Nikki Haley won her first, and potentially only, Republican primary against Donald Trump
Nikki Haley, Donald Trump’s last remaining rival, has won her first primary contest two days ahead of a forecast thrashing on Super Tuesday.
Nikki Haley, Donald Trump’s embattled rival to be crowned the Republican party’s presidential nominee, has won her first primary contest, in Washington DC, offering a burst of momentum to the former South Carolina governor before Republican voters across 15 states are expected to deliver a landslide to Mr Trump on Super Tuesday.
Ms Haley won 66 per cent of the vote in the District of Columbia, and all 19 of its delegates, compared with 33 per cent for Mr Trump, who has defeated Ms Haley in all the state primaries up to this point, including in her home state.
With 244 delegates in his column so far, Mr Trump is expected to win most if not all of the 874 delegates up for grabs on Tuesday, which would make it all but impossible for Ms Haley, who has refused to bow out of the race at least until Super Tuesday, to reach the necessary 1,215 delegates to win the nomination.
“If she’s going to win any of them, she’ll win this one,” Jenny, a former Republican political staffer on Capitol Hill who declined to give her last name, told The Australian outside Madison Hotel in Washington, where the party’s one voting station was located.
Jenny, who voted for Ms Haley, pointed out how a Trump campaign official had threatened to blacklist Republicans who voted for Haley who wanted to work with or for a future Trump administration.
Mr Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nation was in Vermont campaigning as news her of DC victory broke, her latest stop at a whirlwind series of rallies across North Carolina, New England and Texas, where she’s hoping to make a good enough showing to stay in the race beyond this week.
The former president spent his weekend at rallies in in Virginia and North Carolina, largely ignoring Ms Haley and instead attacking Joe Biden for stoking “migrant crime” by allowing asylum-seekers to stay in the US after abolishing his “remain in Mexico” scheme.
“Biden’s conduct on our border is by any definition a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America,” Trump told a crowd in Richmond, Virginia on Saturday (Sunday AEDT). “He talks about democracy. He is a danger to democracy.”
Haley’s victory was unlikely to concern Mr Trump his supporters, who have argued she draws her support from the sort of educated elites the former president often said lived in ‘the swamp’.
“Washington DC is about 90 per cent Democratic and is filled with government employees, bureaucrats, and lobbyists - tells you all you need to know about her base of support,” said conservative author Jim Rickards on social media after Haley’s win.
Washington nurse and native Patricia Chittams, who voted for Donald Trump along with her husband Ralph, told The Australian she had “really wanted to like her [Ms Haley] but no”.
“If you don’t like a candidate, you don’t try to make a martyr of them, and they have,” she told The Australian, putting the former president’s surging popularity down to his four indictments including 91 criminal charges.
Virginia Hurt, a retired journalist and fourth generation Washingtonian, was among the 1,988 Republican voters who turned out to vote for Haley in DC.
“Every time she speaks, she makes sense. She seems to have a command not only of the issues, but of her language, she’s articulate and that means a lot,” she told The Australian, adding that she wouldn’t support Trump in November.
Amid rumours she might pursue an independent bid for president, potentially co-ordinated by political group No Labels, Ms Haley raised eyebrows on Sunday by refusing to confirm that she would endorse Mr Trump for him if he emerged as the winner.
Asked by NBC yesterday on Sunday (Monday AEDT) whether she would honour a commitment she made in order to qualify for the Republican debates to support the eventual party nominee, she said: “No. I think I’ll make what decision I want to make.”
Ms Haley has picked up the endorsements of two senators in the states of Alaska and Maine before (Tuesday’s) showdown across five time zones.
Mr Trump has increasingly turned his attention to Mr Biden, confident he will sweep the field on Tuesday. In his speech in Greensboro, North Carolina, he alleged Biden was bringing in “foreign armies” of young men, especially from China.
“A central question in this election is whether the foreign armies Joe Biden has smuggled across our border will be allowed to stay, or whether they’ll be told to get the hell out of here and go back home. We’ll take them back home,” Mr Trump said. He has pledged to round up and deport any migrants in the US illegally, a number estimated to be at least 11 million people.
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