With Chris Christie out, Nikki Haley is poised to take advantage in New Hampshire
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s decision Wednesday to withdraw from the presidential race shook up the battle for the Republican nomination, which appeared to be up for grabs by former President Donald J. Trump, leaving Nikki Haley got a huge dose of adrenaline. five days before ballots begin in the months-long nomination battle.
The most obviously changed battleground will likely be New Hampshire, where Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations, finds herself within striking distance of the former president. Even without his support, many New Hampshire voters who planned to side with Mr. Christie as Mr. Trump’s opponent are likely to switch to Ms. Haley, as may some of Mr. Christie’s leadership team.
But the shock will have much broader implications, argued John Sununu, a former New Hampshire senator and the brother of the current governor, Chris Sununu, both of whom have supported Ms. Haley. A contest that focused on Mr. Trump’s return and the battle between Ms. Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for second place will now focus squarely on the threat Ms. Haley poses to Mr. Trump’s coronation.
A memo that Mr. Trump’s campaign released after Mr. Christie’s announcement on Wednesday evening did just that, sending out so-called internal polling that showed Mr. Trump beating Ms. Haley in a head-to-head 56 percent to 40 percent.
“It turns the whole story into Donald Trump’s worst nightmare, having to campaign and take substantive action against someone who has balanced budgets, who has been a strong conservative leader and who at the same time has not left chaos wherever she has gone . Mr. Sununu said.
Voters will meet in Iowa on Monday, followed by the New Hampshire primary on January 23. Mr. Christie’s decision could push the few voters he has in Iowa toward Ms. Haley. But perhaps more importantly, the final days before the caucus will focus more on the two-person dynamic between Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump, taking oxygen away from Mr. DeSantis in the state where he needs it most.
Mr. Christie’s departure also makes a victory for Ms. Haley in New Hampshire a more plausible outcome, one that would boost her not only to Nevada but also to her home state of South Carolina and beyond. a CNN poll Conducted by the University of New Hampshire and released this week, it found that 65 percent of Mr. Christie’s supporters would support Ms. Haley if their first choice did not enter the contest.
Matthew Bartlett, a former Trump appointee and a Republican strategist who is unaligned in the race, said it was clear Ms. Haley was getting “the final piece of the puzzle” as she puts together a broad coalition of Republicans, including former die-hards from Trump. like Don Bolduc, a retired Army general who unsuccessfully ran for Senate in 2022 on a far-right platform, and “old Yankee Republicans” like Governor Sununu and his brother.
“If she were to win New Hampshire, or even if she came in second, it would be a huge shock to the Republican Party,” Bartlett said.
To be fair, to assume that Ms. Haley would recruit an overwhelming number of Mr. Christie’s supporters may be an overestimation of her power. Even Mr. Christie, in a “hot mic” moment that accidentally aired on the livestream that preceded his announcement, said that Ms. Haley was still “going to get smoked.”
“She’s not ready for this,” he said.
His departure speech on Wednesday was almost as caustic toward Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis as it was toward Mr. Trump. He mocked Ms. Haley for not citing slavery as the cause of the Civil War and denounced all candidates who had pledged to vote for Mr. Trump as their nominee even if Mr. Trump has been convicted of a crime. Mrs. Haley was one of them.
“Anyone who is unwilling to say that he is unfit to be president of the United States is unfit to be president of the United States,” Christie said – hardly a convincing statement of support for the other candidates.
Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the Republican Party of New Hampshire and now a city councilman in Dover, N.H., said he had wavered between the two candidates but chose Christie after Ms. Haley first promised to pardon Mr. Trump if he was convicted of one of the 91 crimes he faced, then refused to rule out being his running mate.
Mr. Cullen had wanted Mr. Christie to remain in the race unless and until Ms. Haley at least relinquished the vice presidency. Now he said, “I will vote for Haley without any enthusiasm.”
The sentiment was echoed in interviews with independent voters at town hall-style events in New Hampshire. Last week, at a sports bar in Londonderry, Lois and Paul Keenliside said they were independents who felt a responsibility to elevate the top anti-Trump candidate. But after listening to Ms. Haley, they remained on the fence, concerned that she had not ruled out the possibility of running as Trump’s vice president. If she did that, Keenliside said, many independents would “feel betrayed.”
But if nothing else, Mr. Christie’s supporters are “not going to Trump,” said Greg Moore, the New Hampshire director of Americans for Prosperity Action, the well-funded super PAC backed by billionaires Charles and David Koch. in a Sunday interview. The super PAC has endorsed Ms. Haley.
An internal poll from Americans for Prosperity Action conducted last month showed Mr. Trump with a 12 percentage point lead over Ms. Haley and the rest of the field. But in a head-to-head confrontation between two people, the poll showed that they were statistically equal.
The Trump campaign suggested that Mr. Christie’s withdrawal would pull Ms. Haley to the political left to woo his independent and Democratic-leaning voters, alienating most of the Republican electorate.
“Among the Republican primary voters in New Hampshire, Chris Christie is radioactive,” said the campaign memo released Wednesday. “If his withdrawal was intended to help Nikki Haley, it will further polarize the primaries into a battle between Trump’s conservatives and Haley’s DC establishment.”
Randy McMullen, 69, one such independent, said he was attracted to Mr. Christie and Ms. Haley because of what he saw as their ability to compromise and reach across the aisle. Trump was a nonstarter for him, he said, adding that the former president and his imitators were too intransigent.
“It’s MAGA or not at all,” he said of Mr. Trump and his allies.
Beyond New Hampshire, the road becomes much steeper for Mrs. Haley. Even in her home state of South Carolina, Trump remains “the prohibitive favorite” ahead of the Feb. 24 primary, said Matt Moore, a former South Carolina Republican Party chairman who had endorsed South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott before leaving . the race.
And, Mr. Moore noted, Mr. DeSantis could drop out before then, with the bulk of his voters likely moving to the former president. But winning usually leads to winning, and South Carolina residents who previously voted for Ms. Haley for governor but who now support Mr. Trump may be willing to take a second look as she storms out of New Hampshire.
As the first contests of the primary season approached, Christie began hearing more frequently from anxious Never-Trump voters who were attracted to his fearlessness in criticizing Trump but worried that he was siphoning votes from a more viable candidate like Ms. Haley.
“What concerns me a lot is that you and Governor Haley are addressing the same people,” Camron Barth, a 37-year-old 911 dispatcher, told Mr. Christie at a town hall event in Keene, N.H., last week. And so my question to you is: Do you think my concerns about that are unfounded?”
“No,” said Mr. Christie. “I have the same fear.”
A win for Ms. Haley in New Hampshire does not guarantee her long-term viability. Then-Senator John McCain of Arizona upset the heavily favored George W. Bush in 2000 and fired him into South Carolina, where more conservative voters and an organized Bush operation crushed him and all but ended the race.
But before that, in 1992, Bill Clinton redeemed his scandal-plagued campaign in New Hampshire with a strong second-place finish, calling himself “the comeback kid.”
“And the rest is history,” Mr. Bartlett said.