(C) Common Dreams
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Election 2024 Haley Mounts Last Stand in New Hampshire Against an Ascendant Trump [1]
['Reid J. Epstein', 'Jazmine Ulloa', 'Maggie Haberman', 'Michael Gold', 'Lisa Lerer', 'Nicholas Nehamas', 'Chris Cameron', 'Nick Corasaniti', 'Rebecca Davis O Brien', 'Anjali Huynh']
Date: 2024-01-22
Corinne Pullen was watching a football game with her husband and a couple of friends on Sunday when she received an alert on her phone that Ron DeSantis, who had been battling Nikki Haley to be the alternative to Donald J. Trump in the Republican primary, had ended his bid and endorsed the former president.
Stunned silence fell over the room. They were all Haley supporters and they immediately switched the channel to watch the news unfold, deliberating what it could mean for their candidate.
“I was worried,” Ms. Pullen, 68, a retired nurse and former Republican, said Monday morning, as she waited for Ms. Haley to appear at a get-out-the-vote event in Franklin, N.H. “We all feel threatened by another Trump administration.”
In New Hampshire, it is Ms. Haley’s do-or-die moment — and voters can feel it. For anti-Trump Republicans and independents, the stakes are especially high: They see Ms. Haley as the last best chance to move the Republican Party away from Mr. Trump and restore a sense of normalcy to the nation’s politics.
But Mr. Trump's dominance in the polls and his stacking of endorsements — including those of Mr. DeSantis and Senator Tim Scott, Ms. Haley’s fellow South Carolinian and one-time presidential rival — has some on edge.
“We should not be endorsing Trump by any stretch of the imagination,” said Chuck Berube, a Republican and chaplain of the V.F.W. Post 1698, where Ms. Haley spoke in Franklin. Mr. Berube called Mr. Trump “a sore loser” for refusing to concede the results of the 2020 presidential election. He also said Mr. Trump was “unelectable in November.”
Ms. Haley on Monday continued her fast clip of stops across the state, casting herself as an underdog willing to take on Mr. Trump and the political class behind him, as well as “the media elite” that she and her allies say have turned the former president’s path to the nomination into fait accompli.
“America doesn’t do coronations,” she said in Franklin. “We believe in choices. We believe in democracy, and we believe in freedom. I have said I love the live-free-or-die state, but you know what? I want to make it a live-free-or-die-country.”
Her rooms in recent days have been packed, and her supporters energized. For some, Mr. DeSantis’s decision to drop out was a welcomed surprise.
Jeff Caira, 66, a Republican and retired portfolio manager, said Mr. DeSantis had been polling so low in New Hampshire that his withdrawal would not make a difference. Ms. Haley had “waffled” on some issues, he said, and he had been disappointed when she had been asked to explain the causes of the Civil War and failed to mention slavery.
But, Mr. Caira said, “I think she is more focused on the issues than the baggage.
At T-Bones Great American Eatery in Concord, Ms. Haley poured a round of beers with Gov. Chris Sununu, shook hands with patrons and held a baby wearing a Haley button. Sandy Adams, 66, the baby’s grandmother, said she had been “very happy” to hear Mr. DeSantis had withdrawn.
“He was clogging the candidacy; we don’t need extra people,” said Ms. Adams, a retired school psychologist. Ms. Adams had supported Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020 but now believed he was burdened with too many court cases. “She’s ready, she is right, she is what America needs,” she said of Ms. Haley.
Others have been still processing the massive shift in the contest.
At a brewery in Manchester, Moe and Elaine Demers, husband and wife and middle-of-the-road Republicans, had their photo taken with Ms. Haley as she worked the room. Mr. Demers, a retired Army officer and Vietnam vet, said they appreciated Ms. Haley because of her stalwart defense of foreign aid for Ukraine and because she seems to have more tact than Mr. Trump.
Image Moe and Elaine Demers, who had their photo taken with Nikki Haley at the Backyard Brewery in Manchester, N.H., said they appreciated her stalwart defense of foreign aid for Ukraine. Credit... Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
“She’s trying to work with people,” said Mr. Demers, 79. “Both sides need to work together. There is nothing wrong with a muddy middle.”
But asked if they believed Ms. Haley could win, they both paused.
“Boy, it is hard to tell,” Mr. Demers said.
“Miracles happen,” said Ms. Demers, 76, a retired accountant. “I told her if not this time, then next time.”
In Franklin, Ms. Pullen said that with some distance from the DeSantis news, she was feeling a little more optimistic. She had unwillingly cast her ballot for Mr. Trump in 2016 but did not do so again in 2020.
She said she was mostly hopeful but also nervous heading into the primary. She trusted, she said, “the people of New Hampshire.”
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/22/us/election-news-new-hampshire-trump
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