Former President Donald J. Trump won the Republican presidential primary in Michigan on Tuesday, moving closer to a general election rematch against President Biden.
Mr. Biden easily won his own primary despite facing increasing resistance from voters who protested his unwavering support of Israel and its military operation in Gaza by voting not for another candidate but for “non-committal.” The Associated Press called both contests as soon as polls closed at 9 p.m. Eastern Time.
Mr. Trump’s victory over Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, extends an unbroken streak in the nominating contests. It’s Michigan’s sixth straight triumph and its second after Nevada, in a state that’s expected to be a key battleground in November.
“We’re winning Michigan, we’re winning the whole thing,” Mr. Trump told Michigan GOP Watch Party supporters over the phone after the race was called, according to a transcript of the call provided by his campaign. He added that Tuesday’s results were “far better than expected.”
As of 10:45 p.m. Eastern Time, Mr. Trump had 67 percent of the vote to Ms. Haley’s 28 percent, while 3 percent had marked the ballots as “non-binding.” Mr. Trump said in a radio interview earlier in the day that he expected Ms. Haley to “lose by about 80 points.”
Mr. Trump and his team were eager to look beyond the primaries, citing his victories in early states as evidence that it was time for Ms. Haley to abandon the primaries.
The former president, who faces 91 felony charges in four separate criminal cases, is also pressed for time as he seeks to complete his nomination. His first criminal trial is scheduled to begin in Manhattan at the end of March.
During her campaign stops in Michigan this week, Ms. Haley also focused heavily on the general election, arguing that she was by far the better candidate to take on Mr. Biden.
In a statement after the race was called, a spokeswoman for the Haley campaign, Olivia Perez-Cubas, said the share of Republican voters who did not support Mr. Trump was a “blinking warning sign for Trump in November.” She also pointed out that since Mr. Trump’s election to the White House in 2016, Republicans have lost the Michigan governor’s mansion and both chambers of the state legislature to Democrats.
Ms. Haley, who continues to court backers and reported raising $16.5 million in January, said she would continue to compete in the Super Tuesday contests on March 5. So far she has picked up delegates in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. But overall she is well behind Mr. Trump.
Ms. Haley will meet the delegates in Michigan. Sixteen of the state’s 55 delegates were up for election on Tuesday, and they are allocated proportionally based on the total number of votes. According to the Associated Press on Tuesday evening, Ms. Haley was recognized with at least two awards.
But Mr Trump is the clear favorite to receive a majority of the remaining 39 delegates as he remains extremely popular with Republicans. Those will be allocated Saturday when rival factions of the Michigan Republican Party will hold dueling caucuses after a months-long leadership battle that has plunged the state party into chaos.
Both sides are led by people loyal to Mr. Trump, although the state’s Republicans appear divided between factions.
Pete Hoekstra, a former congressman and former ambassador to the Netherlands under Mr. Trump, has been officially recognized by the Republican National Committee as state party chairman. Mr. Trump endorsed him for the post after several state party officials voted last month to remove from office Kristina Karamo, a 2020 election denier who took control last year.
Ms. Karamo, one of several far-right activists who rose to the top of state Republican parties by supporting Mr. Trump’s false claims of voter fraud, has refused to accept her ouster. She has argued that both the vote to remove her and the election of Mr Hoekstra were unlawful.
A judge on Tuesday essentially ordered Ms. Karamo to resign, ruling that she had been lawfully removed from office and ordering her not to impersonate the state party leader or conduct business on behalf of the party. But Ms. Karamo did not tell reporters whether she planned to abandon her plans for a congress on Saturday.
Mr. Trump did not campaign heavily in Michigan before the primary and held only one rally here this year. However, the state is expected to take a critical stance in November after failing in the last two elections.
Mr. Trump won the state by nearly 11,000 votes in 2016, helping him defeat Hillary Clinton and win the White House. Four years later, Mr. Biden beat him in Michigan by a more comfortable 154,000 votes — and in 2022, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who has strongly supported Mr. Biden, ran for re-election as Democrats took control of the Legislature.
In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Biden briefly celebrated his victory in the Michigan primary and then almost immediately attacked Mr. Trump in a preview of their campaign.
Mr. Trump had made Michigan a target in his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, and Michigan’s attorney general filed criminal charges last year against 16 Republicans for falsely impersonating the state’s voters. These Republicans were part of a larger plan to create false lists of voters who endorsed Mr. Trump in battleground states that he lost to Mr. Biden.
The former president campaigned for the White House again this year and continued to spread the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Nicholas Nehamas contributed reporting.
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2024-02-28 04:15:50
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