TROY, Michigan: Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley says it\u2019s not \u201cthe end of our story\u201d despite Donald Trump\u2019s easy primary victory in South Carolina, her home state where the onetime governor had long suggested her competitiveness with the former president would show.
\nDefying calls from South Carolina Republicans to exit the race, Haley traveled Sunday to Michigan, which holds its primary on Tuesday. In the less than 24 hours following her Saturday night loss to Trump, Haley\u2019s campaign said that she had raised $1 million \u201cfrom grassroots supporters alone,\u201d a bump they argued \u201cdemonstrates Haley\u2019s staying power and her appeal to broad swaths of the American public.\u201d
\nBut with Sunday also came the end of support for Haley\u2019s campaign from Americans for Prosperity, the political arm of the powerful Koch network.
\nIn a memo first reported by Politico and obtained by The Associated Press, AFP Action senior adviser Emily Seidel wrote that, while the group \u201cstands firm behind our endorsement\u201d of Haley, it would \u201cfocus our resources where we can make the difference,\u201d redirecting spending toward US Senate and House campaigns and away from Haley\u2019s presidential bid.
\n\u201cGiven the challenges in the primary states ahead, we don\u2019t believe any outside group can make a material difference to widen her path to victory,\u201d Seidel wrote.
\nAFP Action had endorsed Haley\u2019s campaign in November, promising to commit its nationwide coalition of activists \u2014 and virtually unlimited funds \u2014 to helping her defeat Trump, with door knockers fanning out across early-voting states and sending out dozens of mailers on her behalf.
\nWith his win Saturday in the first-in-the South contest, Trump has now swept every primary or caucus on the GOP early-season calendar that awards delegates. His performances have left little maneuvering room for Haley, his former UN ambassador.
\n\u201cI have never seen the Republican Party so unified as it is right now,\u201d Trump said in a victory night celebration in Columbia.
\nHaley insists she is sticking around even with the growing pressure to abandon her candidacy and let Trump focus entirely on Democratic President Joe Biden, in a 2020 rematch.
\nIn addition to the rally in vote-rich Oakland County, Michigan, northwest of Detroit on Sunday evening, she scheduled a Monday event in Grand Rapids, a western Michigan Republican hub. Ahead of the first event on Sunday evening, dozens of supporters filed into a Troy hotel ballroom, festooned with campaign signs and featuring a guitar-playing duo to entertain the crowd, rather than Haley\u2019s typical classic rock rally playlist.
\n\u201cI\u2019m grateful that today is not the end of our story,\u201d Haley told supporters Saturday. \u201cWe\u2019ll keep fighting for America and we won\u2019t rest until America wins.\u201d
\nAsa Hutchinson, a Trump critic and former Arkansas governor who dropped out of the GOP presidential race after Iowa\u2019s leadoff caucuses in January, said he thought Haley should stay in. \u201cThe challenge is that she did everything she could in South Carolina,\u201d he said on CNN\u2019s \u201cState of the Union.\u201d
\nHaley has pledged to keep going through at least the batch of primaries on March 5, known as Super Tuesday. \u201cBut it\u2019s got to accelerate because you run into the delegate wall. And the delegate wall is March 5,\u201d Hutchinson said. \u201cSo she\u2019s got to prove herself.\u201d
\nSouth Carolina\u2019s most prominent Republicans stood with Trump, including US Rep. Nancy Mace, who endorsed him this past week.
\nTo US Rep. Russell Fry, \u201cthis has always been a primary in name only\u201d and that Trump was never in jeopardy of losing to Haley. Fry said Trump would be the GOP nominee and the latest election results were \u201cjust further validation of that.\u201d
\nTexas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Trump ally, said Trump was on \u201ca pathway\u201d to being able to clinch the nomination by mid-March. \u201cI would say the wind is strongly\u201d at his back, Abbott told CNN.
\nNot all voters in South Carolina want Haley to end her campaign.
\nIrene Sulkowski of Daniel Island said she hoped Haley would soldier on, suggesting the former governor would be a more appealing general election candidate than Trump despite his popularity among the GOP base that powers the primary season.
\n\u201cThey\u2019re not thinking, \u2018Who do you want to represent us in the general election?\u2019\u201d said Sulkowski, an accountant. \u201cAnd they need to have a longer-term view.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TROY, Michigan: Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley says it\u2019s not \u201cthe end of our story\u201d despite Donald Trump\u2019s easy primary victory in South Carolina, her home state where the onetime governor had long suggested her competitiveness with the former president would show. Defying calls from South Carolina Republicans to exit the race, Haley traveled Sunday …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":61201,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61202,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61193\/revisions\/61202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}