GOP presidential contender Nikki Haley is trying to court Democratic and independent voters in her home state of South Carolina to back her in a longshot bid to defeat former President Donald Trump.
However, The Bulwark's Marc Caputo reports that this effort is backfiring because her campaign has overloaded these voters with nonstop spam that is driving them to distraction.
The problem was illustrated by Debari Barber, a 41-year-old banking analyst and Democratic voter who had a Facebook comment go viral recently when she told Haley to "lose our number" because she was so tired of the nonstop messages from the campaign.
In an interview with Caputo, Barber explained what was driving her frustration.
"My cousin’s son is only 12 and he keeps getting text messages and he started asking ‘Mama, who is Nikki?’ It’s just aggravating,” she said. “Take us out the group chat. We don’t want to be in it.”
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To make matters worse, Barber says that even replying "STOP" to the messages doesn't seem to work, as the campaign is apparently using multiple phone numbers to ensure that no one can escape the barrage.
36-year-old Danny Davis similarly told Caputo that she's grown very wary of the Haley spam.
“The text messages are very weird,” said Davis. “She has texted me more than Biden. It’s very asinine that she’s texted people she was supposed to represent but she didn’t do a good job doing it when she was in office. It’s pandering at best. She didn’t really care about Black people before.”
Katon Dawson, the former chair of the South Carolina Republican Party, defended the campaign's tactics and told Caputo that reaching out to non-GOP voters was good not just for Haley but the GOP at large.
“We’re going to get every vote and harvest every vote we can,” explained Dawson. “And it’s working.”Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said the U.S. could expect "unhinged chaos" if Donald Trump is allowed to win the GOP primary.
Haley recently responded to Trump's attack on her deployed husband. She said people who defended Trump — like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) — were "disgusting."
"You know, to sit there and mock my husband for not being with me on the presidential trail because he is deployed and serving our country," Haley explained. "You mock one veteran. You're mocking all veterans."
"The problem with Trump is he's never been anywhere near a uniform," she continued. "But the reality is the closest he's come to harm's way is a golf ball hitting him and on a golf cart."
