Officials from Nikki Haley’s campaign said Monday that she raised $16.5 million in January, her largest monthly fundraising total to date, adding another cash infusion to the $14.6 million her campaign raised New Year brought in to continue the nomination fight with Donald J. Trump leaving.
Public polls have shown that Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, has made little progress in closing the gap with the former president, either in her home state, which hosts the Republican primary on Feb. 24, or nationally .
But a series of fundraising events and national publicity, including a surprise appearance on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” have kept a lid on chatter that she might soon withdraw from the race. Her fundraising numbers announced in January, including $11.7 million from digital and direct mail campaigns and 69,274 new donors, signaled her desire not to give up.
“We will have the resources to go the distance,” Betsy Ankeny, Ms. Haley’s campaign manager, told reporters Monday morning. “We will continue to fight as long as we have the momentum and the resources to do so.”
Ms. Ankeny freely acknowledged that Ms. Haley was up against long odds, but argued that she did better than public opinion polls in the New Hampshire primary two weeks ago. Since then, Ms. Haley has toured South Carolina, while Mr. Trump has yet to hold a public event in the state since New Hampshire.
“This is a race to lead the free world,” Ms. Ankeny said. “It should be hard.”
Ms. Ankeny argued that if Mr. Trump won the nomination, public attention would focus on his liabilities, particularly the four criminal cases pending against him, his propensity for temper tantrums and the deep antipathy that many voters have for the former president.
Regardless of current polls, “we’ve seen this movie before,” she said, pointing to Republican losses in the House in 2018 and the White House and Senate in 2020.
“The Republicans will lose,” she predicted in November of a rematch between Mr. Trump and President Biden.
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2024-02-05 17:30:15
www.nytimes.com
