Haley's endorsement of Trump doesn't mean her supporters will follow her

Nikki Haley has made clear she’s on Team Trump. Her supporters don’t all feel the same.

Former state campaign chairs for Haley’s now-defunct presidential bid are increasingly coming out against the former president, including Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, who declined Monday to endorse Donald Trump. And in several other cases, they are endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump, including in Iowa and Michigan .

Meanwhile, some Haley supporters organizing for Harris hope to raise millions to spend on ads to reach the former U.N. ambassador’s backers. And others are involved in more informal efforts to convince fellow disaffected Republicans to vote blue.

“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,” said former Maine GOP Rep. David Emery, who is among the Haley supporters now marshaling Republicans to back Harris.

Harris, he said in an interview, “is trying to take a bit more of a moderate course than I might have expected, and I think she’ll be fine.”

Haley, a Republican, had drawn voters from Trump during the primary even well after she had dropped out. While it’s unclear how many of her Republican supporters are now backing the Democratic nominee — and it may be a tiny slice — that they are still unwilling to support their party leader, Trump, could have implications for the former president considering how tight the 2024 presidential race is shaping up to be.

Haley in her presidential primary campaign racked up more than 4 million votes, many of them coming in the months after she dropped out of the race. Nearly 1 million of those came from six of the seven battleground states that will decide the general election.

Now that voting bloc — a mix of Republicans, independents and even some Democrats — that served months ago as a warning sign of Donald Trump’s potential general-election weakness among more moderate voters could play a crucial role in a close contest between Trump and Harris.

Harris’ campaign is doing more to woo them than Trump’s — vexing Republicans who worry that bloc could be enough to tip the election — including organizing events and targeting Republicans in Pennsylvania.

Haley extended an olive branch to the former president when she endorsed him in May — more than two months after dropping out of the presidential race. And most Republicans who voted for her in the primaries are likely to follow her lead in sticking with their party through November, regardless of their feelings toward Trump.

But many of Haley’s supporters were also part of the cohort of “double-hater” voters who did not want to vote for Trump or President Joe Biden, then the Democratic standard-bearer.

Despite her endorsement, Haley isn’t exactly singing from Trump’s surrogate script, telling listeners of her new radio show this week that she still has Trump’s insults of her top of mind.

“I have issues with him, as well. I have not forgotten what he said about me,” Haley said. “I've not forgotten what he said about my husband or his, you know, deployment time or his military service. I haven't forgotten about his or his campaign's tactics from, you know, putting a bird cage outside our hotel room to calling me ‘bird brain.’ I haven't forgotten any of that.”

Neither have some of Haley’s supporters. Alissa Baker, who served as a co-chair of Haley’s Virginia leadership team, is a registered Republican who is leaning towards Trump, but has not yet committed.

“I think there's sort of a mentality of, well, you're Republicans, so you're gonna come home, right?” said Baker, who works in communications. “There’s a mindset of, we don't have to reach out because you're Republicans, as opposed to the Harris campaign, which feels like we have to reach out because you're not our core voter population.”

“I think that a lot of times we see him play to the base and keep wanting to secure the base, and it's like, you've got them, say something to the rest of us,” Baker said. “We might be leaning your way, we might align with you more. But you're still not talking to us.”

A former senior official on the Haley campaign, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said they expect that “political tribal instincts kick in when you get down to the wire.”

But they added, “that's not everyone.”

While Trump’s campaign, with its hard-line appeals on immigration and crime, is courting his base, the Harris campaign has organized events targeting Republican voters in swing states. They have put money behind ads featuring former Trump officials speaking out against the former president in an effort to persuade Republican voters turned off by his behavior. And this week, they launched a new ad in Pennsylvania featuring a farmer and two-time Trump voter who is now backing Harris.

The campaign touted tripling the number of members of an Arizona Republicans for Harris group — now totaling 120 people. Austin Weatherford, the campaign’s national Republican outreach director and the former chief of staff to former Republican congressman turned Trump critic Adam Kinzinger, said in a statement they’re “seeing a surge in support,” but “aren’t taking anyone for granted.”

“Trump has basically said he doesn't want anything to do with Haley voters,” said Robert Schwartz, a senior adviser and Michigan director of Haley Voters for Harris. “JD Vance was a horrible choice. He’s like a slap in the face to Haley voters, when Marco Rubio or Doug Burgum, Glenn Youngkin — any of them would have been someone who really rallied Haley voters.”

The organization backed Haley in the Republican contest and encouraged Democrats and unaffiliated voters to cast ballots in GOP primaries, in states that allowed it. Schwartz said Haley Voters for Harris is hoping to spend between $5 million and $10 million on digital ads targeting Haley supporters — though it’s unclear whether the funding will come through in time.

It’s also unclear to what degree the Harris campaign can make inroads with Republicans, the vast majority of whom will be punching ballots for Trump. But even marginal shifts in the electorate can prove significant in a close election. And Haley voters who are not yet committed to Trump say they still need to hear more in order to feel comfortable with their decision.

"Anyone who wants to make America great again, secure our southern border, restore law and order and bring down inflation only has one option on the ballot, and that option is President Donald J. Trump,” said Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt. “This election is a binary choice between a successful, former president and a failing current vice president in Kamala Harris, who is the most radical Democrat to ever lead their party's ticket. We welcome all Americans who share these values to join our team.”

Haley is still supporting Trump and last week sent out a fundraising appeal for him, and top aides to Haley and the former president have recently discussed holding joint campaign events, although nothing has been scheduled.

An official on the Trump campaign suggested Harris' campaign efforts may be for naught, and said internal data shows Trump is overwhelmingly supported by the majority of Republicans.

“To the voters who say we haven't done anything to reach out to them, there's no better spokesperson to speak to former Nikki Haley voters than Nikki Haley herself, and she has strongly endorsed President Trump, spoke on his behalf at the RNC convention, and is now fundraising for him as well,” the official said. “So you know, if these voters share the same ideals that Nikki Haley and President Trump do it's incomprehensible that they could consider casting their ballot for Kamala Harris, who believes in the opposite of everything that Nikki Haley and President Trump stand for."

Votes for Haley in Republican primaries were warning signs for the Trump campaign in battleground states like Pennsylvania, where 150,000 Republicans — or more than 16 percent of the state’s GOP electorate — cast ballots for Haley even though she had been out of the race for over a month. Trump lost Pennsylvania to Biden in 2020 by a little more than 80,000 votes.

“It is telling that she kept receiving thousands of votes even after she suspended her campaign. That by definition, is a sign of resisting the Republican nominee,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. “Haley voters are not undecided but they are torn between the two nominees."

In Georgia, for example, a recent Fox News poll found that overall, independents in the state favor Harris over Trump. And the “pathway for Trump” in that state, Republican pollster Daron Shaw told Fox News, is “pretty obvious.”

"He has to make nice with Gov. Kemp and non-MAGA Republicans — and if he does that, he probably has the edge," Shaw said.

Vermont state Rep. Ashley Bartley, a self-described “Never Trumper” who co-led Haley’s leadership team in that state, said members of her group were “all really disappointed” that the former South Carolina governor endorsed Trump and are now torn over how to proceed.

“A lot of the team still feel similar to me — we do not and will not support Donald Trump. I think some of them do feel comfortable voting for Kamala Harris,” she said. “But the others, I’ve heard a lot of people saying they’re going to write in [Gov.] Phil Scott.”

Bartley herself said that while she’s ruled out Trump, the “jury is still out” on Harris.

“I don’t remember the last time I walked into a voting booth unsure of which way I was going to go vote,” Bartley said. “This is a new one for me, and I think a lot of people are feeling this way.”