Nikki Haley looks likely to remain in the Republican presidential race and take part in the Super Tuesday primaries on March 5, even as big donors such as the Koch network stop their spending on her longshot run, according to one expert in campaign finance.
“Does she have the money to hang on until the first Tuesday in March? Absolutely, she does,” said Robin Kolodny, a professor of political science at Temple University. Kolodny stressed that the bare minimum for staying in any race is getting on the ballot, and Haley seems to have that under control.
“The only thing that she really has to pay for is staff salaries, and $13 million will cover that,” Kolodny told MarketWatch, referring to a disclosure last week that showed Haley’s campaign started the month of February with $13 million in cash on hand.
Additional money would allow Haley to buy TV and radio ads, but it’s also possible to get a lot of free publicity from news reports, Kolodny said. She also made a point that many analysts have been emphasizing — that Haley might end up with an eventual opening due to GOP front-runner Donald Trump’s legal problems.
Trump is appealing a civil fraud judgment in New York that leaves him on the hook for more than $454 million in fines and interest, and criminal cases against the former president are also ongoing.
“A lot can happen still,” Kolodny said.
But she also said Haley could end up suspending her White House campaign after Super Tuesday. Haley herself appeared to leave the door open to exiting after March 5, when more than a dozen U.S. states are slated to hold their primaries.
“We’re going to keep going all the way through Super Tuesday. That’s as far as I’ve thought in terms of going forward,” the former South Carolina governor told reporters on Saturday, ahead of Trump’s victory in her home state’s primary.
In addition to the Haley campaign’s $13 million in cash at the start of February, the main super PAC that is supporting her, SFA Fund Inc., had $2 million in cash on hand at that time, according to a separate disclosure filed last week. Disclosures covering February activities aren’t due until late March.
Hedge-fund founder Ken Griffin has been among the big donors to that super PAC, but Griffin suggested last month that he might be done contributing, saying he’ll “focus on actively supporting U.S. House and Senate candidates.”
The Koch network’s Americans for Prosperity organization generated headlines on Sunday by making a similar statement, saying it would concentrate its resources on House and Senate campaigns.
Haley’s campaign on Sunday thanked the organization in a statement while also saying the campaign had just raised more than $1 million from “grassroots conservatives” in 24 hours, so it had “plenty of fuel to keep going.”
Trump offered a response as well, sounding off in a social-media post on Monday. “AMERICAN’S FOR NO PROSPERITY HAVE JUST STATED THAT HALEY HAS NO CHANCE TO WIN, AND THEY WILL STOP FUNDING HER CAMPAIGN, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY. WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY!” he wrote.
Trump is expected to defeat Haley on Tuesday in Michigan’s GOP primary. He has a 52-point lead in a RealClearPolitics average of polls focused on that state.
Haley’s campaign said in a statement on Monday that she would “criss-cross the country through Super Tuesday” and highlighted rallies planned for the days ahead, including in Colorado on Tuesday, Utah on Wednesday, Virginia on Thursday, North Carolina and Washington, D.C., on Friday, and North Carolina and Massachusetts on Saturday.
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