Nikki Haley, facing growing doubts and pressure to drop out, has winnowed the race to a one-on-one contest and is looking to make her case in South Carolina.
A combative Nikki Haley brought her presidential campaign back to South Carolina on Wednesday after a disappointing defeat the night before in New Hampshire, and told a boisterous crowd in a cavernous ballroom in North Charleston that she would fight Donald J. Trump for the Republican nomination.
“The political elites in this state and around the country say we just need to let Donald Trump have this,” she told her supporters, who were jeering at the idea. “Listen. We’ve only had two states that have voted. We’ve got 48 more.”
Nowhere is more immediately important than South Carolina, where she served two terms as governor before being tapped to serve as Mr. Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations. But just because it’s her home state does not mean it is friendly territory. As Ms. Haley looked to reinvigorate her campaign here on the ground, Republicans, as varied as local party officials and the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, stepped up the pressure on her to drop out. As she made her case for pressing on, the former president significantly consolidated his support.
While she spoke, the Trump campaign blasted out a fresh list of endorsements in South Carolina that now includes the state’s two senators, most of its House members, its governor and lieutenant governor, and much of its State House — more than 150 names in all.
“Welcome home to Trump Country, Nikki,” Austin McCubbin, Mr. Trump’s South Carolina director, taunted.
Some of Ms. Haley’s closest allies and confidants on Wednesday continued to insist that Ms. Haley had met her own expectations: She had winnowed the field and was now in the two-person contest she wanted, with time enough until the primary on Feb. 24 to spread her message to a broader electorate and draw contrasts between herself and Mr. Trump.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
