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      Haley Gets a Trump Matchup, but Now Faces the Trump Machine

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      As Nikki Haley celebrated Ron DeSantis’s departure from the Republican primary, Donald J. Trump turned his firepower toward his final rival.With only about 48 hours left to campaign in the New Hampshire primary, Nikki Haley finally got the two-person race she wanted.It might not live up to her expectations.For months, it has been an article of faith among Ms. Haley’s supporters and a coalition of anti-Trump Republicans that the only way to defeat Donald J. Trump was to winnow the field to a one-on-one contest and consolidate support among his opponents.That wishcasting became reality on Sunday afternoon, when Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida ended his White House bid.And yet, as the race reached the final day, there was little sign that Mr. DeSantis’s departure would transform Ms. Haley’s chances of winning.Ms. Haley quickly learned that the role of last woman standing against Mr. Trump meant serving as the last target for a party racing to line up behind the former president.Two former rivals in the race — Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, and Mr. DeSantis — both endorsed the former president. The head of the party’s Senate campaign arm proclaimed Mr. Trump to be the “presumptive nominee.” And Mr. Trump’s campaign strategists vowed that she would be “absolutely embarrassed and demolished” in her home state of South Carolina, the next big prize on the calendar.Campaigning across New Hampshire on Sunday, Ms. Haley and her supporters celebrated the DeSantis campaign’s demise.“Can you hear that sound?” she asked more than 1,000 gathered in a high school gymnasium in Exeter, N.H., her best-attended event in the state. “That’s the sound of a two-person race.”Thirty-five miles north, in Rochester, N.H., Mr. Trump told his crowd to expect a victory so decisive it would effectively end the primary. “That should wrap it up,” he said.Mr. Trump during a campaign rally at the Rochester Opera House on Sunday in New Hampshire.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMs. Haley’s supporters in the state said they were feeling that pressure. Some worried aloud that she had pulled punches with Mr. Trump for so long that her aggressiveness in the primary’s final weekend would be inadequate to persuade flinty New Hampshire voters that she had enough fight in her to win against the brawling former president.One Republican activist backing Ms. Haley said he kept his lawn sign in his garage because Mr. Trump’s victory felt inevitable. Another Haley backer, Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party, described his support for the former governor as unenthusiastic. He said he could not bring himself to defend Ms. Haley on social media or lean on friends and family to vote for her.“Too little, too late,” Mr. Cullen said about Ms. Haley’s prospects. “She had to inspire and engage unaffiliated voters, and I just haven’t seen her doing what she needs to do to reach that audience and turn them out in the numbers that she needs.”Most polls during the past week showed Mr. Trump up by a dozen points or more. A Suffolk University/Boston Globe/NBC10 Boston daily tracking poll of New Hampshire voters showed Mr. Trump steadily adding to his lead over Ms. Haley, with a margin of 53 percent to 36 percent on Saturday.Ms. Haley’s performance on Tuesday is likely to determine the future of her campaign — and possibly her political career. Anything short of a victory or narrow defeat would put pressure on her to drop out rather than face three weeks of punishing ads from the Trump campaign in her home state, where she is already behind.Her best shot at survival is high turnout from New Hampshire’s independent voters, who make up 40 percent of the state’s electorate, while Republicans account for about 30 percent.The New Hampshire secretary of state has been predicting record high turnout on Tuesday, a scenario that both campaigns were claiming would bolster their chances of success.Ms. Haley’s team believes a turnout surge would mean more participation from independent and moderate voters who are more likely to support her. They looked to Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign as a model. Mr. McCain won the state’s primary by dominating independent voters and battling to a draw among Republicans, according to exit polls.Ms. Haley, however, appears to be trailing by a large margin among Republicans, according to public polls. In the tracking poll, Ms. Haley led independents, 49 percent to 41, but was nearly 20 points behind Mr. Trump overall largely owing to his wide margin from Republicans, 65 percent to 25 percent.Ms. Haley on Sunday with supporters in Derry, N.H.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesMs. Haley’s donors and allies argued Mr. DeSantis’s departure could reel in more donations and help her sharpen the contrast between herself and the former president. Both Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis struggled to find ways to criticize Mr. Trump without turning off Republicans who may be open to alternatives, but are still fond of him.But some longtime political operatives in the state suggested there might not be enough anti-Trump Republicans and moderate independents to make the numbers work.“Haley has consolidated the non-Trump vote, but overtaking him is the Rubik’s Cube no one has been able to figure out yet,” said Matt Mowers, a former Republican House candidate from New Hampshire who was endorsed by both Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley.As she delivered her stump speech on Saturday with new urgency, Ms. Haley’s attacks on Mr. Trump were sometimes softened by including Mr. Biden in the critique.“What are Joe Biden and Donald Trump both talking about?” Ms. Haley asked, at her rally in Exeter. “The investigations that they are in, the distractions they have, the people they’re mad at, their hurt feelings, and they have not shown us one ounce of vision for the future — not one.”Jane Freeman, 55, a retired flight attendant and undeclared voter in Exeter, scrunched her forehead and let out a sigh when asked about Mr. DeSantis’s endorsement of Mr. Trump.“Trump is a tricky thing,” said Ms. Freeman, who voted for the former president in 2016 and in 2020 but now supports Ms. Haley. “I really wish he would have waited,” she said of Mr. DeSantis. Still, she said Ms. Haley had the right momentum and was continuing to win voters. “I am nervous, but truly, truly hopeful,” she said.Anjali Huynh More

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      Tim Scott Is Engaged to Be Married

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      Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who for years faced speculation about his marital status, on Saturday proposed to Mindy Noce, his girlfriend and an interior designer who lives in Charleston. She said yes.It’s been a whirlwind few days for Mr. Scott, whose endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump at a New Hampshire rally on Friday renewed talk about his consideration as a running mate, should Mr. Trump win the Republican nomination. The engagement, which was first reported by The Washington Post, comes after more than a year of dating. Mr. Scott made his relationship with Ms. Noce public when he brought her onstage after a Republican presidential primary debate — the last he would participate in before suspending his campaign in November. The two met at church.A spokesman for Mr. Scott, Nathan Brand, confirmed the engagement, which took place on Kiawah Island, S.C., near Charleston. Mr. Scott and Ms. Noce had a celebratory dinner afterward and Ms. Noce attended church the following morning, wearing her engagement ring.Mr. Scott shared his news with a national audience on “Sunday Night in America,” the Fox News program hosted by Trey Gowdy, his friend and a former South Carolina congressman.Mr. Scott, a longtime bachelor, attempted to keep his relationship status quiet. Even so, his bachelorhood had been the subject of much scrutiny during his presidential run and in his Senate career. Asked multiple times on the campaign trail about his marital status, Mr. Scott often demurred, saying he was praying for the right woman before taking that step.“One of the things I love about the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that it points us always in the right direction. Proverbs 18:22 says, ‘He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord,’” he told Brenna Bird, the Iowa attorney general, in September. “So can we just pray together for me?” More

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      Ron DeSantis Drops Out of 2024 Presidential Race and Endorses Trump

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida suspended his campaign for president on Sunday and endorsed former President Donald J. Trump, marking a spectacular implosion for a candidate once seen as having the best chance to dethrone Mr. Trump as the Republican Party’s nominee in 2024.His departure from the race just two days before the New Hampshire primary election leaves Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, as Mr. Trump’s last rival standing.Mr. DeSantis’s devastating 30-percentage-point loss to Mr. Trump in the Iowa caucuses last Monday had left him facing a daunting question: Why keep going? On Sunday, he provided his answer, acknowledging there was no point in soldiering on without a “clear path to victory.”“I am today suspending my campaign,” Mr. DeSantis said in a video posted after The New York Times reported he was expected to leave the race, adding: “Trump is superior to the current incumbent, Joe Biden. That is clear. I signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee, and I will honor that pledge. He has my endorsement because we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear.”Mr. DeSantis had flown home to Tallahassee late Saturday after campaigning in South Carolina. He had been expected to appear at a campaign event in New Hampshire on Sunday afternoon, but it was canceled.Even before Mr. DeSantis made his announcement, Mr. Trump had begun speaking about his candidacy in the past tense. “May he rest in peace,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. DeSantis at a Saturday evening rally in Manchester.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Trump Thanks DeSantis for Endorsement, Calling Him ‘Gracious’

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      Former President Donald J. Trump on Sunday thanked Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for endorsing him after suspending his campaign, calling Mr. DeSantis — once a top rival whom Mr. Trump spent significant time bashing in his speeches — “gracious.”Speaking to a packed house at a historic theater in Rochester, N.H., Mr. Trump called Mr. DeSantis’s wife, Casey, a “really terrific person.” And he said that Mr. DeSantis “ran a really good campaign.”“I will tell you, it’s not easy,” Mr. Trump said. “They think it’s easy to run this stuff, right? It’s not easy.”He went on: “But as you know, he left the campaign trail today at 3 p.m.,” adding, “And in so doing, he was very gracious, and he endorsed me, so I appreciate that.”For months, Mr. Trump made attacking Mr. DeSantis a focal point of his campaign speeches, particularly in Iowa. He bashed Mr. DeSantis as disloyal, called him a poor governor and suggested he was a political opportunist whose positions had shifted as he ran for president.But after Mr. Trump’s dominant victory in the Iowa caucuses, in which Mr. DeSantis finished a distant second, Mr. Trump shifted his sights to Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who is his closest-polling competitor in the New Hampshire primary race.In speeches this past week, Mr. Trump mostly swiped at Mr. DeSantis in casual asides that suggested he wasn’t worth the time.“You notice I haven’t mentioned the name of Ron DeSanctimonious yet,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Manchester on Saturday, using a derisive moniker he bestowed on the Florida governor last year. “I think he’s gone.”Sunday was perhaps the first day in months that Mr. Trump did not use that nickname. Earlier in the day, he told supporters at his campaign headquarters in Manchester that he would stop using that nickname after Mr. DeSantis left the race.“Will I be using the name Ron DeSanctimonious?” Mr. Trump said. “I said that name is officially retired.” More

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      Haley Reacts as DeSantis Exits 2024 Race: ‘May the Best Woman Win’

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      Nikki Haley entered a seafood shack in Seabrook, N.H., on Sunday afternoon with some news for the crowd: Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, was no longer running for president.“We just heard that Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the race,” Ms. Haley, the former South Carolina governor, said to cheers from the several dozen attendees. “And I want to say to Ron, he ran a great race, he’s been a good governor and we wish him well.”“Having said that, it’s now one fella and one lady left,” she continued, holding up two fingers, to more cheers. She added: “For now, I’ll leave you with this: May the best woman win.”Ms. Haley and her allies have long sought to frame the presidential race as being between herself and former President Donald J. Trump, even as she finished third in the Iowa caucuses. With Mr. DeSantis now out of the race, that argument became much more salient — though recent polling averages put her 15 percentage points behind Mr. Trump in New Hampshire.She furthered that argument in a statement issued by her campaign, in which she noted that “only one state has voted” and that “half of its votes went to Donald Trump, and half did not.” (Mr. Trump received 51 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses.)“Voters deserve a say in whether we go down the road of Trump and Biden again, or we go down a new conservative road,” Ms. Haley said in the statement. “New Hampshire voters will have their say on Tuesday.”Ms. Haley also committed to staying in the race through the South Carolina primary and Super Tuesday on March 5, regardless of what happens in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.Rather than deliver remarks in Seabrook, as she has at recent retail stops, Ms. Haley went straight to taking selfies and speaking one-on-one with supporters — a small victory lap, of sorts.Speaking with CNN’s Dana Bash after the event, Ms. Haley escalated her attacks against Mr. Trump, whom she has hit harder in recent days, as well as President Biden. She said they were “equally bad” for the country.“If either one of them was good, I wouldn’t be running,” she added.Ms. Haley told CNN that Mr. DeSantis, who endorsed Mr. Trump in his announcement dropping out of the race, had not called to inform her of his departure.She also said that Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina did not tell her that he would endorse Mr. Trump earlier this week — though Mr. Scott told CNN that he had texted her the day before endorsing Mr. Trump. “He didn’t tell me that he was going to do this,” Ms. Haley said. More

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      Haley Picks Up Endorsement of New Hampshire’s Largest Newspaper

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      The Union Leader, New Hampshire’s largest newspaper and one that reliably picked Republicans for a century before the rise of Donald Trump, endorsed Nikki Haley on Sunday in the Republican primary.“Of course, we can’t talk about Nikki Haley without addressing the elephant in the room and the rather old donkey hiding in the White House,” it wrote, alluding to Mr. Trump and President Biden — though making no mention of Mr. Trump by name.The newspaper did not endorse Mr. Trump in the previous two cycles, either.In the 2016 Republican contest, it backed then-Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey — but later retracted its endorsement when Mr. Christie, who dropped out of the race after a poor showing in New Hampshire, endorsed Mr. Trump.Then in the 2016 general election, for the first time in more than 100 years, it did not endorse a Republican, instead choosing Gary Johnson, the Libertarian nominee.And in 2020, it endorsed Joseph R. Biden Jr. instead of Mr. Trump, who had previously called the newspaper’s publisher a “lowlife” in a television interview.“Nikki Haley is an opportunity to vote for a candidate rather than against those two,” the endorsement reads, again referring to Mr. Trump. It called Ms. Haley a “candidate who can run circles around the dinosaurs from the last two administrations, backwards and in heels.” More

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      Trump Tries to Turn the G.O.P. Race Into a Vice-Presidential Casting Call

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      Painting himself as inevitable, and seeing who will butter him up the most, Donald Trump has paraded a series of possible running mates, including Tim Scott, Elise Stefanik and J.D. Vance.Donald J. Trump has won just a single nominating contest, but his potential running mates already outnumber his presidential rivals on the campaign trail.As he pursues a victory over Nikki Haley in New Hampshire that would send him on a glide path to the nomination, Mr. Trump seems to be holding casting calls for possible vice-presidential contenders onstage at his rallies and at other events.His goals are clear: Show off the sheer breadth of his institutional support in the Republican Party. Inject a sense of inevitability into the race. And, of course, see which underling will butter him up the most.On Friday alone, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio and Representative Elise Stefanik of New York rallied supporters for him. Ms. Stefanik held a second event on Saturday.The presence of all three, each of whom maintains a close relationship with Mr. Trump, generated headlines and fired up his base.But joining Mr. Trump’s ticket can come with risks. Former Vice President Mike Pence twice ran with Mr. Trump, but his refusal to violate the Constitution to help overthrow the 2020 election led to Trump supporters storming the Capitol and threatening to hang him. Mr. Pence and his family were forced into hiding inside the Capitol to avoid the mob.Mr. Scott’s stock seemed to rise with Mr. Trump after his endorsement of the former president on Friday, a move that showed the genial senator’s fealty and his surprising capacity for ruthlessness. In choosing Mr. Trump, Mr. Scott dealt a brutal rejection to Ms. Haley, his home-state compatriot and the woman who appointed him to the Senate.Mr. Scott’s remarks at the Trump rally on Friday in Concord projected a stirring energy often lacking in own presidential bid, which he ended in November.“We need Donald Trump,” Mr. Scott shouted to the audience.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe crowd matched his excitement with shouts of “V.P.,” and Mr. Scott ended his fiery call-and-response speech by shouting with the audience, “We need Donald Trump.”Mr. Trump noted Mr. Scott’s transformation.“He was great, don’t you think?” Mr. Trump said after the rally to a Republican consultant, who insisted on anonymity to describe the private conversation.Mr. Trump’s enthusiasm was a marked change from a year ago, when, after a lackluster debate performance by Mr. Scott, the former president raised eyebrows among some associates with offhand comments that the South Carolinian had not received much coverage.Ms. Stefanik has also seemed like an increasingly decent bet to be Mr. Trump’s running mate, winning acclaim throughout the conservative world for her role in taking down two presidents of elite universities after a contentious hearing on antisemitism and campus protests.At his Friday rally, Mr. Trump praised Ms. Stefanik, a one-time backbencher who rocketed to the party’s No. 4 House leadership job.“Elise became very famous,” he said of her prodding of the college presidents, describing her questioning as surgical. “Wasn’t it beautiful?”One potential hitch with a Stefanik pick: Mr. Trump mispronounced her last name as “STEH-fuh-nick” instead of “steh-FAH-nick.”On Saturday, Trump supporters also greeted Ms. Stefanik with “V.P.” chants as she visited with volunteers at the former president’s campaign office in Manchester.“I’d be honored — I’ve said that for a year — to serve in a future Trump administration in any capacity,” she told reporters.Rep. Elise Stefanik at a Trump rally in Concord, N.H.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAt the Saddle Up Saloon in Kingston, N.H., Mr. Vance mingled with dozens of Trump supporters as reporters asked about his prospects to join the presidential ticket.Mr. Vance, the best-selling author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” suggested he would be better utilized in the Senate during a second Trump term than as vice president. Still, Mr. Vance said, he would have to think about such an offer.“I want to help him however I can,” he said.Mr. Trump agonized over his pick for vice president in 2016, toggling potential picks until almost the moment of the announcement.But during this campaign, Mr. Trump teased his vice-presidential pick before the first nominating contest last week in Iowa, where he said on Fox News that he had decided on a running mate but declined to offer a name. Still, a formal announcement could remain far off: Several people close to Mr. Trump have privately suggested that his comment was more showmanship than serious.In Iowa, Mr. Trump also recruited a series of potential running mates to campaign for him: Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia; Kari Lake, a Republican Senate candidate in Arizona; and Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota.But the V.P. chants have grown much louder in New Hampshire.At an event in Atkinson on Tuesday, Vivek Ramaswamy made an impassioned defense of Mr. Trump — less than a day after ending his own White House bid, most of which he spent glorifying the former president.When the crowd chanted “V.P! V.P!” for Mr. Ramaswamy, an Ohio entrepreneur, Mr. Trump returned the approval.Mr. Ramaswamy, the former president said, is “going to be working with us for a long time.”Ms. Haley, who served in Mr. Trump’s administration as ambassador to the United Nations, has long been mentioned as a potential running mate.But during Friday’s speech in Concord, Mr. Trump seemed to rule out that possibility.“She is not presidential timber,” he said. “Now, when I say that, that probably means that she’s not going to be chosen as the vice president.”Neil Vigdor More