Last chance for Nikki Haley? Anti-Trump Republican in desperate dash to win South Carolina

GREER, S.C.– Nikki Haley had been racing around the state she once governed, trying to fire up her supporters and scoop up undecided voters, and it was her last rally of the three-day weekend. Little did she know, she was about to receive a tree branch.

Growing up in the suburb, State Rep. Chris Wooten said that when he got into trouble, his grandmother would make him pick his own switch.

“I’m gonna give this to Nikki and hope she whips Donald Trump’s a ––,” Wooten said.

As she took the stage, Haley took it from him, and set it near the edge. The switch remained there for the rest of her speech.

Haley has been traversing the state on a bus tour, holding two and sometimes three campaign events a day, ahead of the Feb. 24 primary that is effectively the anti-Trump Republican’s last chance to save her ailing candidacy.

The situation for Haley is bleak. She’s projected to lose South Carolina by double-digits after spending $6 million on ads. And she had to shut down speculation this week that she’s heading for the exits. Haley burned through more money than she raised in January, according to a new federal filing, and the former U.N. ambassador is yet to win a single contest.

Over the weekend, her opponent, Trump, wasn’t even in the state.

Trump spent his Monday, which just so happened to be Presidents’ Day, in political meetings at Mar-a-Lago. He huddled at the private club in Palm Beach that doubles as his residence with House Speaker Mike Johnson.

He’s had a handful of events in South Carolina, but the Republican frontrunner is otherwise looking ahead to the general election.

In a survey of likely Republican primary voters in South Carolina that was taken last week, Haley trailed Trump here by a whopping 28 percentage points. Although she had a net favorability rating (47%-36%) in the exclusive USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll, among the primary electorate, Trump was better liked (64%-25%) in Haley’s home state than she was.

Haley’s supporters are trying to stay upbeat. They are not ready to concede, for the most part, that she is unlikely to win.

“I mean, every vote counts, right? So we're out here, and we're going to vote,” said Matthew Rutter, a 45-year-old army veteran who attended a Tuesday event in Clemson. “I know that the polls say one thing, but I think that she's our best chance of changing what we have going on in Washington.”

Haley reintroduces herself to voters

In the South Carolina primary, the candidate who receives the most votes will receive 29 delegates. The winner of each of the state’s seven congressional districts will get three delegates. A total of 50 delegates are up for grabs. Haley lives on Kiawah Island, in the first congressional district, just outside of Charleston.

Haley won the governorship here twice, but South Carolina has seen explosive population growth in the decade and a half since she was first elected to statewide office. Many of the newcomers are retirees.

The over 65 crowd now makes up nearly 20% of the state’s residents, and Haley has had to introduce herself to them.

That was the case in Beaufort, S.C. on Wednesday night, where Larry Noah, 80, and his wife, Debbie Noah, 76, came to a public park to see Haley speak.

The couple moved to Beaufort from southern Illinois four years ago. He considers himself to be a Republican. His wife is an independent. They plan to vote for Haley in the Republican primary – but said they would vote for Trump in the general election if she’s not the GOP nominee.

“She’s got a lot of stamina, a lot of youth. I like what she did as governor, from what I’ve read about her,” he said.

His wife added: “I thought she did great in the debates.”

Haley grew up in Bamberg and went to college in Clemson. She’s held homecoming events in both locations in the last two weeks.

“I voted for you early today!” an attendee shouted on Tuesday at her alma mater. “Thank you! God bless you,” she responded.

Seeking to drive up turnout among South Carolinians who may not be staunch Republicans, Haley has been asking her rally attendees to press their friends and family who don’t typically vote in presidential primaries to show up to the polls.

“When you leave here, take a yard sign. If you can’t put a yard sign in your yard, put it in the back of your car. If you can get five people to go early vote with you do – go tell every friend, every family member that everything is riding on them going to the polls on Saturday,” she said.

Haley has admitted she must do better than she did in New Hampshire – where she lost to Trump by 11 points – in the conservative state that holds one of the final, pre-Super Tuesday competitions. She said last month that the election has to be close  – only to declare this week that she plans to stay in the race, regardless of the outcome.

Up big in South Carolina, Trump has all but moved on.

He hawked gold high-top sneakers at a convention last Saturday in Pennsylvania and rallied his supporters that night in Michigan, which has the next major Republican primary on Feb. 27. He spent the rest of the holiday weekend at home in Florida. His first event in South Carolina since a Feb. 14 rally in Charleston was a Fox News town hall in Greenville on Tuesday.

He did not stick around to campaign. He had more political meetings at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday and went to Nashville, Tenn. on Thursday to fundraise and attend the National Religious Broadcasters convention.

Trump’s only rally in South Carolina this week is Friday in Rock Hill. He’s also attending a gala with Black conservatives. He’ll leave the state again on the day of the primary to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington, D.C. but will return to Columbia to host a party on election night.

His campaign predicts that under the best case scenario for Haley, Trump will cross the delegate threshold and become the presumptive GOP presidential nominee no later than March 19.

“While Nikki Haley desperately tries to pick up last minute voters in South Carolina she won’t get and turn out Democrats, we are already focused on winning over voters against Joe Biden in key battleground states,” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said.

Haley has gingerly approached the topic of non-Republicans voting in the primary by reminding voters they can cast a ballot for her on Saturday so long they did not participate in the Democratic primary earlier in the month.

Outside groups hoping to keep Trump out of the White House have been more blunt. The South Carolina Republican Party scolded them in a statement this week for trying to skew the results.

Trump turning off Haley supporters

In an impassioned speech on Tuesday, Haley said she is “not going anywhere” and would be “campaigning every day until the last person votes” because America is a democracy and its electorate deserves a choice.

“There are those who are trying to paint me as Never Trump. That’s not what I am,” she said in Greenville, citing her previous support for the ex-president and her role as his U.N. ambassador. “My purpose has never been to stop Trump at all costs.”

Haley has previously said she would back Trump if he wins the nomination, in keeping with a pledge the national party required candidates to sign in order to participate in the debates.

Her supporters are under no such obligation. Jan Hubble, a 69-year-old resident of Greenville who attended Haley’s rally in Greer, said she voted for Biden in 2020 and does not want to do it again.

“But I can’t vote for Trump,” she said. “Nikki Haley has integrity, and we’ve already seen she can do it. We already saw it in South Carolina.”

Hubble was the first person on her street, she says, to put a Haley sign in her yard. She attended the Monday evening event with two of her neighbors. The women came away impressed.

Haley didn’t miss a beat, said Hubble's neighbor, Joyce Murphy.

Murphy said she does not like Trump’s vindictiveness and did not appreciate the way he threatened Haley’s supporters.

“​I think that there are a lot of angry people out there, and they see Trump as a mean person who will take on the other boys,” Murphy, 76, said. “That's why I think that there are people who are from South Carolina who are sticking with him.”

But, she said, if voters have a chance to see Haley in person, she can win. “If they could have heard her tonight, oh my God, because she really is the one we need to have in there.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Last chance for Haley? Former governor bets big on South Carolina