President Joe Biden's campaign is leaping into action with redoubled effort to court voters for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley's presidential campaign, after she announced this week she would be voting for former President Donald Trump.
Haley, who dropped out of the race in March after the Super Tuesday contests, and who has remained on the ballot throughout the country as a sort of proxy vote for Republicans turned off by the former president, signaled her intention to vote for Trump on Wednesday.
According to The Daily Beast's Jake Lahut, "A group of Nikki Haley supporters from Vermont to Arizona met with President Joe Biden’s campaign on Wednesday night almost immediately after she announced her plan to vote for Donald Trump ... In the previously unreported meeting, a Biden campaign representative listened to the concerns of top Haley supporters from various states as part of Bidenworld’s ongoing outreach to win over Haley voters."
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“The fact they actually sent someone last night to speak to a small group … I think that’s a good signal that they’re aware there are huge numbers of Haley voters out there,” said Haley Voters for Biden PAC founder Robert Schwartz, who compared it to the Biden campaign's recent listening sessions with Arab-American voters upset over ongoing U.S. support for Israel in the bloody conflict in Gaza.
While she is personally backing Trump, Haley emphasized this week that she still wants the former president to do more outreach to her voters — something Biden's campaign is focused on beating him to the punch at.
“[Haley] has a very wide coalition of voters, including some from the center-left, the center, and conservatives. And I think among strong conservatives, there are a lot of disagreements about Biden’s policy,” said Schwartz. “While I respectfully disagree with her decision to support Trump, I would also respectfully disagree with her characterization of Biden being catastrophic.”
