Republican presidential candidate and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks during a news conference on Wednesday in Charleston, S.C.
Chris Carlson/AP
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Chris Carlson/AP
Republican presidential candidate and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks during a news conference on Wednesday in Charleston, S.C.
Chris Carlson/AP
Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, has officially suspended her presidential bid.
“The time has now come to suspend my campaign,” she said just moments into a speech near Charleston, S.C., on Wednesday. “I said I wanted Americans to have their voices heard. I have done that. I have no regrets. And although I will no longer be a candidate, I will not stop using my voice for the things I believe in.”
Haley is the last major candidate to challenge former President Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination. She did not endorse the front-runner, her former boss. Instead, she wished him well.
“In all likelihood Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee when our party convention meets in July. I congratulate him and wish him well,” she said. “I wish anyone well who would be America’s president.”
She encouraged Trump to reach out to her voters, calling it “his time for choosing.”
“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him,” Haley said. “And I hope he does that. At our best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away, and our conservative cause badly needs more people.”
In a post on Truth Social, his social media site, Trump said, “Haley got TROUNCED last night, in record setting fashion,” adding that he would “like to invite all of the Haley supporters to join” his campaign.
Meanwhile, President Biden reached out to Haley’s supporters in a statement, saying that he believed they shared common views on the dangers posed to democracy and American foreign policy by the now-presumptive GOP nominee.
“Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters. I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign,” Biden said in his statement.
Haley’s remarks came hours after a lackluster showing on Super Tuesday, when more than a dozen states and territories held presidential preference primary contests. Haley won just one, in Vermont.
Haley pledged to stay in the race even after losing to Trump in the first few states’ nominating contests, including her home state of South Carolina on Feb. 24.
Speaking to supporters in Charleston after that election, Haley said she was pressing on through Super Tuesday, and painted an increasingly dire picture of the state of the country and the high stakes for the presidential race.
“I couldn’t be more worried about America,” Haley said. “It seems like our country is falling apart. But here’s the thing — America will come apart if we make the wrong choices.”
In South Carolina, Haley argued that roughly 40% of primary voters had signaled their desire for an alternative to Trump by voting for her.
She’d been able to get Trump in a head-to-head race just before the New Hampshire primary, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped his bid for the nomination. But she still failed to meaningfully close the gap between herself and the former president in primary and nationwide polls.
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