DES MOINES, Iowa — Despite finishing third in the Hawkeye State’s caucus Monday night, Nikki Haley wasted no time declaring the 2024 GOP race a two-person battle between herself and former President Donald Trump.
The second-place Iowa finisher, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, had bet big on support that never truly materialized — and with Haley leading the governor in both New Hampshire and South Carolina, her team insists their rival has a dead campaign walking.
But DeSantis, who has publicly reveled in his underdog status, believes Haley is in for a rude awakening — on her home turf, no less.
“We are going to take her in her home state,” a DeSantis campaign official told The Post this week, saying that Haley faces “massive” pressure to win the first-in-the-South primary Feb. 24.
DeSantis has nabbed at least 74 endorsements from current and former Palmetto State officials, dramatically outpacing Haley’s 14 — despite her serving as governor there for six years before resigning to become Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations.
“She’s really out of step with South Carolina,” DeSantis told Fox News last week. “We’re going to show that.”
It was no accident that DeSantis’ first two stops after leaving Iowa were events in Greenville and Columbia, South Carolina on Tuesday. Only then did he head north to New Hampshire, where he took part in a prime-time town hall with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.
The Florida governor is following in the footsteps of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who also went to the Palmetto State after the 2016 Iowa caucus rather than New Hampshire.
“There’s a reason this is a two-person race between Donald Trump and Nikki Haley. Because our campaign is living in reality,” Haley campaign spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas told The Post.
“Ron DeSantis’ campaign is living in Disney’s Magic Kingdom.”
After polling in a strong second behind Trump for months, DeSantis’ standing in New Hampshire has suffered as other candidates entered the race with greater appeal to the Granite State’s more moderate electorate.
A Suffolk University/NBC 10 Boston/Boston Globe tracking poll released Wednesday showed DeSantis at just 5%, behind Trump (50%) and Haley (34%).
New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, a Haley supporter, told CNN Tuesday that DeSantis’ collapse among Granite State GOPers was “embarrassing.”
“He’s pulled all his money. He’s pulled all his people,” Sununu said of the Florida governor. “He hasn’t been here in a month. So, he’s given up on New Hampshire. He made that very clear, which is why — again, it’s a two-person race between Nikki and Trump.
“He doesn’t want to be completely embarrassed, I suppose,” he went on. “And so, he’s going to come up and do a town hall here and there. But at the end of the day, he doesn’t have the ground game. He doesn’t have the connections.”
After the Granite State’s Jan. 23 primary, DeSantis will have a month to close the gap on Trump and Haley in South Carolina.
Nevada will hold its Republican caucus on Feb. 8, when Trump and DeSantis will compete for delegates. Haley, on the other hand, has opted to take part in the non-binding primary two days earlier a move many have seen as a sign of surrender to the former president.
Last week, DeSantis brought two disaffected South Carolina lawmakers to his fifth debate with Haley.
“Gov. Haley ran as a conservative in 2010. She didn’t govern as one. And in this campaign, she’s openly run as a moderate to liberal Republican,” state Sen. Josh Kimbrell told The Post at the time.
“I feel like she’s always looking for the next opportunity and she doesn’t really have deep convictions on her policy position,” he later said, echoing DeSantis’ main line of attack on Haley.
Haley has had some key surrogates from South Carolina buttress her campaign, including Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), who stumped for her in Iowa last week.
Trump is up with 52% support, followed by Haley at 21.8%, and DeSantis at 11%, according to the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate.
However, South Carolina polling has been irregular compared to Iowa and New Hampshire, making it difficult to get a true snapshot of the state of the race.
Since launching his campaign via social media last May, DeSantis has seemingly grown more open and accessible on the campaign stump as time moved on.
He has diversified his media portfolio and continued to field questions from voters at his town hall events. DeSantis contends that his rivals have grown more cautious and sheltered while he is becoming more proactive.
“I’m the only candidate that actually agreed to come to New Hampshire to debate,” DeSantis said at his CNN town hall in Henniker, NH Tuesday evening.
“What does that say? We have four candidates for president now — Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, and me. I’m the only one who’s not running a basement campaign at this point,” the Sunshine State governor quipped.
Haley announced earlier Tuesday that she planned to forgo the debates unless Trump agreed to participate.
The DeSantis team has also attacked Haley for declining to take questions from voters during the campaign homestretch in Iowa.
Ahead of the caucus, DeSantis mounted a media blitz of the Sunday morning public affairs shows and local outlets, attempting to illustrate his broadened accessibility to the press.
There is precedent for staging a campaign comeback in South Carolina. President Biden resuscitated his presidential bid with a blowout win just four years ago.
Yet with many voters seeing Trump as an incumbent in all but name, the dynamics on the Republican side are dramatically different.