When former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley finally ended her campaign for the GOP nomination earlier this year, she said that Donald Trump would have to earn the respect of her supporters if he wanted them to vote for him at the polls come November.
A few months after that, Haley officially endorsed Trump for president.
However, it seems that Haley’s supporters aren’t on board with that.
Politico reported this week that some former campaign chairs at the state level for Haley’s presidential bid have come out to oppose Trump.
On Monday, for instance, Utah Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson declined to throw her support behind Trump. There are others, including people in Michigan and Iowa, who not only aren’t supporting Trump but have officially endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris for the job.
There are even some of Haley’s supporters who are organizing for the Harris campaign, according to Politico. Their hope is to raise millions of dollars that they can then spend on advertisements that would target Haley’s backers and convince them to vote for Harris.
One person involved in this effort is David Emery, a one-time Republican member of the House of Representatives from Maine. He said recently:
“Most of us are pretty disgusted with Trump and think he would be a disaster. And if you really believe that, then you can’t sit on the sidelines.”
In an interview, Emery said that Harris “is trying to take a bit more of a moderate course than I might have expected, and I think she’ll be fine.”
Even though Haley fell well short of actually seriously challenging Trump for the GOP nomination, she did consistently draw some Republican voters away from Trump’s side. That even happened well after she dropped out of the race, with voters in some states that held primary elections later in the season still casting a vote for her over Trump.
In total, Haley garnered more than 4 million votes during the primary, with many of those votes being sent her way after she dropped out. Politico reported that almost 1 million of those votes happened in six of the seven crucial battleground states that many political pundits have said will ultimately decide the outcome of next month’s election.
One thing that Politico did poignantly highlight in their article, though, was that it’s unclear at this point how many of Haley’s former supporters are actually against Trump. The media outlet even wrote that “it may be a tiny slice.”
At the same time, Politico’s report said the fact that even some former Haley supporters would consider voting for Harris “could have implications for the former president considering how tight the 2024 presidential race is shaping up to be.”
The Harris campaign has been working hard to try to “woo” those former Haley voters to their side, targeting Republican voters in states such as Pennsylvania.
While Trump has been campaigning hard in the battleground states, his focus has been on hard-line Republicans who are all but certain to support him at the polls.
