In frigid New Hampshire, Haley turns up the heat. But is it too late?

Nikki Haley on Saturday denounced Donald J. Trump's dishonesty and his relationships with “dictators,” questioned his mental acuity and dismissed his growing pile of endorsements, sharpening her attacks on him as she spent the final two days of the campaign in New entered Hampshire.

Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, made her strongest case yet for the Republican presidential nomination, embracing her underdog status this weekend as independent, anti-Trump voters egged her on.

But with the nation's first primary on Tuesday, Ms. Haley has a huge deficit to catch up and very little time to do it. Mr. Trump filled arenas and event centers in Concord and Manchester, N.H., on Friday and Saturday, speaking to adoring crowds as Republican elected officials lined up. His event Saturday night in Manchester attracted several thousand fans. Ms. Haley, meanwhile, visited stores and restaurants. Her largest event, in Nashua, NH, drew about 500 attendees.

University of Suffolk daily poll of New Hampshire voters On Saturday, Mr. Trump had a double-digit lead over Ms. Haley, 53 percent to 36 percent, as his margin had increased one percentage point each of the previous two days.

“When you're dealing with the pressures of a presidency, we can't have someone else who we doubt is mentally fit to do this — we can't do that,” Ms. Haley said in Keene, N.H., criticizing Mr Trump for confusing her with Nancy Pelosi during his Friday evening rally. “So that's the choice. Do you want to win in November or not? Do you want to be scared in November or not? Do you want your children to be proud in November or not?”

Later, at a news conference with reporters in Peterborough, N.H., Ms. Haley wondered whether Mr. Trump would be “into it enough” to lead the nation. “My parents are elderly, and I love them dearly,” she told reporters. “But when you see them reach a certain age, there is a decline. That is a fact – ask any doctor: there is a decline.”

But as she stormed through New Hampshire on her 52nd birthday Saturday, the lines of attack that had been at the end of her standard stump speech shifted more forward. Even the sound of her voice became more urgent. And she seemed to feed off the energy of her audience.

“You can give me your gifts on Tuesday at a polling place near you,” she told supporters in Rindge, N.H., after they sang “Happy Birthday” to her.

Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump are effectively in a two-person race for New Hampshire. The former president hopes to bury his competition on Tuesday, heading into the Nevada and U.S. Virgin Islands caucuses on Feb. 8 and then the South Carolina primaries on Feb. 24. Ms. Haley is hoping for a victory in New Hampshire to give her a swing. back to her home state, where another strong performance could turn Trump's expected coronation into a drawn-out battle for the nomination.

Mr. Trump remains the favorite. Even amid the excitement over Ms. Haley's events in recent days, some of her ardent supporters admitted that they, too, were feeling down about Tuesday.

“I have a feeling Trump is going to win again,” said Linda Merullo, a retired and independent voter in Dover, N.H., who voted for Trump in 2016. “How very bizarre. Boy, are we messed up as a country.”

New Hampshire voters who flocked to Ms. Haley's events encouraged her to take on Mr. Trump and free the country from what they described in November as a terrible choice — between 77-year-old Mr. Trump and the 81-year-old president. Biden.

“We need some young blood,” said Terry Cutter, a Republican from Hillsborough, N.H., who supported Mr. Trump in both 2016 and 2020 but plans to vote for Ms. Haley in the primaries.

“Young blood and a woman to get rid of some of this testosterone,” added his wife, Shelley Cutter, a Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton and Mr. Biden but now supports Ms. Haley. “I don't think anyone over 65 should run for president. You don't need a bunch of old white men; we just have to get them all out of the way.”

For months, Ms. Haley has treated Mr. Trump gingerly, with gentle jabs mixed with respectful praise. a three-minute campaign video This weekend, Cindy Warmbier, the mother of a student who died at the hands of North Korea's autocratic regime, appeared to praise Ms. Haley's efforts as ambassador to the United Nations. But not once does the ad mention that her son, Otto Warmbier, died while Mr. Trump was president, or that Mr. Trump subsequently lavished praise on and shook hands with Kim Jong Un, the dictator responsible for the dominion. Death of Warmbier.

New Hampshire, where about 40 percent of voters are independent, has long respected insurgent candidates willing to take on the favorite. In 2000, Senator John McCain of Arizona defeated that year's incumbent titan, George W. Bush. Eight years later, Barack Obama entered the state with a confidence boosted by his victory in the Iowa caucuses, but lost to Hillary Clinton in a contest that set off an epic battle for the Democratic nomination.

Mrs. Haley seemed to be the last in these final days to realize that independent-minded voters in New Hampshire craved a boxing instinct.

Dave and Kathy Kelley of Hudson, N.H., said they came to hear Ms. Haley speak in Nashua on Saturday evening because they wanted her to adopt the tone that Chris Christie, the former anti-Trump governor of New Jersey, had toward the gentleman. Trump before leaving the race.

“She needs to hold him accountable for other comments he has made about other people, threatening comments and perpetuating the big lie before January 6,” Ms. Kelley said, referring to the pro-Trump riot at the Capitol on January 6 . 6, 2021.

Dave Kelley, 71, added: “It still feels like she's hedging her bets.”

Laura Dowling, 60, a nurse from Nashua, revealed similar misgivings as she dug into a piece of the birthday cake presented to Ms. Haley at the Peddler's Daughter, a lively Irish pub in Ms. Dowling's hometown. “I don't like nastiness in the primaries,” she said, “but I think she should defend herself a little more.”

Ms. Haley's stops were large and small: a cramped, iconic store in Hooksett; a retro restaurant and small country store selling jars of maple syrup in Milford; hotel ballrooms in Manchester and Nashua that brought in hundreds of well-wishers. Unlike Mr. Trump and his excessive rallies, Ms. Haley has been doing the retail work that New Hampshireites have come to expect — shaking hands, holding babies and answering personal questions one by one (although she has not held the town-hall-style events). that state voters also expect).

At a history and culture center in Keene, she bent down to tie an elderly supporter's shoe and took photos with another voter and her poodle mix. At the Peddler's Daughter, Ms. Haley poured pints of Guinness from behind the bar and toasted New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu as she was serenaded with “Happy Birthday” for the third time on Saturday. She took selfies with customers, signed Haley posters and called a fan's mother to wish her well.

She also made her final pitch to voters.

“The world is on fire,” she told some independent voters who told her they feared a Trump re-election, appreciating her message that “chaos” followed wherever he went. “We can't do that again,” she said.

Before Iowa, Ms. Haley had tried to winnow the field. In New Hampshire, she told reporters on Friday, she tried to create contrasts between herself and Mr. Trump. She has long maintained a careful line with the former president, both on the ground and in her books. She rarely criticized him, even as he filed criminal cases, faced accusations of sexual misconduct and heated up his rhetoric toward Mr. Kim, the North Korean leader.

In her final days on the job, she hasn't completely abandoned that approach as she continued to call for generational change and described Mr. Trump as a force of chaos. But on Saturday she denounced his lies and ties to authoritarian leaders, accusing him of having a “bromance with Putin,” praising President Xi Jinping “a dozen times after China gave us Covid” and exchanging “love letters” with Mr. Kim.

“When you talk about contrasts in foreign policy, you don't praise dictators and criminals who want to kill us,” she said in Nashua, telling the story of Otto Warmbier. “It's not good for us.”

She said she was “disappointed” that Sen. Tim Scott, a fellow South Carolinian whom she appointed to the Senate in 2017, had endorsed Mr. Trump. She argued that she got “no love” from South Carolina lawmakers because she ran as a conservative against the Tea Party establishment and pushed for reforms. Asked about Henry McMaster, her lieutenant governor who is now governor of South Carolina and who campaigned with Mr. Trump in New Hampshire on Saturday, she shot back: “I'm sorry, that's the person I ran against to become governor and defeat him? Just check.”

Her more direct approach comes from her events being filled wall to wall with supporters from far and wide. A campaign worker said the fire chief showed up at a town hall in Keene, concerned about the crowded room. At another event at a university in Rindge, many spectators said they had come from Massachusetts, just south, or from New York to get a glimpse of the person they hoped would be the first female president become.

Such voters expressed a desperate desire for someone to defeat Mr. Trump. Ms. Haley is a candidate, they said, whom they can vote for, not against.

Thalia Floras, of Nashua, changed her “lifetime” party affiliation to a Democrat so she could vote for Ms. Haley in the primary. But she worried her candidate's new tone was too timid and too late.

“I wish she would have started that a while ago,” Ms. Floras, 61, said. “She does it with a bit of humor, and she does it with grace.”