Haley Casts Doubt on Nominee Pledge After Trump’s Power Play

(Bloomberg) -- Nikki Haley signaled she may decline to endorse Donald Trump in an election rematch with President Joe Biden, saying she no longer considers herself bound by a pledge to the Republican National Committee to support the party’s 2024 nominee.

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“I think I’ll make what decision I want to make,” Haley said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press for broadcast Sunday. “But that’s not something I’m thinking about.”

Haley said “the RNC is now not the same RNC” — her latest attack on the organization since Trump said he’d nominate his daughter-in-law Lara Trump to co-lead it with Michael Whatley, the North Carolina state party chairman who has supported Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 presidential election.

Haley is keeping up attacks on the GOP frontrunner in the buildup to Super Tuesday on March 5, when more than a dozen states hold presidential nominating contests. Trump has swept the first seven contests, including three on Saturday, and leads Haley by 64 percentage points in the nomination race, according to a RealClearPolitics average of national polls.

Haley has said she’ll stay in the race at least until Super Tuesday. She has been urging voters to reject Trump’s “chaos” and lamenting her party’s drift away from small government and free markets at recent campaign rallies.

On NBC, Haley left open the possibility of staying in until the Republican convention in July, saying donations as well as votes will determine whether she “stays competitive.”

“If the people want to see me go forward, they’ll show it,” she said. “They’ll show it in their votes. They’ll show it in their donations.”

Some donors, including billionaire Ken Griffin and the Charles Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity Action, have dropped their support for Haley. She picked up endorsements from Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins on Friday, her first by sitting US senators.

Read more: Billionaire GOP Donors Pivot to Congress as Haley’s Run Fades

Haley has spoken out against the use of any RNC money to pay for Trump’s legal defenses, saying it would make the RNC “his legal slush fund.” The RNC raised $87 million in 2023 and ended the year with $8 million cash on hand — far less than the Democratic National Committee’s $120 million in fundraising and $20 million on hand.

(Updates with Trump victories Saturday in fourth paragraph.)

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