By Nathan Layne, Gram Slattery and James Oliphant
ROCHESTER, N.H. (Reuters) – Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley will campaign across New Hampshire on Monday hoping to stall Donald Trump’s march to the Republican presidential nomination with an upset victory in Tuesday’s statewide vote.
Eight days after Trump coasted to a record-setting win in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation contest, the former president is aiming to deliver a fatal blow to Haley’s upstart campaign by notching another commanding victory.
The race was transformed into a one-on-one battle on Sunday, when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ended his struggling campaign months after he and Haley jockeyed to emerge as the leading Trump alternative.
For Haley, New Hampshire represents perhaps her final chance to demonstrate that the Republican base is willing to consider someone other than Trump, who has maintained his hold on the party’s faithful despite facing 91 felony counts. He has pleaded not guilty to every crime and claimed that he is the victim of political persecution.
The state’s large number of independent voters, who are permitted to cast ballots in Tuesday’s election, make New Hampshire friendlier turf for Haley than more conservative Iowa.
Even so, Trump holds a double-digit lead in most statewide public polls. While DeSantis had only around 6% support, he endorsed Trump upon leaving the race on Sunday, and his backers are more likely to transfer their allegiance to Trump, according to pollsters.
A Haley victory could give her campaign the momentum – and fundraising – it needs ahead of the next nominating contest on Feb. 24 in South Carolina, where she served two terms as governor. A Trump victory, meanwhile, would add to the air of inevitability he has sought to create around his candidacy.
The winner of this year’s Republican nominating contests will take on President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, in November’s general election.
While the Republican rivals campaign in New Hampshire, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will kick off a series of events intended to highlight Republican-backed limits on abortion that Democrats generally oppose.
Monday is the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the decision that established a nationwide right to abortion until the U.S. Supreme Court reversed it in 2022, galvanizing Democratic voters.
TRUMP TO ATTEND TRIAL
In a reminder of the myriad legal woes that he faces, Trump will spend the morning in a New York courtroom, where a federal jury is hearing the defamation case brought against Trump by author E. Jean Carroll, who says he raped her decades ago.
Trump, who has accused Carroll of making up the story to boost her memoir, may testify for the first time on Monday. As with his criminal cases, which he has frequently used in fundraising pleas, Trump has portrayed the case as part of a broader conspiracy by liberal forces to derail his candidacy.
A separate jury last May found Trump civilly liable for sexually abusing Carroll and ordered him to pay $5 million in damages, a result Trump called a “disgrace.”
He will travel to New Hampshire later in the day for a final rally in Laconia.
Haley has at least five events scheduled, including several appearances with New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, who has endorsed her.
In recent days, Haley, 52, has intensified her attacks on Trump, asserting the 77-year-old has suffered some cognitive decline since his time in the White House and criticizing him for embracing authoritarian foreign leaders.
At a rally on Sunday in Rochester, New Hampshire, Trump accused Haley of relying on an “unholy alliance” of liberals, ‘never-Trumpers’ who oppose him and RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only. He has used a version of her given first name, Nimarata, as an insult and amplified false posts on social media questioning her birthright U.S. citizenship.
Haley is the daughter of Indian immigrants and was born in South Carolina.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Rochester, New Hampshire, Gram Slattery in Exeter, New Hampshire and James Oliphant in Manchester, New Hampshire; Writing by Joseph Ax; editing by Miral Fahmy)
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