Haley supporters hope for comeback
They don’t want Trump; some may vote for Biden
FALLS CHURCH, Va. – James Huang didn’t love Donald Trump.
A self-described moderate, he voted for Trump in 2016 believing Cabinet members would rein him in.
But he “got more and more crazy,” said Huang, a 58-year-old former venture capitalist. In 2020, Huang could not vote for Trump. Huang also could not bring himself to vote for Joe Biden. He left his ballot blank.
Now, Huang is holding out hope that Nikki Haley can make a dramatic comeback and take the GOP nomination. Or that she will run as an independent in the general election.
“She might not win, but who knows what she could do to pull votes away from Trump,” Huang said at Haley’s Thursday rally in Virginia ahead of the state’s March 5 primary.
Haley has been zigzagging the country, railing against Trump in packed hotel ballrooms, in a last-ditch effort to secure enough delegates to justify staying in the GOP race. The odds are not in her favor. She has won only one contest so far: the District of Columbia, on Sunday.
Without a better showing than she had last week in Michigan, where she received less than a third of the primary vote, Haley will be facing difficult choices of her own later this week: whether to end her long-shot presidential bid, and if she does, whether to support Trump.
The somber mood of the Republican electorate is not likely to lose Trump the nomination – but it could cost him the presidency. Many Haley voters say they are weighing alternative ways to express their displeasure, such as writing her name on the November ballot or staying home altogether.
“I won’t vote for Trump, that’s for sure,” said James A. Wilson, 59, at Haley’s rally in Richmond, Virginia. “I’m retired military and Jan. 6 was – that was it for me.”
Trump and his surrogates say that a vote for Haley is a betrayal of the MAGA movement and the GOP electorate.
In January, the former president said he would permanently bar Haley’s donors from his political movement. He upped the ante at a weekend rally in Virginia, where he said MAGA now makes up “96% and maybe 100%” of the Republican Party.
After moderate Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine endorsed Haley ahead of Tuesday’s primary elections in their states, conservative Sen. JD Vance of Ohio signaled in a social media post that he would hold it against them.
“I have a long memory. If you’re fighting Trump and his endorsed candidates politically today, don’t ask for my help in a year,” he wrote.
Haley recently walked back a pledge to endorse the former Republican president. Still, she denies that she and her supporters are anti-Trump.
“We had a couple of thousand people in Virginia yesterday, we had 1,500 in Utah,” Haley said in Washington, D.C., on Friday. “These crowds are not antiTrump crowds. These crowds are people who want to see an America that they can feel good about again.”
Haley has been warning at her rallies that with Trump as the party’s nominee, Republicans will lose races up and down the ballot. His grievance-fueled campaign is driving voters away, she says, and it will cost the GOP control of both the executive and legislative branches in an election year with an unusually favorable Senate map.
“Donald Trump can say that we’re unified. This crowd will tell you there’s no unity with Donald Trump. All they hear are threats and the fact that he bars them from being a part of his club,” she said. “And they don’t feel good under Donald Trump. He refuses to believe it. Just because he says something doesn’t make it true. He’s got a real problem within the Republican Party.”
While Haley’s more conservative supporters say they will vote for the GOP nominee regardless, her rallygoers often say their goal is, in fact, preventing a second Trump presidency.
Ron Oliver, a 53-year-old resident of Raleigh, North Carolina, who saw Haley speak there Saturday, has identified as a Republican for most of his life. He’s no longer affiliated with a party.
In November, he plans to vote for “whoever’s not Trump,” he said.
Voters like Oliver are why Democrats are bullish about making North Carolina a battleground state. Republicans have won since 2012, with no recent contest coming closer than Trump’s 2020 nailbiter win, 49.9%-48.6%. The mood of conservative voters at a pair of Haley rallies ahead of Super Tuesday indicates that Trump could be in trouble.
Linda Angele, a 72-year-old Republican from Davidson, North Carolina, said she would be deeply disappointed if Trump and Biden were her general election options. “Three hundred sixty million–plus people, and these are our choices,” she said. “It upsets me.”
She struggled to say whether she could vote for Trump in November. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I will or not. I don’t – I’ve been a Republican for 50 years. I can’t see – I will not vote for Biden. I will not vote for Biden under any – but I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s going to take a lot of convincing.”
Haley fans in other Super Tuesday states were similarly troubled about the general election.
“It’s a little unsettling because I’ve never missed a vote,” said Rick Poplinski, 57, who lives in the Minneapolis suburb of Eden Prairie. He described himself as a right-leaning independent, and said, “I have no enthusiasm to vote for anybody else that’s out there.”
Contributing: Elizabeth Beyer, USA TODAY Network; Sam Woodward, David Jackson, USA TODAY