Nikki Haley wins the District of Columbia’s Republican primary and gets her first 2024 victory.It’s a relatively small win. But it’s the first time the former South Carolina governor has beaten Trump — and her supporters are here for it.
Nikki Haley has won the Republican primary in the District of Columbia, notching her first victory of the 2024 campaign.
Her victory Sunday at least temporarily halts Donald Trump’s sweep of the GOP voting contests, although the former president is likely to pick up several hundred more delegates in this week’s Super Tuesday races.
Despite her early losses, Haley has said she would remain in the race at least through those contests, although she has declined to name any primary she felt confident she would win. Following her loss in her home state of South Carolina, Haley remained adamant that voters in the places that followed deserved an alternative to Trump despite his dominance thus far in the campaign.
It’s a relatively tiny victory, one Trump will almost certainly use to portray Haley as a creature of the D.C. swamp. D.C.’s 19 delegates will now cast their votes for her at the Republican National Convention in July. That’s out of 2,429 delegates, and so far, Trump has trounced her in all of the other state GOP primaries.
Right on cue, shortly after Haley’s win was announced, Trump’s campaign said her victory means “the swamp has claimed their queen.”
“While Nikki has been soundly rejected throughout the rest of America, she was just crowned Queen of the Swamp by the lobbyists and DC insiders that want to protect the failed status quo,” Karoline Leavitt, press secretary for Trump’s campaign, said in a statement.
The Associated Press declared Haley the winner Sunday night after D.C. Republican Party officials released the results. She won all 19 delegates at stake.
“It’s not surprising that Republicans closest to Washington dysfunction are rejecting Donald Trump and all his chaos,” Haley spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement, noting that Haley became the first woman to win a Republican primary in history.
Washington is one of the most heavily Democratic jurisdictions in the nation, with only about 23,000 registered Republicans in the city. Democrat Joe Biden won the district in the 2020 general election with 92% of the vote.
Trump’s campaign issued a statement shortly after Haley’s victory sarcastically congratulating her on being named “Queen of the Swamp by the lobbyists and DC insiders that want to protect the failed status quo.”
Haley held a rally in the nation’s capital on Friday before heading back to North Carolina and a series of states holding Super Tuesday primaries. She joked with more than 100 supporters inside a hotel ballroom, “Who says there’s no Republicans in D.C., come on.”
“We’re trying to make sure that we touch every hand that we can and speak to every person,” Haley said.
As she gave her standard campaign speech, criticizing Trump for running up federal deficit, one rallygoer bellowed, “He cannot win a general election. It’s madness.” That prompted agreement from Haley, who argues that she can deny Biden a second term but Trump can’t.
While campaigning as an avowed conservative, Haley has tended to perform better among more moderate and independent-leaning voters.
Four in 10 Haley supporters in South Carolina’s GOP primary were self-described moderates, compared with 15% for Trump, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 2,400 voters taking part in the Republican primary in South Carolina, conducted for AP by NORC at the University of Chicago. On the other hand, 8 in 10 Trump supporters identified as conservatives, compared to about half of Haley’s backers.
Trump won an uncontested D.C. primary during his 2020 reelection bid but placed a distant third four years earlier behind Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Rubio’s win was one of only three in his unsuccessful 2016 bid. Other more centrist Republicans, including Mitt Romney and John McCain, won the city’s primaries in 2012 and 2008 on their way to winning the GOP nomination.
Trump has a total of 244 delegates and Haley now has 43. Whoever is first to hit 1,215 delegates will be the Republican presidential nominee. Trump is expected to get much closer following this week’s Super Tuesday primaries, where polls show him dominating from coast to coast.
But Haley’s win counts for something. For starters, unbelievably, she is now the first woman to ever win a Republican presidential primary.
Her ability to defeat Trump in any primary means he can’t celebrate a clean sweep, which, as petty as it sounds, is almost certainly going to infuriate him and delight his critics. And for Haley’s supporters in D.C., it’s a sign that there’s enough of them, even if in this small election, to send the message that they reject the MAGA grip on their party.
“It matters for her to win in D.C. because I think it’s going to frustrate Trump more and more,” said Cherry, 66, who was one of about 250 people at a Haley campaign event in D.C. on Friday afternoon. She asked to use her first name only.
“I’ve never hated a politician, but I hate Donald Trump,” she said. “This is America’s Hitler.”
A Haley victory in D.C.’s GOP primary would “put our little group on the map,” said Dennis Paul, an 84-year-old semi-retired resident.
“She seems to grasp things very well,” he said. “She’s obviously good on fiscal policy. She’s vibrant and exciting.”
Joe, a long-time D.C. resident, praised Haley for her “message of real vigor and understanding of the issues.” He said he wants her to stay in the race as long as possible, even though it’s unlikely she can win.
“First of all, she’s not Joe Biden. Secondly, she’s not Donald Trump,” said Joe, who is in his 60s and who also requested only using his first name, but confirmed his last name is not “Biden.”
“Anywhere ― anywhere ― she can win and show momentum would be great,” Joe said of Haley.
Some attendees at Haley’s event said she has come to represent something much bigger than herself.
Antonia Ferrier, a former longtime senior aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and the late Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), is now a major donor to Haley’s campaign.
She said it’s clear there is a faction of voters who “feel almost voiceless in the Republican Party.” She rattled off recent polling that has deeply frustrated her: Nearly 70% of Americans don’t want a Biden-Trump rematch in November. Nearly 60% think they’re both too old. More than 40% of voters are registering as independent, tying a record high in 2014.
“There is a collective scream in this country,” said Ferrier, who is currently an executive at the International Republican Institute, a GOP nonprofit that advances democracy. “It’s like a collective scream for a leader we can be proud of. But the established political class refuses to listen to it because of their own feedback loops or whatever fucking reason, and Haley is giving voice to that.”
Ferrier said she wants the former South Carolina governor to stay in the race as long as she can, because “she is an affirmation of the politics saying there is a better way. She gets it. It’s clear she understands it.”
“There is another way for our country,” she emphasized.
Haley herself made this point at her campaign event on Friday.
“We don’t have to live the way we’re living now,” she told the room, to applause. “But we need to be part of the solution. We’re gonna fight for Super Tuesday.”
But what is Haley’s endgame, if it’s clear she can’t defeat Trump in the Republican primary but is continuing to campaign and raise money?
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if she knows,” replied Ferrier. “But you know what? There is something about just fighting for basic fucking common decency.”
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