MANCHESTER, N.H. — Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley warned New Hampshire primary voters Monday that a rematch between former President Donald Trump and President Biden would become bogged down in political infighting and would not address what voters really care about.
Ms. Haley, appearing at a rally in Franklin a day ahead of the state’s first-in-the-nation primary, said polls show voters do not want Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden facing off again on the November ballot.
“The majority of Americans disapprove of Trump and Biden and what they are doing,” Ms. Haley said. “When you hear Trump speak, what’s he talking about? Grievances of the past. He’s talking about vendettas.”
Ms. Haley is trailing Mr. Trump by 19 points in the latest Suffolk University tracking poll in a race narrowed to just two candidates after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out on Sunday.
Ms. Haley is courting the anti-Trump vote and told prospective supporters on Monday the legally embattled Trump would bring more “chaos,” and that the country could not survive another four years of him leading the country.
“Today, he’s in court,” she said of the former president.
Mr. Trump is facing 91 criminal charges in four separate cases as well as civil litigation. He was slated to appear in a Manhattan courtroom Monday for the penalty phase of a lawsuit filed against him by columnist E. Jean Carroll, but the hearing was postponed due to COVID-19 concerns among courtroom participants.
As for Mr. Biden, Ms. Haley pointed to his talk of conducting his own investigations against Mr. Trump.
“Neither one of them is talking about the future,” she said.
Ms. Haley said Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden are “in a dead heat” in general election matchup polls, and said she would fare much better against the incumbent president.
Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump both lead Mr. Biden in polls by an average of one to two points.
Ms. Haley promoted a Wall Street Journal poll, taken in late November through early December, that showed her beating Mr. Biden by 17 points, a much greater advantage than Mr. Trump, who came out ahead of Mr. Biden by 4 points in the same poll.
“That’s a mandate to stop the wasteful spending and get our economy back on track,” Ms. Haley told the crowd in Franklin. “That’s a mandate to get our kids reading again and go back to the basics and education. That’s a mandate to secure our border with no more excuses. That’s a mandate for law and order in our country. And that’s a mandate for a strong America that we can be proud of. Don’t you want that?”
Mr. Trump called the Wall Street Journal poll “phony,” and said Ms. Haley is attracting Democratic voters in New Hampshire who are backing her solely to keep him off the ballot because they know he can defeat Mr. Biden.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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