BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley will be making a stop in Minnesota next week as part of a cross-country blitz of Super Tuesday states.
Haley's campaign announced the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor will hold an evening campaign event at the DoubleTree in Bloomington on Monday, Feb. 26. She's also planning stops in Michigan, Colorado, Utah, Virginia, Washington, D.C., North Carolina and Massachusetts during the week.
Haley is the last major Republican candidate challenging former President Donald Trump for the 2024 GOP nomination.
In a speech to supporters Tuesday, Haley declared, “I refuse to quit."
And in an interview with the Associated Press, she vowed to stay in the fight against Trump at least until after Super Tuesday’s slate of more than a dozen contests on March 5 — even if she suffers a big loss in her home state Saturday.
“Ten days after South Carolina, another 20 states vote. I mean, this isn’t Russia. We don’t want someone to go in and just get 99% of the vote,” Haley told The Associated Press. “What is the rush? Why is everybody so panicked about me having to get out of this race?”
In fact, some Republicans are encouraging Haley to stay in the campaign even if she continues to lose — potentially all the way to the Republican National Convention in July in the event the 77-year-old former president, perhaps the most volatile major party front-runner in U.S. history, becomes a convicted felon or stumbles into another major scandal.
As Trump's “Make America Great Again” movement presses for her exit, a defiant Haley on Tuesday repeatedly likened Trump to Democratic President Joe Biden —and both as too old, too divisive and too unpopular to be the only options for voters this fall.
She also pushed back when asked if there is any primary state where she can defeat Trump.
“Instead of asking me what states I'm gonna win, why don't we ask how he's gonna win a general election after spending a full year in a courtroom?”
Ahead of Haley's speech Tuesday, Trump's campaign released a memo predicting that Haley would be forced out of the race after losing her home state Saturday.
“The true ‘State’ of Nikki Haley’s campaign?” Trump’s campaign chiefs wrote. “Broken down, out of ideas, out of gas, and completely outperformed by every measure, by Donald Trump.”
Eager to pivot toward a general election matchup against Biden, the Republican former president is also taking aggressive steps to assume control of the Republican National Committee, the GOP's nationwide political machine, which is supposed to stay neutral in presidential primary elections. Last week, Trump announced plans to install his campaign's senior adviser Chris LaCivita, as RNC's chief operating officer and daughter-in-law Lara Trump as the committee's co-chair.
Former Republican presidential contender Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, said it was time for the party to unite behind Trump during an unrelated South Carolina appearance on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Biden was asked as he departed the White House on Tuesday whether he preferred to go up against Haley or Trump this fall.
“Oh, I don’t care,” the president said.
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