Report: Donors Are Still Wasting 'Eye-Popping' Amounts on Nikki Haley's Doomed Campaign

By Ben Kew | 6:15 AM on February 05, 2024

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Donors are still wasting millions of dollars propping up Nikki Haley's doomed presidential campaign, according to a report from Axios.

The news outlet reported that Haley, who remains a distant second in the polls to her challenger, former president Donald Trump, had an "eye-popping" fundraising haul in January that could allow her campaign to survive throughout the primary process.

The report states:

Nikki Haley had an eye-popping month of fundraising in January, hauling in almost as much cash as the prior three months combined, Axios has learned.[...]
The Haley campaign has the money to keep her long-shot presidential bid alive, even as many leaders in her party have called for the GOP primary to come to an end.
Haley raised $16.5 million in January, including $11.7 million from grassroots supporters, according to her campaign. The campaign also added 69,274 new donors last month.

Haley also brought in a staggering $5 million in grassroots donations the week after she lost the primary in New Hampshire to Trump, presumably as anti-Trump Republicans coalesced around their only remaining candidate.

Furthermore, the former South Carolina governor reportedly has 10 fundraisers lined up in California, Florida, New York, and Texas as she seeks to win over megadonors who still believe she has a chance of prevailing in the race.

Axios added:

Haley's campaign raised more cash than it spent in 2023, while rival campaigns like Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) all burned through more cash than they brought in.

Haley brought in $17.3 million during the fourth quarter, her public FEC filing shows, more than double the $8.2 million she raised during the quarter before that.

Haley now has more money than Joe Biden did at this stage of the 2020 presidential race, but less than Sen. Ted Cruz at the same time back in 2016.

Mark Harris, the lead strategist for the pro-Haley super PAC Stand for America, described Trump's threat to ban anyone within the Haley campaign from the MAGA camp as having thrown "gasoline on the fire."

Harris explained:

We may end up advertising in the Super Tuesday states ... but we're following the campaign's lead and the best thing we can do for all those states is have a strong showing in South Carolina. We're the insurgent outsider campaign, we're the underdog. That's right where Nikki likes to be.

Haley, meanwhile, recently insisted that she would not drop out of the race even if she lost in her home state, South Carolina, and that "momentum" was all she needed to turn the primary around.

"I need to show that I'm building momentum. I need to show that I'm stronger in South Carolina than New Hampshire," she said in an interview last week. "Does that have to be a win? I don't think that necessarily has to be a win. But it certainly has to be better than what I did in New Hampshire and it certainly has to be close."

Yet, no matter her level of optimism, the polling data does not look good. According to the latest RealClearPolitics average, she trails Trump by over 27 points in South Carolina, while Trump holds a staggering 55-point lead nationally.

On the positive side, this is an improvement on where she was last week, when she was down by 30 and 58 points, respectively, but still way off the kind of figures she would need to mount any credible challenge to the former president.