Nikki Haley, the Republican candidate, largely beaten by Donald Trump on Super Tuesday, finally announced her withdrawal from the campaign, while calling on the former American president to rally moderate Republican voters.
She no longer had a choice. Nikki Haley, 52, announced Wednesday that she was suspending her presidential campaign after being widely defeated across the country on Super Tuesday, leaving Donald Trump as the only candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination.
The former United States ambassador to the UN, however, would not intend to support Donald Trump. Instead of that, she should encourage him to win the support of the coalition of moderate Republicans and independent voters who supported her.
The former South Carolina governor was Donald Trump’s first significant rival when she entered the race in February 2023. She spent the final phase of her campaign aggressively warning the Party Republican against the re-election of the former president, who, according to her, was too damaged by the ambient legal chaos and by personal grievances to defeat Joe Biden in November.
His withdrawal from the Republican primaries now allows Donald Trump to focus solely ona probable revenge against the current tenant of the White House.
The former president is on track to reach the 1,215 delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination later this month.
Nikki Haley’s defeat marks a painful, if predictable, blow to voters, donors and Republican Party officials who opposed Donald Trump and his fiery politics of Make America Great Again. She was particularly popular among moderate voters and those with college educations, constituencies that will likely play a central role in the general election. It’s unclear whether Trump, who recently said Haley’s donors would be permanently banned from his movement, will ultimately be able to unite a deeply divided party.
Donald Trump said Tuesday night that the Republican Party was united behind him, but in a statement shortly afterward, Haley’s spokeswoman, Olivia Perez-Cubas, said: “unity is not achieved by simply saying: ‘We are united’”.
Nikki Haley is therefore leaving the 2024 presidential race after making history as the first woman to win a Republican primary. She beat D. Trump in the District of Columbia on Sunday and in Vermont on Tuesday.
The candidate’s allies note that she exceeded most political expectations by going this far even if she was slow to directly criticize her former boss.
Nikki Haley has made it clear that she does not want to become DonaldTrump’s vice president or run on a third-party ticket organized by the group No Labels. So she leaves the race with a high national profile that could help her in a future presidential campaign.