With less than two weeks to go until the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, Nikki Haley is criss-crossing her home state in a well-funded, last-ditch attempt to usurp her former boss, Donald Trump.
It remains a long shot. While the ex-president packed an arena in Conway, where 3,000 people turned out on Saturday afternoon and thousands more queued up outside, Haley has been drawing much smaller crowds in towns across the state.
The contrast is backed up by recent polling from South Carolina showing Trump as many as 37 points ahead of Haley — a stunning gap in a state where she was once a popular governor.
“I think Haley will be soundly defeated in South Carolina,” said Chip Felkel, a veteran Republican political consultant in the state and prominent Trump critic. “Trumpism, whatever that actually is, has taken over the party formerly known as the GOP.”
Even the voters who turned out to see Haley as she kicked off a 30-stop bus tour last weekend acknowledged her chances of stopping Trump were slim.
“I sure as heck hope so,” said one female voter in Gilbert who declined to give her name, when asked if Haley could spring a surprise win.
Her husband added: “If she can’t win in South Carolina, then I think it is time for her to bag it . . . if you can’t win your home state, then what’s the point?”
It is a question that hangs over Haley’s campaign as she presses ahead with a gruelling schedule of nonstop rallies, fundraisers and media appearances in the face of increasingly slim odds.
Aside from his huge polling lead, Trump has also secured the endorsements of South Carolina’s current governor, both of its US senators, and all of the state’s members of Congress, bar one.
Haley’s sole congressional endorsement has come from Ralph Norman, a Republican US House member. He said that despite the long odds, Haley will keep campaigning until at least Super Tuesday on March 5, when more than a dozen states hold primaries.
“She is more determined now than I have ever seen her,” Norman told the Financial Times. “She is tireless and her message is resonating.”
On the stump, Haley points out she has outlasted a dozen “fellas” to be the last person standing to take on the former president.
“Don’t you think it’s finally time we had a woman in the White House?” Haley asked voters in Greenwood on Saturday. “No drama, no vendettas, not taking things personally, just getting to work. That’s what we need, and we can do that.”
And she has punched back against Trump’s increasingly personal and sexist attacks. He has taken to calling his former UN ambassador “birdbrain”, and on Saturday in Conway he questioned the whereabouts of Haley’s husband, who is stationed overseas as a member of the Army National Guard.
“Donald, if you have something to say, don’t say it behind my back. Get on a debate stage and say it to my face,” Haley replied at her own rally in Gilbert.
The former US ambassador to the UN remains popular among wealthy Wall Street donors, who poured money into her campaign despite her string of defeats in the early primary states — and after Trump’s warnings to the billionaire backers to halt their support for her.
Haley raised $16.5mn in January, including $11.7mn from grassroots donors, according to her campaign, and picked up another $1.7mn in a swing through California last week. A fresh fundraising blitz is planned this week in Texas.
The funds have allowed her to dominate the airwaves: Haley has spent $8.1mn on political ads aired in South Carolina in the year to date, according to AdImpact, compared to just $72,000 spent by Trump, whose last ad aired in the state on January 8.
Haley has sharpened her attacks on her former boss in recent weeks, with a stump speech almost entirely focused on why the Republican party should break with Trump and back her instead.
She tears into his temperament, catalogues his legal troubles, questions his advanced age — noting that the 77-year-old recently appeared to confuse her with former Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi — and cites polling showing that she would be far more likely to beat President Joe Biden in November.
“The Republican incumbent, Trump, didn’t get 43 per cent of the vote [in New Hampshire],” she told voters in Greenwood. “That says a lot. But then he gets on stage that night and throws a total temper tantrum. Did y’all see it? All he did was talk about revenge.”
Her message about the former president is resonating with some South Carolinians, including Ronnie Southerland, a 67-year-old retired mechanic who rode to the rally in Greenwood on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
“I used to like Trump. I voted for him last time. But he acts like a big baby. I mean, I am sorry, I got tired of him. He don’t do nothing but cause trouble,” Southerland said.
“Look at all the stuff he has got to go to court for. I mean, for four years, he would be going to court half the time . . . The president shouldn’t be like that. All Trump is for is Trump.”
Brenda Murray, a campaign volunteer in her early 60s from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, said she had voted for Biden in 2020 but was now spending her time trying to get Haley elected.
“Look, 70 per cent of the people don’t want Biden and Trump again. It’s just crazy. It’s really crazy,” Murray said, adding: “I just don’t want her to quit.”
Some seasoned political operatives also argue Haley should stay in the race — if only to position herself as an obvious alternative should something happen to Trump before the Republican party’s nominating convention in July.
The candidate who has racked up the most delegates after the primaries will be named the nominee at the convention. But the winner will need more than 1,200 of these delegates. Trump has won 63 delegates, compared to Haley’s 17.
“You never know what is going to happen in this race . . . Donald Trump is under a hell of a lot of investigations that could not go his way,” said Alex Stroman, the former executive director of the South Carolina Republican party. “And then you would have the party looking to see what the off ramp is, and I think that off ramp would be Nikki Haley.”
Others argue Haley — who says she is not interested in being Trump’s vice-president — is laying the groundwork for another run at the White House in 2028.
“She has a pretty good point that her numbers are much better than Trump’s versus Biden. People just choose to ignore that,” said Felkel, the Republican consultant. “If Trump loses, she is going to be well positioned to say, ‘I told you so.’”
“There is a long game here that benefits Nikki Haley,” said Kevin Madden, who was a top adviser to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012.
“Haley is developing a lot of muscle memory that will be beneficial for 2028,” Madden added. “There are very few guarantees in politics, but Nikki Haley running for president again, no matter what happens this time, is a guarantee.”
Additional reporting by Eva Xiao in New York
