(Manchester) Six days before the Republican primary in New Hampshire, Nikki Haley, the only woman on the right to run for the White House, is throwing all her strength into the battle to rally moderate and independent voters to her cause, in the hope of shaking up the domination of an arch-favorite Donald Trump.
The former US ambassador to the UN and ex-governor of South Carolina is due to hold a rally in the small town of Rochester, while Donald Trump will be in Portsmouth, a fishing town on the coast.
Initially considered as having little chance of making an impact, Nikki Haley, 51, has slowly but surely won over some of the Republicans, collecting support and rising in the polls as well as in pledges of donations.
But her star faded after the first of the Iowa Republican caucuses on Monday, when she came in third behind a triumphant Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis who beat her by two points.
She is therefore under pressure to do better than the latter, governor of Florida, and obtain a good score, or even victory in New Hampshire to try to compete with Mr. Trump.
The ex-president, indicted several times, returned again on Wednesday to his civil trial in New York, between two campaign meetings. For the moment, his legal setbacks hardly seem to move his supporters.
“Real battle”
The New Hampshire primary will be open to voters who are not affiliated with either party, which could benefit a perceived less radical candidate such as Nikki Haley.
On Tuesday, in this state in the northeast of the country, she repeated that she was “very close to Donald Trump” in the polls (a recent CNN opinion survey places her a few points behind him).
In Iowa, “we finished with a good performance. This is what we wanted,” she said, referring to her 19% in this Midwestern state (51% for Mr. Trump).
The Republican governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, one of his supporters, judged that a victory for the ex-president was not a foregone conclusion and that New Hampshire was shaping up to be “a real battle”.
“If she scores well, if she comes in close first or second in New Hampshire, then that will give her the momentum and the enthusiasm and the attention that will carry her to [la primaire de] her state of South Carolina, where she can […] maybe change the dynamic,” he said on CNN.
In the days to come, Nikki Haley’s challenge will be to convince moderate or undecided voters like Alen Hancock, a septuagenarian who says he is “interested in the three Republicans who came first” and plans to brave the cold to listen to the candidate in gathering in Rochester.
This financial management advisor wants to get rid of Joe Biden, whom he describes as “idiot”, but is hesitant about Donald Trump whom he finds “rude” even if he “believes a lot in what he does”.
“I would have liked us to have someone solid, and younger, who really cares about the country,” he adds.
Target
Nikki Haley must also reassure her donors. According to American media, if she fails to achieve an unlikely victory in New Hampshire or does not come second just behind Mr. Trump, then they will write off her race.
“I would still like to see her get somewhere, but the mountain she has to climb is huge,” businessman Andy Sabin, who is raising money for her, told CNBC.
Donald Trump has in any case made Mme Haley is her current target to take down as evidenced by her latest publications on her Truth Social network. One of them, a photo montage, shows Nikki Haley in the guise of Hillary Clinton, the Democrat he beat in 2016 and whom he despises.
And he made a point of alluding to the foreign origins of this daughter of Indian immigrants by recalling (and misspelling) her first name, “Nimrada” (she was in fact born Nimarata Nikki Randhawa and took the last name of her husband).
On Tuesday night, he also attacked her in front of a crowd of supporters in New Hampshire.
“Nikki Haley is particularly counting on Democrats and liberals to infiltrate your Republican primaries,” Donald Trump said on stage. “If she wins, Biden wins,” he asserted.
The competition for the Republican nomination will formally end in July at the Conservative Party convention.