Presidential candidate Nikki Haley has spent recent weeks trying to characterize former president Donald Trump’s GOP’s lock on prominent Republican lawmakers in Washington as a sign that he’s the real establishment candidate in the primary. “Now we have a two-person race,” Haley said at a rally in Salem, N.H., on January 22. “And you got one who’s got the entire political elite all around him.”
But as she trudges toward the March primary states, the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor is facing more and more pushback from grassroots Republicans well beyond today’s open primary in the Palmetto State, where she trails Trump in most polls by double digits.
Haley is facing headwinds not just from congressional lawmakers in Washington, D.C., but from a number of early-primary state GOP leaders who are calling on Republicans to unite behind Trump even before their voters have cast ballots. And it’s not just in redder states such as Mississippi, Ohio, and Alabama where Trump is racking up support from state GOP chairmen and executive committees.
Even in more competitive March primary states like Michigan, Florida, Georgia, and Colorado, the former president’s dominance among grassroots Republicans is clear.
State GOP leaders who are preemptively rallying behind the former president before their own voters have had a chance to weigh in cite varying reasons for doing so. In interviews, they describe what they see as the inevitability of Trump’s victory, the desire for party unity, and the eagerness to start focusing the national party’s time and resources on defeating President Joe Biden in November.
Texas GOP chairman Matt Rinaldi, who endorsed Trump on January 29, insisted in an interview that Haley has “zero chance” of winning the nomination and should drop out. “I have no idea why she’s staying in it,” said Rinaldi, whose state holds its presidential primary on Super Tuesday. “The only person right now who has any chance of winning the Republican nomination is Donald Trump.”
After losing to Trump in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and the Virgin Islands, Haley continues to lean into her underdog status. She insists she won’t drop out no matter the result in South Carolina and maintains she has a path forward in a number of early-primary states.
“Nikki Haley has always been the anti-establishment underdog, and she’s never cared what the party bosses think about her,” Haley spokeswoman AnnMarie Graham-Barnes said in a statement to NR. “She’s running to give the 70 percent of Americans who don’t want to see a Trump–Biden rematch a choice in this election. Donald Trump once campaigned on draining the swamp. Now he has become the swamp.”
And in yet another signal to her supporters that she’s not dropping out right after South Carolina, Haley’s team this week announced a slew of campaign events later this month in Minnesota, Utah, and Colorado.
She will also campaign in bluer Michigan ahead of its February 27 primary, where newly elected state GOP chairman Pete Hoekstra — a former congressman and ambassador to the Netherlands under Trump — has already called Trump the “presumptive nominee.”
“Let’s unite, let’s focus on Democrats, and let’s really focus on winning a state which I think we can win,” said Hoekstra, who took the reins after the state party committee ousted his predecessor Kristina Karamo from her job. (Karamo has refused to leave her post, even after Trump and the RNC officially recognized Hoekstra as her successor.)
Many of these state party chairmen acknowledge that endorsing Trump before their own Republican voters have cast their primary votes is an unprecedented move.
“We do not traditionally endorse in primaries,” Alabama GOP chairman John Wahl said in an interview about his party’s February 10 endorsement.
He said this time, the state GOP’s executive-committee members, who are elected by Republican primary voters, felt it was time to rally around the party’s presumptive nominee. “Donald Trump and the people of Alabama have always had a special relationship. We’ve seen it in the last election. We’ve seen it with the rallies here,” he said.
Rinaldi, the Texas GOP chairman, brushed off concerns about the precedent that may be set by rallying behind Trump at the state level before he has formally secured the nomination.
“I don’t have any problem with the grassroots exerting their power to help choose their candidate,” Rinaldi said. “I think the Republican Party grassroots needs to take control of their party and define what it means to be a Republican. And that isn’t Nikki Haley.”
Some of these state parties are taking a cue from outgoing GOP chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who has put pressure on Haley to get out of the race without explicitly calling for her to do so. “I’m looking at the map and the path going forward and I don’t see it for Nikki Haley,” McDaniel told Fox News the night of Trump’s win in New Hampshire’s primary. “We need to unite around our eventual nominee, which is Donald Trump.”
Like McDaniel, some state parties are putting pressure on Haley to drop out without explicitly endorsing the front-runner. The Georgia GOP issued a statement on January 24 saying it’s “difficult” to see a path for Haley and that the elected members are “united” in their “call to move to the general election phase of this campaign.”
“We’re acknowledging the reality of the situation, which is that Donald Trump’s going to be the Republican nominee for president,” Georgia GOP chairman Josh McKoon said in an interview. “The question is, what’s the most efficient allocation of resources going forward? Is it to continue to engage in this primary process? Or is it to prosecute the case against Joe Biden and win the November election?”
Not all state GOP chairmen representing March primary states are throwing their weight behind the front-runner. Vermont GOP chairman Paul Dame has been vocal about his opposition to Trump and says his presence at the top of the ticket has hurt down-ballot GOP candidates “big time” in his state.
Dame adds that it’s been “disappointing” to watch the Trump campaign exert so much pressure on the national GOP when there’s still an active primary. Amid pressure from Trump-world, McDaniel is expected to step down from her post as RNC chairwoman shortly after today’s primary.
It’s unclear whether the race to replace her will be contested, though Trump has already waded in with his preferred picks for the RNC’s top posts. He’s thrown his weight behind Michael Whatley, RNC general counsel and North Carolina GOP chairman, to succeed McDaniel, and his daughter-in-law Lara Trump to serve as co-chairwoman (the party’s rules require there to be a male and female co-chairs). Trump also endorsed his own campaign adviser, Chris LaCivita to serve as the RNC’s chief operating officer.
That leadership shake-up is expected to take place in early March, as National Review reported earlier this week.
“Yes, he’s in the lead. And it’s likely that that lead will continue,” Dame said in an interview. “But trying to exert this kind of influence” on the national party, he added, is something “I’m not comfortable with.”