Haley gains backing. But catching Trump? That’s hard

WASHINGTON â€”  If the current contest for the Republican presidential nomination were a normal campaign, the past week’s news would have been very good for Nikki Haley.

On Tuesday, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador won the endorsement of the political network financed by the conservative billionaire Charles Koch. On Wednesday, Jamie Dimon, the head of Wall Street’s biggest bank, announced his support at a financial conference sponsored by the New York Times.

On Thursday, with the likelihood of new money rolling in, her campaign announced its first television ad, a 30-second spot in which she called for a “new generation of conservative leadership� to “leave behind the chaos and the drama of the past.�

All that comes as the candidates prepare for Wednesday’s fourth debate of the GOP nominating season — with a pared-down field in which Haley may be one of just three on stage.

Of such things momentum is made. In a normal campaign.

What would it take to beat Trump?

This isn’t a normal campaign.

Polls for weeks have shown Haley gaining on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose support has bled away.

But beating DeSantis won’t get Haley the nomination. Wednesday’s debate will matter, but only up to a point. The campaign is still all about Donald Trump.

Nationwide, polls show Trump closing in on 60% support among Republican primary voters. In the states holding the earliest contests, the race is only slightly more competitive.

In Iowa, whose Jan. 15 caucuses are the campaign’s first contest, multiple recent surveys showed the former president with leads between 24 and 36 points over DeSantis and Haley, who are roughly tied in second place. Vivek Ramaswamy and Chris Christie, the campaign’s two other remaining candidates, languished in single digits.

In New Hampshire, which holds its primary the week after Iowa, Haley and Christie both poll better than DeSantis or Ramaswamy. The state allows independents to vote in the GOP primary and has a more college-educated, less evangelical Republican electorate. But Trump still leads by 20 to 30 points, according to recent surveys.

So Haley’s success has been only relative. What would it take for her to achieve actual success?

First, more dropouts

The GOP debates have served one of their intended purposes — winnowing the field. In 2016, Republican hopefuls were slow to drop out, allowing Trump to win some primaries with just 30%-40%. This time, the field has consolidated more rapidly.

The first debate featured eight candidates, not including Trump, who has refused to share a platform with rivals who don’t truly rival him. One by one, Asa Hutchinson, Doug Burgum, Mike Pence and Tim Scott have been pushed to the sidelines as their support failed to grow.

Christie, the former New Jersey governor, could be next: Party officials haven’t yet officially said who has qualified for Wednesday’s debate, but outside of New Hampshire, he appears to have failed to meet the threshold of 6% support in polls, and one state isn’t enough to qualify.

Since Christie and Haley fish in similar pools of voters, especially in New Hampshire, his withdrawal would likely help her.

New Hampshire’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu, said earlier this year, when he announced that he would not run, that “every candidate needs to understand the responsibility of getting out and getting out quickly if it’s not working� in order to give one person a clear shot to beat Trump.

“Christmas at the latest,� Sununu said then. He’s expected to make his own endorsement soon.

Unfortunately for Republicans who want to stop Trump, this isn’t 2016, and Trump no longer is the candidate of a minority of the party. Even if Haley picked up all of Christie’s voters in New Hampshire, for example, she would still be several points behind Trump.

An early upset

Haley — or DeSantis if he could somehow resurrect his chances — has little time. In the stretch from the Iowa caucus through March 5, when California and roughly a dozen other states vote, nearly half the delegates to the Republican convention will have been chosen. By the end of March, two-thirds of the delegates will be allocated, according to NBC News, which obtained the latest math from Republican party officials.

That means a Trump rival can’t count on a long-drawn contest to change voters’ minds about the front-runner. Nor are Trump’s criminal trials likely to play a major role — by the time his first trial is scheduled to get underway in early March, the key contests will mostly be over.

The two main candidates chasing Trump have pursued different strategies: DeSantis has focused his attention on Iowa, where he has some major supporters, including the state’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, and Bob Vander Plaats, an important evangelical leader whose backing helped Mike Huckabee win Iowa in 2008, Rick Santorum in 2012 and Sen. Ted Cruz in 2016.

Notably, none of those men went on to win the nomination. As with them, it’s hard to see what DeSantis’ second step would be even if he could pull off an Iowa upset.

Haley has spent time and money on Iowa but has focused more heavily than DeSantis has on New Hampshire. A victory there could generate a burst of support, which could help her win South Carolina, which, in theory, could propel her into a March 5 showdown.

Her new supporters mean she’s likely to have the money — at least in the early going. And Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-backed organization, has an extensive network of activists, which could also help her in getting supporters out to vote.

“AFP Action’s endorsement will put thousands of AFP Action activists and grassroots leaders into the field — with a focus on the early primary states,� Emily Seidel, the group’s senior advisor, wrote in a memo that went to reporters.

Some X factor?

All that being said, actually beating Trump remains improbable.

Haley has clear policy differences with Trump — she strongly favors U.S. military aid to Ukraine, for example, and she supports raising the retirement age to reduce the costs of Social Security and Medicare. But on both of those issues, most Republicans favor Trump’s position.

And while her call for “generational change� and an end to “chaos� may appeal to independent voters and perhaps some Democrats, that’s not so true in Republican primaries. There’s no sign that Trump’s ardent backers are wavering. His voters are far more likely than supporters of the other candidates to say in polls that they’ve firmly made up their minds.

“I’m in the ‘never say never’ camp. But man, it’s hard to see how Trump loses,� said Republican consultant Alex Conant, who was a top advisor to Sen. Marco Rubio when he lost to Trump eight years ago.

What maintains a level of uncertainty about the race — and keeps donors willing to back rivals — is the chance that Trump could blow himself up. That possibility, like a mirage, has sustained the hopes of Trump’s Republican opponents for eight years without ever materializing, but it continues to tantalize them.

So, on to the primaries: Trump could falter, but the race remains his to lose.

Immigrant dreams

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Column: Could immigrants be America’s new swing voter group?
In recent years, much attention has focused on two sets of voters considered key to winning the presidency. The first is blue-collar workers in the industrial Midwest. The second is college-educated residents of the Sunbelt’s burgeoning suburbs. Both remain crucial to the prospects of the two major parties. But The Times/KFF survey suggests there’s another potential swing group: the nation’s immigrants, Mark Barabak wrote.

The Newsom-DeSantis debate

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Luna and Noah Bierman summarized the debate’s main themes.

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Ahead of the debate, Luna and Tampa Bay Times reporter Emily Mahoney sat down to discuss the surprising similarities between Newsom and DeSantis.

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Before the debate, Times staff writers offered this look at who Newsom and DeSantis are, and how they’re using their power to deepen America’s blue state-red state divide.

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Cross-country moves between progressive California and conservative Florida have taken an outsize role in the rivalry between DeSantis and Newsom. More Californians are relocating to Florida than the other way around — but the number moving in either direction is minuscule compared with each state’s population. Hailey Branson-Potts looked at some examples.

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For DeSantis it’s about giving parents the freedom to control what their children will learn and where. They also are free to leave public schools entirely — using state funding for a private school. For Newsom freedom to learn is about protecting the civil rights of students, expanding opportunities within public schools through new investments — such as schooling for 4-year-olds — and also allowing instruction about diverse views related to race and gender, Howard Blume reported.

Column: Newsom and DeSantis have the spotlight, but they don’t have a chance. Harris and Haley might
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The latest from Washington

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The latest from California

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