Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump tosses a pen as he addresses members of the press during a campaign stop in Londonderry, N.H., on Jan. 23.Matt Rourke/The Associated Press
Donald Trump has notched a convincing victory in the New Hampshire primary, closing in on the Republican presidential nomination with a double-digit defeat of his only remaining rival.
Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador fell well short of catching the former president in this mountainous, forested state of 1.4 million despite its famously moderate and independent-minded electorate.
While this is only the second state to vote in the contest – after similarly small Iowa, which handed Mr. Trump a landslide last week – its verdict could damage Ms. Haley’s fundraising prowess and force her from the race.
If it does, it would further affirm Mr. Trump’s increasing dominance of his party. The candidate of the Republican establishment, Ms. Haley represents a last, desperate bid by the Never Trumper faction to turn the page on the bombastic businessman.
If Mr. Trump is nominated a third consecutive time, it would set up a lengthy general election rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden, a race between two historically unpopular candidates.
A defiant Ms. Haley vowed to continue the campaign, which moves next month to her home state of South Carolina. Fifteen more, including populous California and Texas, vote on Super Tuesday March 5. She also reiterated a demand that Mr. Trump debate her, which he has so far refused to do.
“This race is far from over. There are dozens of states left to go,” she told her primary night party in Concord, New Hampshire’s quaint state capital. She called for the country to “put the negativity and chaos behind us” and questioned the mental acuity of both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden.
“The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the party that wins this election,” she said. “We are just getting started.”
Mr. Trump used his victory speech to lace into Ms. Haley for refusing to drop out.
“Let’s not have somebody take a victory when she had a very bad night,” he told supporters in the town of Nashua. “Who the hell was the imposter that went up on the stage before and claimed a victory?”
Subsequent states could prove increasingly difficult for Ms. Haley, with higher proportions of conservative voters. And unlike in New Hampshire, many of these states do not allow independent voters to cast ballots in their Republican primaries.
Mr. Trump’s juggernaut sails on despite liabilities that would have sunk most other candidates. He faces four criminal trials for trying to overturn the 2020 election, refusing to return classified documents to the government and falsifying business records. If he returns to the White House, the former president is promising to mete out “retribution” against his political opponents and round up asylum seekers for deportation.
His campaign has rapidly cleared the field of competition. A dozen candidates have already dropped out, most recently Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who endorsed Mr. Trump over the weekend.
Mike Bushway, a retired corrections officer, said Ms. Haley was “swamp” for having courted business investment from China when she was governor of South Carolina. “She backstabbed Trump,” he said as he waited to get into a rally for the former president in Concord a few days before the election.
Like many of Mr. Trump’s supporters, he said he didn’t believe his preferred candidate had done anything to merit being charged criminally. “He shouldn’t be tried. The liberal left side is attempting this because they’re scared of him,” he said.
In his rally speeches and advertisements, Mr. Trump and his campaign zeroed in on Ms. Haley as insufficiently tough on border security and excoriated her for supporting a raise to the country’s retirement age. He also mocked her Punjabi full name and declared her “not smart enough” to be president. Two of her erstwhile South Carolina allies, Senator Tim Scott and Governor Henry McMaster, endorsed him.
The polished Ms. Haley, meanwhile, campaigned on returning the party to a Reaganite program of small government and hawkish foreign policy. She said little about Mr. Trump’s criminal charges or attempts to reverse the 2020 vote but did accuse him of admiring dictators. On one occasion as UN ambassador, she said, she gave him a pointed warning: “I had to sit down and have a conversation with him because he was having too much of a bromance with Putin,” she told one campaign stop.
Ms. Haley also seized on a gaffe in which Mr. Trump repeatedly confused her with former Democratic House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi. Ms. Haley portrayed both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden as suffering from cognitive decline. “Do we really want to go into an election with two fellas that are going to be president in their 80s?” she said.
Brett Shewey travelled to New Hampshire from North Dakota to see Ms. Haley speak, hoping she could finally do what previous GOP challengers to Mr. Trump have not. “Trump has hijacked the hearts and mind of the Republican Party,” he said. “The world’s on fire right now and we need to have a calm, measured voice in the White House.”
Despite her underdog status, Ms. Haley ran a cautious campaign. She pulled out of a debate with Mr. DeSantis last week and took no audience questions at most of her events. She notched endorsements from New Hampshire’s governor, Chris Sununu, and its largest newspaper, the Union Leader.
She also hoped to capitalize off the state’s large number of “undeclared” voters who can participate in the primary of either party. The end of former New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s presidential campaign, which had been the most overtly anti-Trump of them all, was expected to help her.
Mr. DeSantis had tried to present himself as more Trump than Mr. Trump, criticizing the former president for physical distancing measures during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and for not firing Anthony Fauci, the disease expert who became a hate symbol for the right.
This similar platform, coupled with Mr. DeSantis’s awkward mien, failed to catch fire and he looked on track for a single-digit finish in New Hampshire. He appeared to become increasingly frustrated with the former president’s dominance of the party and his belief in loyalty above ideological considerations.
At one point, he complained that conservative media form a “Praetorian Guard” around the former president and refuse to criticize him.
“You can be the most worthless Republican in America,” he said on another occasion, “but if you kiss the ring, he’ll say you’re wonderful.”