Haley Promises Reprieve from Trump-Era ‘Baggage’ in Closing Electability Argument to Iowans

Adel, Iowa — On the eve of the January 15 Iowa caucuses, Nikki Haley again pushed her electability argument.

“Republicans have lost the last seven out of eight popular votes for president. That is nothing to be proud of. We should want to win the majority of Americans,” the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor told supporters Sunday evening in a stump speech that also touched on cutting “wasteful” spending, eliminating the federal gas and diesel tax, cracking down on illegal immigration, and preserving American foreign policy commitments to Ukraine and Israel. “The only way we’re going to win the majority is if we elect a new generational leader and leave the negativity and the baggage behind.”

The problem for Haley ahead of Monday evening’s first-in-the-nation contest is that she’s running against a de facto incumbent who is polling double digits ahead of both her and second-place rival Florida governor Ron DeSantis. In the final hours before Iowans head to the caucuses, her hope — and DeSantis’s — is that Trump’s GOP primary lead is weaker than it looks in the polls. 

Haley is playing the long game by focusing on New Hampshire — where she continues to rise slightly in the polls — in hopes that the state’s more moderate and independent-leaning electorate will pick her in their January 23 open primary over a former president who is battling 91 felony charges across four criminal indictments.

Trump is polling even with or above President Joe Biden in most head-to-head match-ups, but Haley says that a non-Trump candidate is a much safer bet for Republicans who don’t want another nail-biter election.

But as she continues to make her pitch to Iowans who may be hearing her for the first time, the Trump endorsements keep trickling in. On Sunday alone, Trump racked up endorsements from North Dakota governor and former 2024 rival Doug Burgum; first-term representative Derrick Van Orden (R., Wisc.); and Senator Marco Rubio (R. Fla.), his rival in 2016. Rubio’s endorsement is especially damning given that DeSantis is governor of Rubio’s home state and that Haley endorsed Rubio in the 2016 GOP presidential primary in his bid against Trump.

Many elected Republicans are falling in line behind Trump even before any votes have been cast. This  points to the brutal political reality facing his rivals in Monday evening’s contest in Iowa and beyond. Many lawmakers and congressional candidates seem to think his victory is inevitable — and that failing to get behind him before he locks up the nomination may come at a political cost for their own electoral prospects.

“They’re all cowards,” says Alex Johnson, a Haley campaign volunteer who trekked out to Iowa from Maryland. His party needs to “turn the page,” he says, and elect a new generational leader. “It drives me mad that they would endorse Donald Trump again and again and again.”

A non-Trump victory in the GOP primary for Haley would require peeling off Trump’s supporters, many of whom consider themselves die-hard fans of the former president. “Without being able to give you specifics off the top of my head, I think Haley’s an establishment candidate,” said Winterset resident and Trump caucus captain Lisa Bourne at an event featuring the former president in Indianola on Sunday. “I don’t think she’s for the people. She has big-donor interests.”

That’s a DeSantis talking point — one that Haley often brushes aside as being motivated by his own frustrations that some Wall Street donors have abandoned his campaign to support hers instead. On the CNN debate stage Wednesday, she reminded voters that DeSantis’s campaign has burned through tens of millions of dollars while steadily declining in the polls.

“If you can’t manage a campaign, how are you going to manage a country?” Haley asked during the one-one-one CNN debate with DeSantis. His political operation is a “revolving door” of campaign operatives that has blown through millions with “nothing to show for it,” she said.

The Desantis-versus-Haley feud has been a welcome political development for Trump. Both candidates have torn each other apart in ads, stump speeches, and on the debate stage while the front-runner has watched from afar, declining to engage with them in any of the Republican National Committee-sponsored debates this cycle.

Soon, Haley supporters hope, the primary will be a head-to-head race between her and Trump.

DeSantis has “put all his eggs in one basket in Iowa” whereas Haley is managing expectations and running a long game, says Nathan Ballentine, a Republican member of South Carolina’s house of representatives and longtime friend of Haley’s. “She sees the bigger picture. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. So I look forward to her taking the momentum from here on to New Hampshire and into the home state of South Carolina.”

But Iowa comes first. Do her own supporters think she has a shot of winning Monday evening’s contest? “That’s going to be hard,” says Haley volunteer Lilly Kirk, who says she supported Trump in 2016 and 2020. Not that Iowa is a strong predictor of eventual nominees. Recall that three recent Hawkeye State winners did not go on to clinch the GOP nomination: Mike Huckabee in 2008, Rick Santorum in 2012, and Ted Cruz in 2016.

A “strong second,” Kirk says, is enough to give her the momentum she needs to win in New Hampshire and South Carolina. “I just hope people — especially Trump supporters — will see that we can’t afford four more years of this division and we need to turn it around.”