Nikki Haley scores first primary victory in DC

Ahead of the crucial Super Tuesday contests, Indian American Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley scored her first campaign boosting victory defeating former President Donald Trump in the Washington, DC Republican primary.

Carrying nearly 63% of the vote, Haley defeated Trump in a contest that took place over the weekend in a downtown hotel just a day after she was crushed by the frontrunner in caucuses in Missouri and Idaho and at a Republican convention in Michigan on Saturday.

Trump is cruising to the Republican nomination and is favored to win primaries across 16 Super Tuesday states this week.

READ: Koch-backed group stops spending on Nikki Haley’s campaign (February 26, 2024)

But the Republican electorate in DC — where Republicans make up just 5% of registered voters — is hardly representative of the conservative base found in most other parts of the country.

Trump was trounced in the primary contest in DC in 2016, coming in third behind Marco Rubio and John Kasich. Still, his campaign made a play for DC Republicans this year, warning D.C. lobbyists that they will be blacklisted from any future Trump White House access if they didn’t show up to vote in the weekend’s primary.

Campaigning in Massachusetts on Saturday, Haley ripped Trump for the effort, saying, “You can’t threaten people. You can’t push them out, because that is not a winning combination.”

READ: Nikki Haley says she’d pardon Trump if he’s convicted (February 20, 2024)

At a rally in Portland, Maine, Haley took another swipe at Trump for threatening to cut off access to lobbyists who didn’t vote for him. “If you’re a candidate running for president, your job is to bring people in, not push people out of your club,” Haley said.

Meanwhile, Haley declared Sunday she no longer feels bound by the Republican National Committee pledge to endorse Trump if he becomes the party’s nominee.

“The RNC is now not the same RNC,” the former South Carolina governor said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview that aired on Sunday. “I’ll make what decision I want to make.”

READ: Nikki Haley inclined to pardon “reckless” Trump (June 14, 2023)

Haley’s stance is a shift from an earlier pledge to support the Republican nominee. The RNC required candidates to sign a loyalty pledge to get on the primary debate stage. Trump declined to sign and did not participate in any of the debates.

During the first Republican debate, Haley was among a handful of candidates who said they would vote for Trump if he were the Republican nominee, even if he were convicted of a felony.

Haley’s comments about the RNC follow the resignation last week of its elected leaders, including outgoing chair Ronna McDaniel. She has accused Trump of trying to turn the national party into a campaign “slush fund” amid the contested presidential primary.

READ: Ramaswamy vows to pardon Trump if elected in 2024 (June 9, 2023)

Haley told reporters on Friday morning that her campaign was about a movement to return to Republican ideals such as fiscal discipline and a push toward a younger generation of conservative leadership.

“I’m not anti-Trump,” Haley said during the press roundtable. “This is about the fact that I think America is better than this. And I think that the Republican Party is better than this, and I think we can do more than this.”

But asked directly by “Meet the Press” host if she has taken the possibility of endorsing him off the table, Haley said, “It’s not anything I think about.”

“If you talk about an endorsement, you’re talking about a loss. I don’t think like that,” she said. “When you’re in a race, you don’t think about losing. You think about continuing to go forward. What I can tell you is I don’t think Donald Trump or Joe Biden should be president.”

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Haley repeatedly dodged the question of whether she would endorse Trump in the interview and would not say whether she believes he is responsible for the Jan 6 insurrection that was carried by his supporters after he urged them to march to Capitol.

“I think he should have said something earlier. I think he should have stopped it when it started,” Haley said.

She said she remains focused on her presidential campaign and winning a series of contests that will take place on March 5.