Nikki Haley steps up her case against Trump in New Hampshire

Nikki Haley may have finished third in the Iowa caucuses, but as she campaigns in New Hampshire for the nation's first primary next week, her attention is squarely on just one rival: Donald J. Trump.

Ms. Haley, a former governor of South Carolina who served under Trump as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has begun refining her argument against her former boss, trying new tricks and unleashing new ideas. a new attack ad straight out of the gate. She has also stepped up efforts to cast herself as Trump's biggest rival, announcing she would no longer participate in primary debates that do not include him.

In recent comments and in a new television advertisement, Ms. Haley portrays Mr. Trump and President Biden as two sides of the same coin: politicians who are past their best years and unable to forge a vision of the country's future. because they are “eaten up by the past, by investigations, by grievances.”

At a campaign rally on Wednesday in Rochester, N.H., she fended off Mr. Trump's attacks on her immigration record, warning voters not to believe his ads against her and reminding them that it was Mr. Trump who had wanted to do that. raising the age for social security was eligible and had ever proposed increase in the gas tax.

“Those are things he has to be accountable for. Oh that's right! He will not be on the debate stage,” she swiped.

In Bretton Woods, N.H., where she held her first rally after the Iowa caucuses on Tuesday, Ms. Haley said she had voted for Mr. Trump twice and was “proud to serve in his administration” before delving into her celebrity criticism that, whether fair or not, “chaos follows” the former president. But she also took a few sour digs.

“The majority of Americans don't think having two octogenarians running for president is what they want,” she said to small applause at the Omni Mount Washington Resort.

It is fair to say that Ms. Haley has not completely abandoned her measured approach to Mr. Trump. On Thursday, she told voters she wouldn't attack him personally — “people want me to hate Trump or love Trump” — and said people are tired of that kind of politics. “I'm just talking about policy,” she said.

On Wednesday, her campaign released a two minute compilation capturing Mr. Trump thanking Ms. Haley for her work as governor and ambassador.

She has not flatly rejected her bid for vice president and is not talking about his criminal charges. In a CNN interviewMs Haley claimed she had not been “paying attention to his affairs” when the host, Dana Bash, asked how she felt about her party's frontrunner being held liable for sexual abuse. Ms. Bash was referring to the defamation lawsuit filed by the writer E. Jean Carroll that is now on trial.

“I haven't watched this one,” Ms. Haley argued, “but if he's found guilty, he'll have to pay the price.” (Mr. Trump has already been found liable in a civil lawsuit, and a jury is only weighing how much he should pay.)

While she has been slow to gain success in Iowa, she has competed heavily in New Hampshire from the start, buoyed by a recent influx of money from her allied super PAC and the prospect of a more independent and better educated electorate. On Wednesday, her leading opponent for second place, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, announced he would move most of his staff to South Carolina, her home base, while largely withdrawing from events in New Hampshire.

DeSantis is aiming to take advantage of the late February primaries in her own backyard, where the Republican base is more aligned with Iowa's largely white and Christian evangelical voters. For her part, Ms. Haley has long maintained that she would perform well enough in Iowa and New Hampshire to catapult her campaign into a showdown with Mr. Trump in South Carolina.

But Mr. Trump remains in the lead in both states. It was in South Carolina where Trump cemented his path to the Republican nomination seven years ago. And a new poll from St. Anselm College in New Hampshire shows that while Ms. Haley is handily winning over New Hampshire independents, Mr. Trump's hold on Republican voters is so overwhelming that he leads by double digits, 52 percent up to 38 percent.

Nevertheless, he has responded in kind to Ms. Haley, trying to put his closest rivals completely behind him after an upset victory in Iowa.

At his rally at a country club in Atkinson, N.H., this week, he attacked her record as governor and portrayed her as aloof and not Republican. His campaign has sent out a slew of emails with subject lines including: “Nikki Haley loves China,” “Nikki Haley is funded by Democrats, Wall Street and Globalists,” and “Nikki Haley is weak on immigration and opposes a border wall.”

Democrats also hit Ms. Haley. They have pointed to her signing of strict abortion and immigration restrictions and her careful handling of Mr. Trump as signs that she is part of the same old wave of extremist Republicans as Mr. Trump, and not a new face.

“No matter how they dress it up, these MAGA Republicans have already told us how they want to crash our economy and take away our freedoms for their own political gain – and we're going to take them at their word,” said Ray Buckley, chairman of That the Democratic Party of New Hampshire said in a statement.

Neil Viddor contributed reporting from Bretton Woods, NH