Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley will drop out of the Republican presidential nomination race on Wednesday after only picking up one state on Super Tuesday as former President Donald Trump dominated at the polls, according to multiple reports.
Sources close to Haley told multiple outlets that she would drop out of the race after just winning one of 15 contests on Tuesday. Haley was the last major challenger to Trump and has been critical of him throughout her campaign. She managed to defeat him in Vermont, but lost by wide margins in the other states that voted.
“Today, in state after state, there remains a large block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump,” spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas said on Tuesday. “That is not the unity our party needs for success.”
During her campaign, Haley picked up wins in the District of Columbia and Vermont, but failed to build momentum in other states, taking third in Iowa and losing by over ten points in New Hampshire after the rest of the field had dropped out. Last month, she was unable to win in her home state of South Carolina, where she is expected to announce the suspension of her campaign.
The Koch network’s Americans for Prosperity dropped funding for Haley after her fourth primary loss.
While initially promising to back the Republican party’s nominee last year, she has recently been hesitant to confirm whether she plans on endorsing Trump if he takes the nomination. Sources told the Wall Street Journal that she will not make an endorsement on Wednesday.
“What I will tell you is that I have serious concerns about Donald Trump. I have more serious concerns about Joe Biden,” she said in February.
During the Trump administration, Haley was his ambassador to the United Nations for several years. She has since been critical of him and claimed that he will be unable to beat President Joe Biden in November. She also has been vocal about Trump’s legal battles as he faces dozens of charges in multiple states.
“This may be his survival mode to pay his legal fees and get out of some sort of legal peril, but this is like suicide for our country,” she said. “We’ve got to realize that if we don’t have someone who can win a general election, all we are doing is caving to the socialist left.”
Trump performed strongly on Tuesday, picking up wins across the South and earning victories in states like California, Minnesota, and Maine. Ahead of an expected rematch with Biden in November, he has taken the lead in polling in key swing states.
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