CNN
—
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will announce Wednesday that she is withdrawing from the Republican presidential race, clearing the way for former President Donald Trump, according to a source familiar with the plans.
He is scheduled to speak in Charleston, South Carolina, at 10 a.m. ET, following a string of defeats in the race for the Republican nomination on Super Tuesday.
Haley has no plans to endorse Trump, a person familiar with her plans told CNN. Instead, she will ask her former president to win the support of voters who supported her. The plan is seen as leaving room for her to support Trump ahead of the general election in November.
Haley, who was President Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, won 14 of the 15 Republican races held on Tuesday in the Republican primary, which Trump dominated from start to finish. He was the last of more than a dozen major candidates to be defeated. He skipped party debates and maintained a much lighter state travel schedule than all his rivals.
Haley had vowed to stay in the race at least until Super Tuesday. She also began to ramp up attacks on President Trump, questioning his mental state and calling him one of two “grumpy old men” along with President Joe Biden, the likely Democratic nominee. He was lumped together.
But in her home state of South Carolina, 2024 was her fourth straight loss. That includes one loss to “none of these candidates” in the Nevada primary, where Trump was not running and there were no contested delegates. (He instead chose to participate in party-sponsored caucuses that would win delegates.)
As the campaign shifts into a new gear, from early state elections where retail politics take center stage to a national election in which 56% of party delegates will be elected by March, Haley said: There was little hope of keeping pace with the former president. 12 — Most of them are participating in winner-take-all contests.
Still, Haley became the first Republican woman to win two primary races in Vermont and the District of Columbia. Her victory means Trump can no longer say he shut out Haley in all of her states, but it wasn't enough to give her a significant delegate count.
The former South Carolina governor's resignation showed how unfazed Republican voters are by the debate over a possible election. Trump's Republican base falsely claims he lost the 2020 election due to widespread fraud, even though general election polls showed Haley's support remains true to. A much stronger position against Biden.
“I've never seen the Republican Party as united as it is right now,” President Trump told supporters at an election night party in South Carolina.
After Trump won more than 50% of the vote in Iowa, with Haley a distant third, Republicans quickly sided with the former president and backed him. Former 2024 candidates, including biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, campaigned with Trump on the eve of the New Hampshire primary. went. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also bid Haley farewell as she left the field, calling her platform “a repackaged version of overcooked corporatism.”
Haley has never had such an outpouring of support behind her. Her former Arkansas governor, Asa Hutchinson, supported her, but her former New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, did not, and she was caught on a hot mic saying she was “on fire.” Ta.
In New Hampshire, Haley's ally, Gov. Chris Sununu, had predicted a “landslide” victory for Trump before polls showed her leading, but Haley defied expectations and lost by 11 points. .
During her campaign, Ms. Haley often sought to distinguish herself from Mr. Trump as a better alternative to Mr. Biden who could woo moderate and independent voters in the general election.
“I won the moderates and independents, he won [Trump] I don't. That's why he lost in 2018. That's why he lost in 2020. That's why he lost in 2022, and that's why every poll shows him losing to Joe Biden and me winning,” Haley said in an interview with Fox News.
Haley last year signed a pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee as part of her participation in the Republican primary debates, but she has recently indicated she is no longer bound by that pledge. “I make my own decisions,'' he said. I want to make it. ”
Haley entered the Republican presidential race in February last year, becoming the first person after President Trump to run for president in 2024. She was in the low single digits in polls for most of the first six months of her campaign, but gained momentum after the first Republican primary debate in August, where she called for a “consensus” on abortion and on foreign policy. His experience made him stand out. She was well-received in subsequent debates, helping to increase interest among her constituents and donors.
By late fall, many wealthy Republicans and some Democrats seeking an alternative to Trump began rallying behind Haley. She received an endorsement from billionaire Charles Koch's political network in November, and the campaign announced it had raised $24 million in the last quarter of this year. She also received support from Mr. Sununu, strengthening her campaign in one of her most promising states, where 40% of her registered voters identify as independents.
That momentum caught the attention of her rivals, who began digging into her record and trying to paint her as a candidate beholden to donors. DeSantis and her allies sought to undermine her hard-line stance on China by highlighting her accomplishments in attracting Chinese companies to South Carolina. Haley responded that at the time, governors across the country were trying to attract Chinese companies, but that the United States now has a better understanding of its relationship with China.
Some of the wounds were self-inflicted. In mid-November, Haley called for name verification on social media accounts, which would effectively eliminate anonymous posts. She quickly retreated after a wave of backlash. Ahead of the Iowa caucuses, DeSantis stuck to his tongue-in-cheek comments that Iowa would begin the nominating process and New Hampshire would “fix” the results.
Her biggest stumbling block came in late 2023, when she was asked about the causes of the Civil War during an event in New Hampshire. Haley did not mention slavery in her response, sparking a wave of criticism from Democrats and Republicans. In the days that followed, she said she was wrong to ignore her slavery and highlighted her own experiences with racism growing up as the daughter of Indian immigrants in rural South Carolina. .
Her views on race were reiterated in January when she told a Fox News host that the United States “has never been a racist country” despite its history of legal discrimination. Haley maintained that although she has experienced racism in her life, she believes this country was not founded to perpetuate racism.
However, Haley is known for saying “kick.”[s] Come back even stronger,” his rivals chased after him. She frequently criticizes Mr. Ramaswamy's foreign policy stance, accusing Mr. DeSantis of “lying” about his record because he is “losing” and of Mr. Trump because he is doing it in her favor. He said he was having a “tantrum.”
After finishing third in Iowa, Haley declared the nomination contest a two-person contest between her and Trump, but after DeSantis ended her campaign days before the Granite State primary, My prediction was correct.
The campaign has become personal between Trump and Haley. The former president once criticized former President Barack Obama for raising a post that falsely claimed that Haley was ineligible to serve as president because her parents were not citizens when she was born in South Carolina. He repeated the insults he had hurled at the birther. Trump also mocked her by misspelling her first name, Nimarata (Nikki is her former governor's middle name).
Meanwhile, Haley questioned former President Donald Trump's mental competency after he confused her with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during a campaign rally.
“The reality is he was a mess,” she said at a campaign event on Jan. 21. “He was just as confused as when Joe Biden said he was going to start World War II.”
Haley's criticism of Trump intensified after she mocked her husband's military service and called for all donors to be “forever banned from the MAGA camp.”
In mid-February, Haley said: “In that moment, by showing such disrespect for the military, he showed he was unfit to be president of the United States. I trusted him to protect our military. That's because we haven't.”
Haley's political career began in 2004, when she defeated a 30-year incumbent in the Republican primary for state representative in Lexington County, South Carolina. In the 2010 gubernatorial race, he defeated a congressman, state attorney general and lieutenant governor in a crowded Republican primary, and narrowly defeated his Democratic opponent in the general election.
At the time, Haley was a rising star in the Republican Party and was seen as a potential vice presidential nominee in 2012 and 2016. In 2016, she was selected as the Republican respondent to President Barack Obama's final State of the Union address.
On the presidential campaign trail, Haley touted her work in South Carolina, bringing jobs to the state and enacting conservative policies like voter ID and abortion restrictions.
One of Haley's defining moments as governor came in 2015, when a white supremacist gunman killed nine black churchgoers at Charleston's Mother Emanuel AME Church. Haley has argued for years that the Confederate flag is a sensitive issue, but in the days after the killing, he called for the flag to be removed from the Capitol grounds.
Haley served as governor of South Carolina for six years before becoming Trump's ambassador to the United Nations in 2017. Her presidential candidate spoke often about her two years at the United Nations and her perspective on the threats facing the United States.
Her calculated move to step down from the Trump administration after two years in office sparked speculation about her next move. She spent nearly a year on the board of Boeing Co., where she worked extensively during her time in South Carolina, but she was removed in March 2020 after her executives discussed obtaining COVID-19 relief funds. I resigned.
In the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Haley said she believes her former boss has no future in politics and has no intention of running for president in 2024. .
“I don't think he'll be in the picture,” she told Politico in February 2021. He has fallen so far. ”
But two months later, she said she would support his campaign and not oppose him if he ran.
“If we have to make a decision, we'll talk about it at some point,” she told The Associated Press.
When Haley became the first candidate to run against him after the announcement in late 2022, President Trump told reporters he encouraged her to run.
“Nikki Haley said, 'I would never go against a president, he's a great president, the best president of my lifetime,' but I want her to follow her heart and do what she wants,” Trump said. “I said we should do it,” he said. A statement after she released it. “I wish her luck!”
This story has been updated with additional information.
CNN's Eric Bradner and Ebony Davis contributed to this report.
