The co-chair of Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign in the swing state of Georgia said many of her voters are still gettable for former President Donald Trump, but he has “a lot of work to do.”
Eric Tanenblatt, a veteran Georgia operative who served as Gov. Sonny Perdue’s chief of staff, said Haley voters were more than Never Trumpers and Democrats.
“There are some people who are probably gravitating toward Trump because he is the presumptive nominee,” Mr. Tanenblatt said. “Then you have people that will not vote for Donald Trump, and they are going to vote for President Biden or maybe one of the third-party candidates, and then you have a group of people who don’t really know what they are going to do.”
He put himself in the last category.
Ms. Haley pulled the plug on her campaign in early March after slogging it out longer than the rest of Mr. Trump’s Republican primary rivals.
She has yet to endorse Mr. Trump. Nor has she heard from him or Mr. Biden.
“No one on either side has been talking to us,” a source close to the Haley campaign said before dismissing the idea that she will nudge her supporters toward Mr. Biden. “She is a Republican, so a world in which she is helping Joe Biden is kind of fantasy land.”
As for prodding her voters toward Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley said at the end of her campaign that the onus was on him “to earn the votes.”
Her candidacy highlighted Mr. Trump’s unmatched strength with the base of the Republican Party and his potential weaknesses this fall with parts of the broader electorate.
Ms. Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations and governor of South Carolina, won hundreds of thousands of voters in key swing states. She ran strongest among moderate Republicans, independents and Democrats who crossed over to vote in open Republican primaries.
College-educated voters flocked to her campaign, along with voters who said Mr. Biden won the 2020 election and thought she had a better temperament than Mr. Trump.
Plus, her supporters thought her appeal outside traditional Republican circles — the same support Mr. Trump criticized — made her a nightmare matchup for Mr. Biden in November.
Those voters could swing the election in battleground states — including Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin — that have been decided by narrow margins in recent elections.
Mr. Biden has recognized that and welcomed Haley voters with open arms. His campaign recruits Haley donors and tests messages that could resonate with her primary supporters.
A recent Biden campaign ad highlights Mr. Trump’s harsh rhetoric toward Ms. Haley and her supporters.
“Birdbrain, I call her Birdbrain,” Mr. Trump says in a video clip in the ad. “Nikki Haley has made an unholy alliance with RINOs, Never Trumpers, Americans for no prosperity.”
The ad closes with the message “Save America. Join us.” written across the screen.
Mr. Trump did invite Ms. Haley’s supporters to join his movement when she exited the race, but only after celebrating the way she was “trounced” in the March 6 Super Tuesday contests and casting her supporters as “Radical Left Democrats.”
Mr. Trump’s post-New Hampshire primary vow weeks earlier to bar “anybody” who contributes to “Birdbrain” is a threat that still irks Haley backers.
“I felt he made that statement at his peril because those are the very voters — Republican voters like me that voted for him twice — that he needs to bring back into the fold to beat Biden and save our country,” said Leah Aldridge, who served as co-chair of Women for Nikki. “I am looking for him to reach out to voters like me, solidly Republican voters who felt Nikki Haley was a new generational conservative leader.”
Ms. Aldridge said a “surprising number of women” who worked for the Haley campaign will not back Mr. Trump, but she said her vote is Mr. Trump’s “to lose.”
He could help erase her lingering doubts about his bid by articulating a clearer vision for the future and “moving our country out of the division that we find ourselves in because it is hurting our families, communities, and our position in the world,” she said.
Former Rep. Thomas Davis III of Virginia, who supported Ms. Haley and has yet to go all-in with Mr. Trump, delivered a familiar critique. He said Mr. Trump should set aside his pugilistic instinct for a more disciplined, welcoming style.
“The question for him and Republicans, in general, is whether people would rather join a church that is welcoming to converts or a church that is chasing out heretics,” Mr. Davis said. “Right now, they resemble the latter. … Now that he has the nomination, it is time for him to be a little bit more magnanimous — open the tent a little a bit.”
Michigan state Rep. Mark Tisdel, a member of Ms. Haley’s leadership team in the state, said he plans to vote for a straight-party ticket this fall.
He said Mr. Trump could strengthen his hand in Michigan by targeting the women in the Detroit suburbs who supported Ms. Haley and have been turned off by his bravado over the years.
“Republicans and many independents had a great deal of appreciation for his political achievements, but the personality turned off enough people that even though he got millions of more votes the second time around, he still lost,” Mr. Tisdel said. “He should run on his record and leave the rest out. More than anything, act presidential.”
Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled Nikki Haley’s first name in a headline.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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