Nikki Haley drops out of Republican primary

Nikki Haley kept running long after it was clear she didn’t have a shot.

But on Wednesday morning, the former South Carolina governor — and only woman to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 — ended her yearlong bid, ceding the GOP nomination to Donald Trump.

In brief remarks, Haley declined to endorse Trump, as most of her other GOP primary rivals have already done, instead urging him to give her more moderate-minded supporters a reason to back him in November.

“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond who did not support him,” Haley said to reporters assembled at her campaign headquarters in Daniel Island, South Carolina. “And I hope he does that. At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people. This is now his time for choosing.”

Haley’s departure follows a brutal series of losses in states across the map on Super Tuesday, where she failed to halt Trump’s momentum. And it marks the end of what remained of the GOP’s nominal attempt at soul-searching this presidential cycle, when few of the dozen candidates who signed up to run against Trump would dare to take him on directly.

Haley did step up her attacks on Trump over the last several weeks. It wasn’t enough, but nothing may have been.

Previously appointed by Trump as his United Nations ambassador, Haley was the first Republican to launch her presidential bid after he announced his campaign in late 2022, and was the last to remain in the GOP contest after other challengers bowed out.

Her persistence allowed Haley to make history. In winning her first primary in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, Haley became the first woman to win a GOP presidential primary. She won her first state on Tuesday, narrowly beating Trump in Vermont.

Her unsuccessful run leaves her at a personal and professional crossroads — forced to decide whether she will continue her crusade against Trump and his influence on the Republican Party, or endorse him as he becomes the party’s nominee. Haley last year signed a pledge issued by the Republican National Committee to support the eventual nominee, a requirement to participate in the RNC’s primary debates. But in recent days, Haley said she no longer felt bound to the pledge — while telling POLITICO she was unsure if her Trump criticism would continue post-candidacy.

Her standing in the party has taken a hit, too. In her home state, where she had not appeared on the ballot in a decade, Haley finished 20 points behind Trump — and was already hinting her road could be coming to an end. In a sign of how dire her prospects had become, the Koch network’s Americans For Prosperity Action, a powerful conservative group supporting her run, announced after South Carolina it would no longer spend money supporting her campaign. Heading into Super Tuesday, it was only a question of when, not if, she would drop out.

The only woman to launch a bid in this year’s GOP presidential primary, Haley went farther in her campaign than any of the few women who did so before her.

Betsy Ankney, Haley’s campaign manager, had repeatedly said there would be “more fertile ground” for Haley in Super Tuesday states, when 11 of 16 had primaries that allow non-Republicans to participate. But having once been a firebrand conservative who won a difficult 2010 gubernatorial primary in a wave of tea party momentum, Haley’s campaign became increasingly dependent on turning out large numbers of unaffiliated voters, Democrats, moderates and the shrinking, traditional wing of the Republican Party.

To those Republicans, she was a source of some hope — and a place for the donor class to invest in their long-shot effort to derail Trump.

Haley’s campaign boasted its highest fundraising month of the campaign in January, reporting that it raised $16.5 million and picked up 70,000 new donors. Beginning in the fall — and as candidates like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina crashed in polling — Haley became the top choice of major Republican donors, and even top Democratic financiers. But money proved to be insufficient when it came to winning over voters.

Previously an accountant by trade, Haley started with little traction in the race but stuck to a lean budget, keeping overhead costs low as she waited to staff up and open offices in the early states. As support picked up, she repeatedly bragged about her decision to fly commercial and stay at lower-cost hotels.

“From the beginning, we have been very smart about how we spent our money,” Ankney said earlier this month. “We did not build too quickly. We did not grow before we had the resources to do so.”

Haley was defiant as she faced calls from influential Republicans to bow out, scrambling instead to breathe new life into her campaign. In February, she appeared as herself on an episode of “Saturday Night Live,” and her campaign and super PAC seemed to suddenly be having fun with their Trump insults — dropping “Mean Girls” memes, putting his face on the “Grumpy Old Men” movie poster and mocking up a Halloween costume package for “Weakest General Election Candidate Ever.”

The jovial, attention-grabbing approach didn’t move the needle in the polls — though Trump’s resentment toward Haley for remaining in the race appeared only to grow. After results posted Sunday night showing Haley capturing nearly 63 percent of the vote in D.C., Trump went on social media, once again calling Haley “Birdbrain” and “a loser.”

Trump had seemingly locked up most of the Super Tuesday states before any real campaigning took place, with the rank-and-file squarely behind him and endorsement after endorsement from prominent Republicans, including former primary rivals.

Haley, meanwhile, secured the endorsement of only three members of Congress, her longtime friend and former state legislative colleague Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), followed by Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine). Murkowski and Collins, two critics of Trump, weighed in just days before Republicans in their states voted on Super Tuesday.

CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, a previous version of this report misstated Haley's best finish in a primary state.