ROCHESTER, N.H. — No long lines of supporters were waiting hours to get into Nikki Haley’s campaign rally Wednesday night, but even without Donald Trump-level enthusiasm, she is the biggest threat to the former president in Tuesday’s critical primary.
Ms. Haley, 51, arrived in New Hampshire this week after placing third in the Iowa caucuses but close enough to a second-place finish to make her a contender in the state, where polls show her within 16 percentage points of Mr. Trump.
New Hampshire is the most competitive contest in any of the early-voting states, all otherwise dominated outright by Mr. Trump, and Ms. Haley is fighting here to upend the battle for the nomination by winning it.
Moments after taking the stage at a packed rally in Rochester, she attacked Mr. Trump for overspending while he was president, which she promised to stop.
“He put us $8 trillion in debt in four years,” Ms. Haley said. “Our kids are never going to forgive us for that.”
Ms. Haley, a former South Carolina governor, has polled solidly in second place behind Mr. Trump for weeks in New Hampshire, where the base of Republican voters is far less socially conservative or evangelical than in Iowa.
She is also expected to benefit from the state’s undeclared voters, who outnumber Republicans and who can vote in the primary. Among them are throngs of Biden voters who no longer favor the president because of his age, waning mental acuity and job performance.
Hampton software manager Eric Cady said he voted consistently for Republicans until Mr. Trump ran for office, then he started voting for Democrats because, he said, he despises Mr. Trump.
He can’t stomach another term for President Biden, so he supports Ms. Haley.
“There are a lot of people here who are in the center that really don’t like his fringe attitude. He’s off-putting,” Mr. Cady said.
Ms. Haley, he said, is intelligent, reasonable, has character and a worldview.
“That’s a lot of things we don’t have right now,” Mr. Cady said.
A Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll released Wednesday showed Mr. Trump ahead of Ms. Haley by 16 percentage points. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who placed second in Iowa after pouring most of his campaign resources into the state, got just 5% of the vote and is focused primarily on South Carolina.
The numbers have allowed Ms. Haley to boast that the contest is now a two-person race that pits her against Mr. Trump.
Analysts warn it will soon be a one-person race — not involving her — unless she wins in New Hampshire or finishes close to the former president.
“New Hampshire is critical to Haley’s chances of winning the GOP nomination,” Andrew E. Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, told The Washington Times. “If she does not win in New Hampshire, she really doesn’t have a path to the nomination.”
Ms. Haley is also facing pressure from donors, who have poured money into her campaign, enabling her to saturate the state with mailers and television ads attacking Mr. Trump.
She is campaigning as a conservative candidate who can beat Mr. Biden in November and won’t be dragged down by legal battles and other “drama,” which, she tells supporters, follows Mr. Trump everywhere.
Ms. Haley promoted polls showing her winning by as much as 17 points in the general election. “On a good day,” she said of Mr. Trump, “he’s up by 2 points.”
Mr. Trump has called the poll giving Ms. Haley a 17-point advantage “fake.”
She accused Mr. Trump of lying about her, particularly her stance on closing the southern border to illegal immigrants and that she wants to end Social Security.
“What I have said is I am the only candidate who has said we need to do something about Social Security,” raise the retirement age for people in their 20s and limit benefits for “the mega-wealthy.”
She told the Rochester crowd she would push for tougher border security, deporting illegal immigrants, veterans health care, a comprehensive energy policy that includes fossil fuels, and term limits for elected leaders.
“These are people making decisions about our national security. These are people making decisions about the future of our economy,” she said. “We need people at the top of their game.”
Not exactly running scared, Mr. Trump isn’t ignoring Ms. Haley.
He is campaigning in New Hampshire like he has real competition, with rallies scheduled across the state most nights leading up to the Tuesday primary.
He criticized Ms. Haley extensively at his New Hampshire events this week and said her campaign is funded by Democrats who want to keep him from winning another term in the White House.
He claimed Ms. Haley underperformed during her tenure as his ambassador to the United Nations and that her boast that she had spearheaded tough negotiations with China were false because he had done it himself.
“I worked with her,” Mr. Trump confided to hundreds of supporters packed into a rally in Atkinson this week. “She was OK. Not great. She’s not tough enough to deal with these people.”
Ms. Haley’s path to the nomination shrinks considerably if she does not either win New Hampshire or come very close to defeating Mr. Trump.
He is leading by dozens of points in South Carolina, her home state, which holds a primary on Feb. 24.
Mr. Smith said she will benefit from Mr. DeSantis’ name on the ballot in New Hampshire.
Mr. DeSantis “staying in will pull some votes away from Trump,” Mr. Smith said, but the former president doesn’t necessarily need a huge win in New Hampshire as he is poised to sweep other contests.
“If he defeats Haley, the race is essentially over,” he said.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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