Haley’s Civil War blunder complicates her bid for New Hampshire

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor seeking the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, appears to have weathered a blunder over the causes of the Civil War over the holidays, but the controversy over her response, which did not address slavery named was a gift to a rival, former Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey.

And that new ammunition could be the most lasting impact of her attempt to nail former President Donald J. Trump in the nation’s first Republican primary on Jan. 23 in New Hampshire.

With less than two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Ms. Haley is expected back in southern New Hampshire on Tuesday for a two-day campaign as she works to maintain the momentum that has lifted her to second place in the state. But the last week of 2023 was particularly rocky. She ruined the name of star basketball player Caitlin Clark of the Iowa Hawkeyes, stoked anger and frustration among the independent and moderate factions of her base over her response to the Civil War during a town hall meeting in Berlin, N.H., and then possibly provoked the anti-Trump faction again when she said she would pardon Mr. Trump if he were convicted.

Mr Christie, who will be in the state on Thursday and Friday, has seized on Ms Haley’s gaffe and both their campaigns are at a crucial juncture. They have long been on a collision course in New Hampshire, where Mr. Christie has made his do-or-die state and where Ms. Haley is climbing.

a New Hampshire poll in November by Emerson College Polling and Boston television station WHDH found Trump with the support of 49 percent of Republican primary voters, matching his numbers in August. Ms. Haley was up 14 percentage points, gaining the support of 18 percent of voters, while Mr. Christie followed with a steady 9 percent.

“The first reason given in the South Carolina government’s proclamation of secession when the Civil War began was because the North opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories,” Christie said on CNN on Friday. “Now Nikki knows all that, and she doesn’t say it because she’s afraid to say it.

Polling averages in New Hampshire do not suggest that Mr. Christie threatens Ms. Haley, let alone Mr. Trump, but his position in third place, with about 11 percent of the Republican primary electorate, is a dampener on Ms. Haley, whose rise in the state appears to be have come to a standstill.

Both are competing for the same voters: Republicans who have soured on Mr. Trump and independents motivated to vote in the Republican primaries to thwart the former president’s bid to reclaim the White House. On Tuesday, a Trump campaign memo called that cohort “a ‘Coalition of the Unwilling’” that both candidates hope will be “sufficient to slow down President Trump.”

The combined support of Ms. Haley and Mr. Christie would put either of them within striking distance of the frontrunner, although the math is not that simple. Both candidates most likely have voters who would go elsewhere or sit out the election if their preferred candidate dropped out.

“I think he should stay inside — keep the heat on,” Doug Houghton, 71, a retired pilot and independent voter, said of Mr. Christie at a Haley town hall in Hooksett, N.H., in late November.

Furthermore, the Civil War snafu seems to have suppressed any talk of the New Jerseyan lending its support to the South Carolinian.

In interviews with more than a dozen anti-Trump Republicans, independents and centrist Democrats at Haley campaign events, several people described Mr. Christie as a kind of moral compass for the primary field and the only candidate who could keep Ms. Haley from going too far to stray. to the right.

Christie campaign officials say Ms. Haley’s suggestion that the Civil War was fought over “the freedoms of what people could and could not do” was not a one-off. In 2010 she said the war was over “tradition versus change.” The issue, they said, goes to the heart of Mr. Christie’s campaign — that only he has the power to challenge the Republican electorate to leave the divisions of the Trump era behind them. They pointed to her long, convoluted answer last week when asked if she would be Trump’s running mate. For the space of two minutes she didn’t answer.

“What it has done is expose something about Governor Haley that has existed throughout the campaign, but never more clearly — an unwillingness to speak the truth on difficult topics, and the most difficult topic in the Republican primaries is Donald Trump,” Michael DuHaime, Christie for years. confidant and campaign advisor, said of the Civil War comments.

Ms. Haley scored a major political victory last month when Chris Sununu, the popular governor of New Hampshire, threw his support behind him after long considering whether to support Ms. Haley, Mr. Christie or Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Mr. DuHaime conceded that the endorsement put some distance between Ms. Haley and Mr. Christie, but not nearly enough for Ms. Haley to overtake the front-runner.

In national television interviews and campaign appearances, Mr. Christie has consistently criticized Ms. Haley over what he describes as “ her unwillingness to take on Mr. Trump — “Run against him, or don’t run against him” — and her position on abortion, which he claims Ms. Haley is changing to sound louder in Iowa and less so in New Hampshire. (Ms. Haley has rejected this characterization at her own town halls.)

The two were cordial on the national debate stage, but Mr. Christie was also accused by Ms. Haley’s supporters of playing on gender tropes. He referred to Mr Sununu as Mrs. Haley’s “political husband.” In the fourth presidential debate, he himself defended her against her rivals, while she seemed to retreat into the background.

So far, the Haley campaign apparatus has not paid much attention to Mr. Christie. A new ad aligned by the super PAC along with her, the SFA Fund attacked Mr. DeSantis, not Mr. Christie or Mr. Trump, signaling its intention to appoint Ms. Haley as the clear runner-up candidate ahead of the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses.