© Reuters. Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during his New Hampshire presidential primary election night watch party, in Nashua, New Hampshire, U.S., January 23, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Segar
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By Nathan Layne, Gram Slattery and James Oliphant
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) – Republicans Donald Trump and Nikki Haley turned their focus to South Carolina on Wednesday for the next big contest to determine their party’s presidential nominee after the former president won in New Hampshire but failed to knock out his rival.
Trump’s back-to-back wins in nominating contests put him on a path toward a November general election rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden. But Haley, who served as Trump’s U.N. ambassador and is now his sole opponent for the nomination, vowed to soldier on.
Both Republican candidates are expected to sharpen their attacks in South Carolina, with Trump, 77, looking to embarrass Haley, 52, by defeating her in her home state and Haley aiming for an upset by reminding voters of her record as the state’s governor from 2011 to 2017.
Haley has three rallies scheduled in South Carolina in the coming days, and her campaign released two new ads as part of a $4 million ad buy in the state.
One attacks Biden, 81, as “too old” and Trump as “too much chaos,” and calls a reprisal of the 2020 election a “rematch no one wants.” The other says she delivered “thousands of jobs, lower taxes, tough immigration laws” as governor.
Mark Harris, chief strategist of the SFA Fund, the main outside super PAC supporting Haley, said the group would be placing a multimillion-dollar ad buy throughout South Carolina that would hit the air in the coming days. He said major donors were hanging in there to give Haley a shot heading into Super Tuesday on March 5, when Republicans in 15 states and one territory vote.
Harris said South Carolina’s election rules – voters do not need to be registered Republicans to vote in the primary – could benefit her. Michigan, which holds a primary just days after South Carolina, also represented fertile territory given the state has a significant suburban population, a group with which Haley tends to perform well, Harris said.
Republicans have largely coalesced around Trump, putting pressure on Haley to drop out. Trump has racked up endorsements from most of South Carolina’s leading Republican figures, and opinion polls show him with a wide lead there.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said late Tuesday she did not see a path forward for Haley.
“I think she’s run a great campaign,” McDaniel told Fox News. “But I do think there is a message that’s coming out from the voters, which is very clear: We need to unite around our eventual nominee, which is going to be Donald Trump. And we need to make sure we beat Joe Biden.”
Over the last several weeks, South Carolina U.S. Representative Joe Wilson, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster and South Carolina Speaker of the House Burrell Smith have been making calls to state legislators and other local officials to push them to endorse Trump, according to two people with knowledge of the calls.
“In South Carolina, we’re putting the hard press on anyone that previously endorsed Senator (Tim) Scott to get them to endorse Trump,” South Carolina U.S. Representative William Timmons told reporters at a Trump rally on Saturday.
Ford (NYSE:) O’Connell, a Republican consultant based in Florida and a former Trump surrogate, said he expected the Trump campaign to pull out all the stops now against Haley.
“The plan in South Carolina is to embarrass Nikki Haley. The key is to make sure that the donors don’t fund her any further,” O’Connell said. “He’s going to argue if she can’t win her home state, she can’t be the Republican nominee.”
Joel Tenney, a Christian evangelist who was part of Trump’s faith coalition in Iowa, said he planned to travel to South Carolina next week as a volunteer to help target the state’s large base of evangelical voters.
Trump has remained popular with that voting bloc, winning a majority of the white evangelical vote as part of his commanding victory in Iowa earlier this month.
Trump is the first Republican to sweep competitive votes in both Iowa and New Hampshire since 1976, when the two states cemented their status as the first nominating contests.
Tuesday’s vote was the first one-on-one matchup between Trump and Haley, after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, once seen as Trump’s most formidable challenger, dropped out on Sunday and endorsed the former president.
Haley, who placed third in Iowa and lost to Trump by 11 percentage points in New Hampshire, refused to bow out.
“This race is far from over,” Haley told supporters at a post-election party in Concord, challenging Trump to debate her. “I’m a fighter. And I’m scrappy. And now we’re the last one standing next to Donald Trump.”
At his own party in Nashua, Trump opened his speech by mocking Haley, calling her an “imposter” and saying: “She’s doing, like, a speech like she won. She didn’t win. She lost … She had a very bad night.”