Nikki Haley’s Long Shot Bid Might Be the GOP’s Best Shot at Dumping Trump

Nikki Haley, despite rising to second place in some Republican primary polls, still trails Donald Trump by more than 30 points in her most favorable poll. But supporters of the former South Carolina governor are, somehow, still confident about her chances. “She’s just where she needs to be,” Republican congressman Ralph Norman tells me. “We got a long way before the Republican convention. You will see her go up. I think she’ll be the nominee, and I think she’ll win.”

Haley was once considered an unlikely choice for Republican voters operating in the post-Trump paradigm. While she served as the former president’s ambassador to the United Nations, Haley is more of a throwback to George W. Bush–era conservatism. On foreign policy, the most fleshed-out portion of her résumé and platform, she is thoroughly an establishment neoconservative. Her unflinching support for Ukraine and hatred of Russia are both key components of her messaging. She has also criticized Trump on the campaign trail for failing to sufficiently treat China as a military foe rather than merely an economic threat.

None of this quite gels with the “America First,” noninterventionist talking points popularized by Trump and subsequently copied by his many disciples, including fellow GOP presidential hopefuls Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy. But it does make her stand out in a crowded field of candidates jostling for second place.

“That’s the beauty of her,” says Norman, a South Carolina lawmaker who is backing Haley in spite of disagreeing with her support for sending more US funds to Ukraine. “She will take unpopular positions and she’ll back it up and tell you why.”

While Norman may be the only major Republican politician from Haley’s home state to have endorsed her, the congressman isn’t concerned about her prospects. In 2010, during Haley’s successful bid for the Republican gubernatorial nomination against Henry McMaster, the state’s current governor, Norman says he was the “only one that endorsed” her in South Carolina.

In any case, imprimaturs are hardly the biggest priority in a presidential primary that features a 45-point favorite. And at this point in the race, Republicans not named Trump are mostly just focused on two things: fundraising at a time when donors are hesitant to back a probable loser, and grabbing the attention of the 40% or so of Republican voters willing to usher in a new party figurehead.

The Haley campaign, which has seen some positive signs on the latter front, is turning its attention to the megadonors whose support it will need to survive the winter months. On Friday, Haley’s campaign representatives will report to Dallas to pitch her candidacy to the American Opportunity Alliance, a group of Republican patrons led by billionaires Ken Griffin, Harlan Crow, and Paul Singer, according to NBC News. The three men, who are shopping for a viable non-Trump Republican, will also hear from advisers for the DeSantis campaign.

DeSantis was long considered the favorite of the Republican donor class, but their hope in the Florida governor has been all but extinguished—the retardants being his commitment to unpopular culture-war issues as well as his generally off-putting personality. “Frankly, I don’t know how they ever looked at him and thought, This is our guy, he can win in November,” one Haley adviser, who asked to remain anonymous, tells me. “Donors and the voters can obviously see that he’s not the answer, and that’s why we are in the best position to get their support: Nikki is experienced, she has a clear record to stand on, and in terms of momentum, she is headed in the right direction. The same can’t be said for DeSantis.”

While Haley has yet to surpass DeSantis in any national polls, a survey of Republican voters in New Hampshire published last week found that she had overtaken him in the early primary state. That poll, from USA Today, The Boston Globe, and Suffolk University, put Trump at 49%, Haley at 19%, and DeSantis at 10%. (DeSantis leads her in most other states, including Iowa.)

She has also eclipsed DeSantis in one key fundraising figure: cash on hand. In the last quarter, the Haley campaign reported an $11 million haul. Of that amount, $9.1 million can be spent in the primary. (She can only spend the remainder if she secures the GOP nomination.) While DeSantis raised $15 million in the quarter, it only brought in $5 million that can be used in the primary.

Part of the funding disparity can be attributed DeSantis’s inability to relate to voters on a personal level, says Preya Samsundar, a Haley surrogate. “When you look at Ron DeSantis and the campaign he’s run, the thing that keeps coming up is the more you see of Ron DeSantis, the more you introduce him to the American people, the less they like him,” she tells me. “It’s the opposite for Nikki Haley. The more people meet her, the more they fall in love with her.”