Haley entered 2024 with $14.6 million, fueling her continued bid
Nikki Haley, the last candidate standing between former President Donald J. Trump and the Republican nomination, raised $24 million in the last three months of 2023 and started this year with $14.6 million in her campaign account, a hefty sum that has all but ensured that she will have the money to continue her insurgent bid for the White House.
Last year's final fundraising figures do not reveal how much Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, has raised since finishing a distant third in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15 and then losing again in the New York caucuses. Eight days later primaries in Hampshire.
But documents filed Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission do indicate that her frugal presidential campaign has kept spending under control while pushing for new contributions.
“We're running a smart campaign and that means we have to spend our money wisely,” said Haley campaign spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas. “Seventy percent of Americans don't want a rematch between Biden and Trump, and we have the resources and energy to make sure that doesn't happen.”
While Ms. Haley’s campaign was careful with money, a super PAC backing her, SFA Fund Inc., spent heavily on advertising in 2023. spent almost the entire amount and ended the year with about $3.5 million in inventory.
This week, Ms. Haley, Mr. Trump's first ambassador to the United Nations, made her pitch to some of the country's wealthiest donors, seeking their support as she continues her long bid for the Republican nomination. And when the week is over, her aides say, she will sit down, as she has done throughout her run, and personally review her campaign's spending.
Until this month, her aides said, she flew almost exclusively commercially, unlike other candidates, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose campaign spent at least $2.5 million on private jets, data showed Wednesday.
This financial moderation was recorded in new federal files, coupled with steadily increasing support from donors. Her campaign itself raised $17.3 million, including transfers from other committees she controls, and spent $14.3 million in the final three months of 2023.
The numbers do not include last month, in which Trump won both Iowa and New Hampshire. But they help explain why she is the last remaining challenger.
In the first quarter of 2023, her campaign spent just 20 cents of every dollar it raised. In the second quarter, 68 cents for every dollar were spent. In the third quarter that was still 43 cents. All year long, her campaign has spent less than 60 cents for every dollar it raised — at the bottom among presidential candidates, and well below the burn rates of Mr. DeSantis and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.
Ms. Haley caught the attention of some major donors early in the cycle. Timothy C. Draper, a venture capital investor in California, gave her super PAC $2.25 million, while Jan Koum, a Ukrainian-American businessman, gave the PAC a total of $10 million as of February.
She also scored some big names toward the end of the year as she continued to gain momentum in the polls. Billionaire hedge fund managers Paul Singer and Kenneth C. Griffin gave her super PAC $5 million each in December.