give some in his party the option of casting what is essentially a protest vote.
That could prove especially enticing in a state with the highest number and concentration of Arab Americans. Biden is facing intense pressure to press for a permanent ceasefire in the Israel-hamas war, to the point that a core group of elected officials have joined a campaign to promote backing “uncommitted” instead of the president on Tuesday.
While Biden faces questions about the intensity of his support among some Democrats, there is plenty of GOP turmoil in Michigan.
Though the party’s most active members heavily support Trump to be the 2024 nominee, a power struggle inside the state party organization could complicate his team’s effort to organize the state to turn out the vote in November.
The state party organization is facing more than $600,000 in debt under ousted chair Kristina Karamo, though Karamo refuses to step aside despite the ouster and Trump’s endorsement of Hoekstra, a former congressman who was Trump’s ambassador to the Netherlands.
Hoekstra has said it will be difficult to rebuild in fewer than nine months a state party that, in recent presidential cycles, has operated with a budget of $20 million to $30 million. Biden carried the state in 2020 by fewer than 155,000 votes