DES MOINES, Iowa — Despite finishing third in Monday night’s Hawkeye State caucus, Nikki Haley wasted no time declaring the 2024 GOP race a two-person battle between herself and former President Donald Trump.
Iowa’s second-place finisher, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, had bet big on an endorsement that never really materialized — and with Haley leading the governorships in both New Hampshire and South Carolina, his team insisted their rival had a dead campaign.
But DeSantis, who openly revels in his underdog status, believes Haley will have a rude awakening — in his backyard, no less.
“We’re going to take her to her home state,” a DeSantis campaign official told The Post this week, saying Haley faces “tremendous” pressure to win the South’s first primary on Feb. 24.
DeSantis has captured at least 74 endorsements from current and former Palmetto State officials, dramatically outpacing Haley’s 14 endorsements — even though he served as governor there for six years before resigning to become Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations.
Ron DeSantis’ first stop after Iowa was in South Carolina. AP
“He’s really out of sync with South Carolina,” DeSantis told Fox News last week. “We’ll show it.”
It’s no coincidence that DeSantis’ first two stops after leaving Iowa were events in Greenville and Columbia, South Carolina, on Tuesday. Only then did he head north to New Hampshire, where he participated in a major town hall with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.
The governor of Florida followed in the footsteps of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who also went to the Palmetto State after the 2016 Iowa caucuses instead of New Hampshire.
“There’s a reason this is a two-person race between Donald Trump and Nikki Haley. Because our campaign lives in reality,” Haley campaign spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas told The Post.
“Ron DeSantis’ campaign stays at Disney’s Magic Kingdom.”
The New Hampshire problem
After polling second strongly behind Trump for months, DeSantis’ standing in New Hampshire has been hurt as other candidates enter the race with greater appeal to more moderate voters in the Granite State.
A Suffolk University/NBC 10 Boston/Boston Globe tracking poll released today shows DeSantis at just 5%, behind Trump (50%) and Haley (34%).
New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, a Haley supporter, told CNN Tuesday that DeSantis’ downfall among Granite State GOPers was “shameful.”
Nikki Haley’s camp seems to think the upset in South Carolina by Ron DeSantis was ridiculous. Reuters
“He has withdrawn all his money. He has attracted all his people,” Sununu said of the Florida governor. “He hasn’t been here for a month. So he’s given up on New Hampshire. He made it very clear, which is why — again, it’s a two-person race between Nikki and Trump.
“He didn’t want to be really embarrassed, I guess,” he continued. “So he would come and do a town hall here and there. But at the end of the day, he has no ground game. He has no relationship.”
Hoping for a South Carolina recovery
After the Granite State primary on Jan. 23, DeSantis will have a month to close the gap on Trump and Haley in South Carolina.
Nevada will hold its Republican caucus on February 8, when Trump and DeSantis will compete for delegates. Haley, instead, had opted to participate in the non-binding primary two days earlier, a move many saw as a sign of capitulation to the former president.
Donald Trump’s grip on the GOP was on full display Monday night. AP
Last week, DeSantis brought two disaffected South Carolina lawmakers to his fifth debate with Haley.
“Gov. Haley ran as a conservative in 2010. She didn’t govern as one. And in this campaign, he openly ran as a moderate to liberal Republican,” said Sen. Josh Kimbrell told The Post at the time.
“I think he’s always looking for the next opportunity and he doesn’t really have deep convictions about his policy positions,” he said later, echoing DeSantis’ main attack on Haley.
Haley has had several key surrogates from South Carolina support her campaign, including US Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), who failed to get her in Iowa last week.
Trump is up with 52% support, followed by Haley at 21.8% and DeSantis at 11%, according to the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate.
However, polling in South Carolina was uneven compared to Iowa and New Hampshire, making it difficult to get a true picture of the state of the race.
Put himself out there
Since launching his campaign on social media in May, DeSantis appears to have grown more open and accessible on the campaign trail over time.
He has diversified his media portfolio and continues to field questions from voters at his town hall events. DeSantis thinks that his competitors have become more cautious and defensive while he has become more proactive.
“I’m the only candidate who actually agreed to come to New Hampshire for a debate,” DeSantis said at his CNN town hall in Henniker, NH, Tuesday afternoon.
“What does that say? We have four presidential candidates now — Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Nikki Haley and me. I am the only one who is not running an underground campaign at this point,” said the Sunshine State governor.
DeSantis made himself widely available to the media and voters. AP
Haley announced earlier Tuesday that she planned to stop the debate unless Trump agreed to participate.
DeSantis’ team has also attacked Haley for refusing to answer questions from voters during the campaign’s homestretch in Iowa.
Ahead of the caucus, DeSantis launched a media blitz on Sunday morning public affairs shows and local outlets, trying to portray his broad accessibility to the press.
There is precedent for holding campaign comebacks in South Carolina. President Biden revived his presidential bid with a landslide victory there just four years ago.
But with many voters seeing Trump as the incumbent in all but name, the dynamic on the Republican side is dramatically different.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
