The rise of Nikki Haley
Can Nikki Haley save the country from Donald Trump? Will independent or so-called “undeclared” voters help her do it in New Hampshire? A shocking poll showing Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the United Nations, within four points of Trump in New Hampshire supercharges that question just enough to catch Trump’s ever churlish attention. “Fake New Hampshire poll was released on Birdbrain,” Trump said in a social media post that refers to Haley by the disrespectful and sexist nickname he bestowed upon her. “Just another scam!... Real poll to follow.”
An American Research Group survey of 600 likely Republican primary voters, which was conducted Dec. 14-20, had Haley trailing Trump 29 percent to 33 percent. Haley’s climb in other surveys, coupled with a recent Wall Street Journal poll showing her winning a general election campaign against President Biden by 17 points, enhances her pitch as the most electable Republican alternative to Trump. But first, she must win the nomination, no easy feat given Trump’s huge margins in most surveys. And the winning has to start this month — the Iowa Republican caucuses will be held Jan. 15 and the New Hampshire primary is scheduled for Jan. 23.
Jennifer Nassour, the Massachusetts cochair of Women for Nikki and the northeast regional chair for the Haley campaign, believes her candidate can and will pull off a New Hampshire primary victory — and a Massachusetts one too. Nassour, who was chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party when Republican Scott Brown beat Democrat Martha Coakley in 2010 in a special US Senate race, told me she senses the same groundswell of support for Haley that propelled Brown to victory. It comes “from people you didn’t know were interested, who wanted something so different from the norm, they came out and were knocking on doors and making phone calls.” In that special Senate contest, independent, or unenrolled, voters supported Brown over Coakley by a 65-30 spread. And while Brown lost two years later to Democrat Elizabeth Warren, the template for his dramatic win in 2010 is what Nassour is predicting for New Hampshire in 2024.
Of course New Hampshire is not Massachusetts and 2024 is not 2010. They are different states in different times. Yet deep voter unhappiness over the prospect of a Trump-Biden rerun leaves at least a glimmer of hope for a last minute surge for Haley. As Nassour sees it, Trump has a firm hold on 30 percent of registered Republican voters.
But that doesn’t take independent voters, who account for close to 40 percent of all New Hampshire voters, into account. Meanwhile, The New Hampshire Bulletin has also reported that as of October, nearly 4,000 New Hampshire Democratic voters had changed their party affiliation to undeclared or Republican, within the window of time allowed for such a switch. Undeclared voters in New Hampshire and Massachusetts can take a Republican or Democratic ballot. (In Massachusetts, a Democrat who changes to unenrolled by Feb. 24 could choose a Republican ballot on March 5, the date of the presidential primary, a spokesperson for Secretary of State Bill Galvin said.)
It’s tough if not impossible to win over Trump Republicans who, like Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s son, characterize Haley as “a puppet of the establishment in Washington D.C.” and oppose her as a pick for vice president. It will also be tough to win over Democrats and Democratic-leaning independent voters who aren’t thrilled with Biden but don’t like Haley’s antiabortion stance or her refusal to call out Trump for his despicable efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his overall corruption. But it might not be impossible. I agree with Nassour when she says that in the middle are voters who are repulsed by the sheer meanness, ugliness, and endless embarrassment of today’s politics, as personified by Trump — not to mention the dangerous threat to democracy that he represents. Meanwhile, “No one wants to see another TrumpBiden showdown,” Nassour said. “People are sick of where we are today. They want a new conversation, an actual choice, a chance to see their worlds move forward.”
That theory will be put to the test very soon in New Hampshire. I don’t share Haley’s conservative politics, including her position on abortion. At times, she, too, has failed the grace test, for example, by calling Republican Vivek Ramaswamy “scum” when he questioned her commitment to banning TikTok over national security concerns when her own daughter uses it. But there is something appealing about a 51-year-old presidential candidate with an admirable resume talking issues in a clear, cogent, and reasonable way — even if I disagree with her stance on most of those issues. We need more of that, not less.
Does that add up to a vote for Haley for president? That’s a much weightier decision. But a vote for the choice she represents at this moment in time — someone other than Trump running against Biden — is something to think about.