As the February 24 Republican primary elections approach in South Carolina, former President Donald J. Trump has a commanding lead in the polls against his only challenger, former South Carolina Governor Nimrata “Nikki” Haley.
According to the poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight, Trump is dominating Haley on her own home turf by a margin of about 65 percent to Haley’s 32 percent.
Haley is losing by more than 30 points despite the fact that her campaign committed to making a $4 million ad buy in South Carolina in the wake of her loss in the New Hampshire primary. Those ads reportedly ran on television, radio, and digitally online.
Haley, who is also the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, is the lone major holdout in the Republican primary against Trump, and chose to continue her run even after Trump’s most high profile opponent, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) dropped out of the race.
A video posted on X, formerly Twitter, appears to show a lack of enthusiasm for the Haley campaign as she begins a two week bus tour in the state, first stopping in the town of Newberry.
Only about 10 people can be seen in the video greeting Haley’s bus.
Nikki Haley’s bus has arrived in Newberry, S.C.
It’s the first day of the 2-week South Carolina bus tour “The Beast of the Southeast”. It will include more than 30 stops pic.twitter.com/CJdadVVR12
— Nidia (@NidiaCavazosTV) February 10, 2024
It is unclear how much Trump has spent on advertising in the state, but his Federal Election Commission (FEC) report, filed on January 31, said that the former president has $37,541,960 on hand.
In a Saturday Get Out The Vote rally at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, Trump, in his typically caustic manner, attacked Haley, who he calls “Birdbrain.”
“Where’s her husband? Oh, he’s away. He’s away,” Trump said at the rally. “What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone.”
Haley’s husband, Maj. Michael Haley, is serving an active duty deployment in Africa for the South Carolina Army National Guard.
The war of words escalated when both Haley and her husband responded to Trump.
The candidate questioned Trump’s mental fitness.
“I have long talked about the fact that we need to have mental competency tests for anyone over the age of 75. Donald Trump claims that he would pass that — maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t,” she said. “But if you mock the service of a combat veteran, you don’t deserve a driver’s license, let alone being President of the United States.”
Michael Haley responded with a meme on X.
“The difference between humans and animals? Animals would never allow the dumbest ones to lead the pack,” the caption reads.
@realDonaldTrump @GOP @CNN @FoxNews @wsjournal @USATODAY @nytimes @AP pic.twitter.com/BS6uODv6kr
— Michael Haley (@WMichaelHaley) February 10, 2024
Meanwhile, another federal election is heating up in the Palmetto State.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC-01) faces a primary challenge from her former Chief of Staff, Daniel Hanlon.
Hanlon filed his statement of candidacy for the June 11 Congressional primary back on January 26. There is little information about the candidate, who does not yet appear to have a campaign website.
Hanlon is a veteran Capitol Hill operator.
According to LegiStorm, he served as Senior Legislative Assistant to former South Carolina Republican Rep. Mick Mulvaney from 2016 to 2017.
After that, from 2017 t0 2020, he served as the Deputy Chief of Staff in the Office of Management and Budget, following his former boss to work in the Trump administration.
He began working for Mace in 2021.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on X / Twitter.
Photo “Donald Trump” by Donald Trump and “Nikki Haley” is by Nikki Haley.
