Republican presidential candidate former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks throughout a marketing campaign occasion on March 1 in Charlotte, N.C.

Chris Carlson/AP

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Chris Carlson/AP

Republican presidential candidate former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks throughout a marketing campaign occasion on March 1 in Charlotte, N.C.

Chris Carlson/AP

Nikki Haley, the final main candidate to problem former President Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination, will droop her presidential marketing campaign Wednesday, based on sources acquainted with her plans.

The marketing campaign despatched an electronic mail early Wednesday morning, inviting press to attend ready remarks at 10 a.m. ET in Charleston, S.C. Her anticipated suspension comes early after a lackluster showing on Super Tuesday, when greater than a dozen states and territories held presidential desire major contests. Haley won just one, in Vermont.

A former South Carolina governor and Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, Haley pledged to remain within the race even after losing to Trump within the first few states’ nominating contests, including her home state of South Carolina on Feb. 24.

Speaking to supporters in Charleston after that election, Haley mentioned she was pressing on through Super Tuesday, and painted an more and more dire image of the state of the nation and the excessive stakes for the presidential race.

“I couldn’t be more worried about America,” Haley mentioned. “It seems like our country is falling apart. But here’s the thing — America will come apart if we make the wrong choices.”

In South Carolina, Haley argued that roughly 40% of major voters had signaled their want for an alternative choice to Trump by voting for her.

She’d been in a position to get Trump in a head-to-head race simply earlier than the New Hampshire major, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped his bid for the nomination. But she nonetheless didn’t meaningfully shut the hole between herself and the previous president in major and nationwide polls.

Throughout her marketing campaign, which launched in February 2023, additionally in Charleston, S.C., Haley framed her unique status as a girl of coloration within the Republican subject as proof for the viability of the American dream.

“I don’t believe in glass ceilings,” she advised supporters at her marketing campaign launch in Charleston. “I believe in creating a country where anybody can do anything and create their own American dream.”

Haley’s political resume

When Haley joined the race final February, she got here into it with in depth political expertise. First elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 2004, beating a 30-year incumbent Republican, she then went on to function the state’s first nonwhite and girl governor.

Haley gained nationwide recognition for her response to a racist 2015 shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston that killed 9 Black churchgoers. In response to that capturing, she led the trouble to remove the Confederate flag from the state capitol grounds. Then, in 2017, Trump appointed her to signify the U.S. on the United Nations, the place she turned recognized for her hawkish overseas coverage.

That resume couldn’t overcome, nonetheless, a Republican Party that moved extra within the course of Trump after she served as governor.

Finding a steadiness

Haley generally appeared to struggle along with her messaging as she straddled the tough line between pleasing the Republican base and interesting to independents, average Republicans and different voters who’re disaffected with Trump. In considered one of her most notable gaffes, Haley didn’t establish slavery as the reason for the Civil War when questioned throughout a marketing campaign cease in New Hampshire, a remark she rapidly walked again.

She also stumbled in her response to a controversial Alabama Supreme Court ruling that threatened entry to the fertility process in vitro fertilization, or IVF — a process that has overwhelming public support, together with amongst many citizens who oppose abortion rights.

Asked for her ideas in an interview with NBC’s Ali Vitali, Haley mentioned, “Embryos, to me, are babies,” earlier than clarifying her help for entry to the process in subsequent interviews. Haley later advised Newsmax, “you don’t want to take those fertility treatments away from women.”

Haley spent the final a number of weeks of her marketing campaign stepping up her attacks on each Trump and President Biden, emphasizing each candidates’ comparatively superior age. She additionally went after Vice President Kamala Harris, warning South Carolina voters that the United States would quickly have a feminine president: both Haley or Harris — one other jab at Biden’s age and perceived frailty that additionally drew a distinction between her and Trump.

An uphill struggle towards Trump

But her anti-Trump messaging and elevated assaults on his age didn’t chip away at his resounding reputation amongst Republicans and loyalty inside his MAGA base.

Even although Haley was a well-liked governor whereas she led South Carolina, the previous president’s standing within the state proved to trump hers within the state, which has a excessive share of voters who take into account themselves “very conservative,” a big white and evangelical Christian inhabitants, and, notably, not many independents — a voting bloc that leaned towards Haley within the New Hampshire primary.

Trump additionally fought aggressively towards Haley within the ultimate days of the race, ramping up his assaults and advertisements towards her.

Notably, in remarks on Tuesday night as outcomes continued to roll in from the first contests, Trump spoke however didn’t point out Haley.

With Haley’s departure from the race, a general-election rematch between Trump and Biden seems all however official. Neither candidate can safe sufficient delegates to be the presumptive nominee till mid- to late-March.