Nikki Haley Planning To End Presidential Campaign: Reports

Nikki Haley is reportedly planning to announce on Wednesday that she is suspending her GOP presidential primary campaign following her weak showings on Super Tuesday as Donald Trump seems poised to clinch the Republican presidential nomination for a third time.

Haley will deliver remarks to her supporters in South Carolina at 10 a.m. Wednesday. She is not expected to endorse Trump but will still urge the former president to appeal to the GOP and independent voters who backed her campaign, according to The Wall Street Journal , which first reported the news of her upcoming announcement.

While Haley did not hold any public events Tuesday evening, fuelling speculation about the future of her White House bid, her campaign issued a statement praising her performance and delivering a warning to the GOP.

In state after state, there remains a large block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump, Haley national spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said Tuesday. That is not the unity our party needs for success.

Perez-Cubas added, Addressing those voters concerns will make the Republican Party and America better.

Haley managed to score a surprise victory in Vermont against the former president, a few days after she became the first woman to ever win a Republican presidential primary with her victory in Washington, D.C . 

Still, Haley concluded the benchmark for staying in the race was not reached and told only a circle of close aides late Tuesday that she planned to drop out, an adviser told CNN . The unnamed adviser told the network that Haley was hoping to get at least 40% of the vote in several states to justify continuing her long-shot White House bid.

The former South Carolina governor and ex-ambassador to the United Nations was the first Republican to enter the race, arguing she represented a new generation of leadership for the GOP . And she was the last remaining in the primary against Trump, coming in a distant second place in both the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries and failing to notch enough significant wins on Super Tuesday.

But ultimately, even with the backing of a PAC associated with the Koch political network  and a strong fundraising apparatus, Haley struggled to define herself within a Republican Party that remains in thrall to Trump. Americans for Prosperity Action, the powerful Koch-affiliated advocacy network, said after the South Carolina primary that it was withdrawing its financial support from Haley , seeing no path for her in the race.

Buoyed by several strong debate performances, Haley popped in the polls prior to the Iowa caucuses but still trailed Trump by double digits even as many of those same polls gave her a better chance of beating President Joe Biden in a general election than Trump. Haley finished third in the Iowa caucuses with 19% of the vote, behind Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. In her home state primary, Haley trailed Trump by 20 points. 

Haley attempted to stake out a more moderate position on abortion , declining to specify a gestational cutoff for a federal ban. She also broke from some of her GOP rivals in her support of U.S. military aid for Ukraine .

Haley, once a member of Trumps cabinet as U.N. ambassador, had tried to thread a needle on the former president. At first, she argued that it was time for the GOP to move on from the former president, without forcefully criticizing him and after saying in 2021 that she wouldnt even mount a White House run against him . 

But she pivoted in the final weeks of her campaign, arguing Trump would rule as a king if given a second term. Haley, 52, also argued that few voters want a repeat of the 2020 election with two candidates in their 70s.

Do we really want to spend every day between now and November watching Americas two most disliked politicians duke it out? No sane person wants that, Haley said in a February address.

Polling showed that Haley picked up support from some Democrats and independents eager to prevent another Biden-Trump rematch. Even so, Haley, careful not to shrink her GOP base, never campaigned as an out-and-out Never Trumper and still praised Trump for being the right president at the right time.

Many of Haleys policy positions remained undefined through the end of her campaign, as her main argument for office was being able to provide experienced, steady leadership, in contrast to Trumps chaos .

She nonetheless managed to outlast nearly all of her opponents, including DeSantis, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, fellow South Carolinian Sen. Tim Scott and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.