Haley suspends campaign, leaves Trump as last major Republican candidate

Nikki Haley suspended her presidential campaign on Wednesday after being soundly defeated across the country on Super Tuesday, leaving Donald Trump as the last remaining major candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination.

Haley didn’t endorse the former president in a speech in Charleston, South Carolina. Instead, she challenged him to win the support of the moderate Republicans and independent voters who supported her.

“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him. And I hope he does that,” she said. “At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people.”

Haley, a former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, was Trump’s first significant rival when she jumped into the race in February 2023. She spent the final phase of her campaign aggressively warning the GOP against embracing Trump, whom she argued was too consumed by chaos and personal grievance to defeat President Joe Biden in the general election.

Her departure clears Trump to focus solely on his likely rematch in November with Biden. The former president is on track to reach the necessary 1,215 delegates to clinch the Republican nomination later this month.

• Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell endorsed Trump for president on Wednesday, a remarkable turnaround from the onetime critic who blamed the then-president for “disgraceful” acts in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack but now supports Trump’s bid to return to the White House.

McConnell, who was the last top GOP leader in Congress to fall in line with Trump, declared his support in a short statement after Trump’s Super Tuesday wins pushed the GOP frontrunner closer to the party nomination.

The two men have not spoken since 2020 when McConnell declared Biden the winner of that year’s presidential election. But more recently, their teams had reopened talks about an endorsement. “It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States,” McConnell said in the statement. “It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”

• U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota ended his long-shot 2024 Democratic presidential bid on Wednesday after failing to win a primary contest against Biden. Phillips told WCCO Radio in Minneapolis that he was endorsing Biden, saying “there is only one choice” in an expected fall matchup with Trump.

Phillips, a 55-year-old multimillionaire who is among the richest members of Congress, built his White House bid around calls for a new generation of Democratic leadership while spending freely from his personal fortune.

But the little-known congressman ultimately failed to resonate with the party’s voters. Phillips was the only elected Democrat to challenge Biden for the presidency.