Haley suspends White House run
After an altogether disastrous Super Tuesday showing and with the big money interests already disengaged, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley announced she would end her run for the White House yesterday.
Haley made the announcement from her campaign headquarters in South Carolina during a 10 a.m. press conference, though her departure was rumored for hours beforehand after sources close to her campaign let the information slip early this morning.
“The time has now come to suspend my campaign,” she said from Charleston. “I said I wanted Americans to have their voices heard. I have done that. I have no regrets.”
Haley did not immediately endorse former President Donald Trump but instead congratulated and encouraged him to make room under the conservative tent for the voters who supported her campaign and who felt left behind by the MAGA faithful.
“We must bind together as Americans. We must turn away from the darkness of hatred and division,” she said.
The former South Carolina governor’s departure marks the end of a primary race apparently decided the moment Trump chose to attempt a second try at a second term. If polling is any guide, Trump was never in any real danger of losing the primary in a party he’s dominated since 2016.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis came closest to outperforming him in pre-election surveys — at one point he was averaging within single digits of the former president — but his Trump-lite routine never stuck with voters and he entered the Iowa caucus far behind.
He ended his campaign soon after and endorsed Trump ahead of the New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation Republican primary.
Haley said it will be up to the former president to bring dissociated Republicans back into the fold, and “to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him.”
President Biden issued a statement after Haley’s announcement, saying that her supporters are more than welcome to continue their opposition to the former president by joining with him.
The Super Tuesday results were not the only signs that Haley was going to have to eventually end her campaign and make way for a Trump to take on Biden again. Support from Charles Koch backed super PAC Americans For Prosperity, which threw its weight behind Haley in November, ended after she failed to win the party primary in her home state of South Carolina.