Michael Dwyer/AP
GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley just won the Washington, DC, primary, beating former president Donald Trump by almost 30 points, with nearly 63 percent of the vote. It’s her first success in a primary that has so far been an uphill battle for the former South Carolina governor.
Haley made something of a power move to try to win the 19 delegates in DC, a blue city where fewer than 5 percent of voters are registered Republicans. On Friday, she held a rally at the Madison Hotel downtown, where the GOP also had set up the only primary voting site. A party volunteer outside the polling station explained to me that the DC GOP was forced to pay for and hold its primary earlier than the regular June 4th DC primary, because Republican National Committee rules require delegates to be elected at least six weeks before the national convention, which is scheduled for July 15 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Presidential candidates tend to skip DC on the campaign trail unless they’re in town for some other event, such as a fundraiser. DC GOP chair Patrick Mara told me he often jokes, “Even Abe Lincoln didn’t show up for our primary.” But Haley’s decision to make a stop in DC seemed savvy, bringing hundreds of people directly to the polling station in a city where she had a decent shot of winning.
The DC Republican Party skews moderate. In 2016, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) won the primary, with former Ohio Governor John Kasich coming in for a close second. Trump won only 391 votes that year. (He was the only candidate on the GOP ballot in 2020.) So the conditions were ripe for a 2024 Haley victory.
The turnout for her rally was surprisingly large, and not even everyone was from Virginia. Campaign volunteers told me several hundred people had come in before Haley arrived for her 12:30 pm speech.
“I politically adore the woman,” said Tom Davy, a 63-year-old native Washingtonian who was waiting in line to get into the ballroom after casting a ballot Friday for Haley. “I like the fact that she’s an accountant.”
Haley’s speech to the packed house was a throwback to simpler, more civil times. She opened by talking about shrinking big government, lowering taxes, and balancing the budget—traditional GOP platforms that have all but vanished from public discourse since Trump and the forces of MAGA took over the party. Her slogan might well have been “Making America Normal Again.” She asked the audience to visualize a future where people could enjoy Thanksgiving again. “Can you imagine a country where we could sit down at the dinner table and not have a political fight?” she asked. “The reason I’m doing this is for my kids and your kids and the younger generation. They deserve to know what normal feels like.”
She had sharp words for both Trump and Biden, but Haley reserved some of her most pointed criticism for Trump, calling him out for spending campaign contributions on his personal court cases and trying to get the RNC to cancel the primary. “We don’t anoint kings in America,” Haley said. “We have elections.”
Trump, meanwhile, took a different approach to persuade DC voters: He threatened them. On Friday, Politico reported that the campaign had made it known to lobbyists in the city that if they didn’t get out and vote for him in the DC primary, they shouldn’t bother trying to get access to anyone in his next administration. “If you don’t bother voting, don’t bother calling,” one Trump campaign official told the outlet. The Trump campaign clearly underestimated how many lobbyists actually live in DC, as opposed to say, Virginia or Maryland. After the victory, Haley’s campaign released a statement noting that Haley is the first woman to ever win a GOP primary. “It’s not surprising that Republicans closest to Washington dysfunction are rejecting Donald Trump and all his chaos,” she said.
Despite Haley’s rally at the Madison, fewer than 2,000 people cast a vote in the local GOP primary, down from 2,800 in 2016 and 5,200 in 2012—a sign, perhaps, of the party’s dwindling numbers in the Nation’s Capital. The win, however, probably won’t keep Haley in the race beyond this week’s Super Tuesday conteste. She was crushed by Trump in the Idaho and Missouri caucuses and the Michigan GOP convention on Saturday. But perhaps the win will turn Haley into a DC statehood supporter. Voters in the District of Columbia are taxed without representation in Congress—a conservative cause if there ever were one.
The Trump campaign issued a statement Sunday night minimizing the loss. “Tonight’s results in Washington, DC, reaffirm the object of President Trump’s campaign — he will drain the swamp and put America first,” said Trump Campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt. “While Nikki has been soundly rejected throughout the rest of America, she was just crowned Queen of the Swamp by the lobbyists and DC insiders that want to protect the failed status quo. The swamp has claimed their queen.”
