Haley, keeping up her fight, says she raised $12M last month

Influx of donations likely will help her campaign past Super Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said Friday she raised $12 million in February, a haul that likely will allow her to remain in the Republican primary against former President

Donald Trump past this week’s Super Tuesday — even though she can’t point to an upcoming state where she expects to beat him.

The former ambassador to the United Nations noted she outraised Trump in January and insisted the donations have continued to flow despite her not having a long-term plan to challenge — or even really dent — the former president’s commanding lead in the primary.

“When I go into a fundraiser,” she said during a meeting with reporters in Washington, “they don’t ask me, ‘What’s your strategy?’ They don’t ask me, ‘What’s your plan?’ All they say is, ‘Thank you for giving me hope.’”

Haley got some good news later in the day, when moderate Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins became the first U.S. senators to endorse her, defying most top GOP leaders who have lined up behind Trump. Murkowski has her own personal history with the former president, who in 2021 vowed to personally campaign against her when she was up for reelection the following year — though that threat didn’t stop the senator from winning another term in 2022.

Collins said late Friday that Haley’s “experience as a successful governor and as a strong representative of our country as ambassador to the United Nations makes her extremely well-qualified to serve as our first female president.”

Nikki Haley