By Michelle Nichols and Gram Slattery
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said Wednesday that she will vote in favor Donald Trump in the November elections, despite having harshly criticized her former rival for months during her campaign.
There has been enormous speculation about who will get the votes of Haley’s supporters in the Nov. 5 general election rematch between Trump and the Democratic Party. President Joe Biden.
Although Haley dropped her bid for the Republican presidential nomination in March, her name has remained on the ballot and she continues to routinely win well over 10% of the vote in state-run primaries despite no longer campaigning.
Many of those votes are being cast by Republicans and independents dissatisfied with Trump, and some Democrats have begun to rally their support.
Haley, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for two years when Trump was in power, never seriously challenged the former president for the nomination. She won only one state and the District of Columbia before ending her campaign. But her fierce attacks on his character and competence in the final months of her campaign made Haley the standard-bearer for the Republican Party’s dwindling anti-Trump wing.
“Trump has not been perfect on this policy. I have made that clear many times. But Biden has been a catastrophe. So I will vote for Trump,” Haley told an audience during a question-and-answer session Wednesday at the Washington-based Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank.
The comments followed a speech on foreign policy, and the event marked Haley’s first public appearance since quitting.
When she ended her campaign, she did not endorse Trump, and she still has not formally done so.
In the past, she has called on Trump to reach out to her supporters and earn their votes — comments she repeated Wednesday.
“Trump would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me, and not assume they will just stick with him,” Haley said.
Trump’s campaign has generally rejected these calls, arguing that Haley’s supporters tend to vote for Democrats even though many are registered Republicans.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery in Washington and Michelle Nichols in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
