United States – Nikki Haley, a Republican presidential hopefully, said on Friday morning that she had raised $12 million in February alone, and this number will likely allow her to remain in the Republican primary beyond next Tuesday, irrespective of the fact that she may not win any of the next states’ primaries, foremost of which is Super Tuesday.
Haley’s Financial Edge Over Trump
The former ambassador to the United Nations said in January that she was out raising Trump both in money and that her not having a long-term plan to challenge had not impacted the donations she received in order to dent Trump’s commanding lead in the primary, as reported by Associated Press.
Haley has not yet been officially confirmed for her February total expenditures, and the next campaign finance reports are expected to be filed soon. One more solid month with donors, however, Haley claims it, proves that Republicans are ready to pick another candidate who is not Trump. While Haley served as the governor of South Carolina previously, she is now the only one who remains from a slew of Republican White House candidates that numbered more than a dozen once.
Trump, an unstoppable force in the GOP, had won every single primary contest before Saturday’s primary in Washington, D.C., among which was his crushing victory against Haley in South Carolina. However, Haley collected more cash than Trump in January, raising $12.5 million, while the fearless super PAC contributed another $12 million. The former president’s campaign alone raised over 8.8 million dollars in January, and the PAC supporting his candidacy raised an additional seven-point-three million.
When asked about Haley’s announcement of her impressive fundraising in February, Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, responded, “Our focus is now on Joe Biden and the general election.”
“Republican voters have delivered resounding wins for President Trump in every single primary contest, and this race is over,” Cheung said.
As Biden considers his own fundraising and travels across the country, the president, who is running for a second term, has also cast his net wider, primarily calling the former president a peril to the country’s core values and the future of the democracy.
Haley’s Stance on Trump
Haley said that she is “not anti-Trump,” and she doesn’t blame Republicans for voting for him either during the primaries. She campaigned in Washington DC just a day before the Republican primary, but the odds are not much, given how Democratic the city is. She was also tying up the evening on Friday in North Carolina, which was among the 15 states having Republican primaries on Tuesday.
Haley avoided questioning whether she saw herself winning a primary during Super Tuesday or beyond by saying: “I don’t look all the way down the road.” She has been reiterating to the media that her focus is only on Tuesday and that she would reconsider things after the results.
“Super Tuesday, we’re gonna try to be competitive. I hope we go forward. But this is all about, like, how competitive can we be?” Haley said in her Washington meeting with reporters. “Can we continue to show that there is a big number of Americans who are saying they want to go in this direction?”
No Labels
Haley has mentioned in the past that she has no aspirations of mounting a third-party presidential challenge against both Biden and Trump with the centrist No Labels group. She stated that she hadn’t talked to No Labels but added that she wouldn’t work with No Labels to mount a White House bid because she felt a Democrat would be needed as a running mate, as reported by Associated Press.
“I can’t do what I want to do as president with a Democrat vice president,” she said. “If I ran for No Labels, that would mean it’s about me. It’s not about me — it’s about the direction I think the country should go.”