Nikki Haley plans busy fall travel to boost 2022 Republicans

Nikki Haley is hitting the campaign trail for dozens of Republican candidates across the country, part of the former ambassador’s two-year effort to boost the GOP’s 2022 prospects and establish a springboard for a 2024 presidential bid.

Through Election Day, Haley is heading to Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Texas. She is stumping for Republicans on both sides of the Donald Trump divide running for the House, Senate, and state governorships, including Herschel Walker and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the former president’s Senate picks in Georgia and Pennsylvania, respectively; Republicans on his naughty list, such as Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp; and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, an occasional Trump critic.

Haley will also do a little campaigning in her home state of South Carolina, with more stops for more candidates in more states expected to be added to her fall itinerary in the coming days. All told, Haley will cap a midterm election cycle having raised more than $5 million for more than 50 Republican candidates and groups for whom she headlined more than 50 events nationwide via her political action committee Stand for America.

“America is worth fighting for, and that’s why we’re crisscrossing the country campaigning for conservatives up and down the ballot,” Haley said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner. “We need leaders who are fighters, and we’re doing our part to make that happen.”

Haley, 50, is a former governor of South Carolina, recruited in the middle of her second term to serve in Trump’s Cabinet as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

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She and members of her political team are adamant that the likely 2024 contender’s only goal in the work she has undertaken over the last 20 months has been to help Republicans win control of Congress in November and increase the ranks of GOP governors. But Haley’s White House ambitions are unmistakable and are reflected in the sprawling political operation she has built since leaving the Trump administration in January 2019.

There is the Stand for America PAC, through which Haley engages in overt political activities, and there is the Stand for America political nonprofit group, a 501(c)4 through which she advocates conservative policies. Haley is using both vehicles to build grassroots political support and assemble a lucrative digital file of grassroots donors who contribute in small amounts online, increasingly the lifeblood of successful presidential campaigns.

Haley’s team declined to disclose the size of its donor file or how much Stand for America, the 501(c)4, has raised this cycle. However, a Haley adviser said the group reaches approximately 1 million people weekly through its social media channels; it sends out a daily newsletter that reaches 200,000, estimating the 600 newsletters emailed in the past two years have reached 860,000 people in total.

Meanwhile, the Stand for America PAC, which is subject to federal fundraising disclosure regulations, reported raising just under $13 million for the 2022 cycle through June 30 and reported $3.2 million in cash on hand.

“Stand for America has focused their efforts this year on helping 2022 candidates. This has resulted in them raising millions of dollars for in-cycle candidates while also building a supporter base for themselves,” said a senior GOP digital strategist who keeps tabs on prominent Republicans and their online fundraising operations.

Haley, a sharp critic of Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, developed a close relationship with the former commander in chief after joining his Cabinet. Their rapport was enviable: Haley managed to stay in Trump’s good graces despite occasionally disagreeing with him publicly and avoiding displays of obsequious subservience so common among the 45th president’s other subordinates.

But their relationship hit the skids after the 2020 election due to Trump’s unsupported claims that the contest was stolen and that now-President Joe Biden’s victory was fraudulent.

Haley was critical, prompting a backlash from Trump; Haley has since worked hard to repair the damage, going so far as to announce that she will not run for president in 2024 if Trump mounts a third campaign. The effort has worked somewhat, although she continues to face skepticism from grassroots Republicans over her quarrel with Trump that could cause problems should she seek the White House.

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However, Haley has been a major draw on the fundraising circuit dating to early 2021, in the immediate aftermath of her feud with Trump, with audiences responding favorably to the former ambassador personally. Events she headlines often swell beyond capacity, and in fundraising for so many Republican candidates and putting Stand for America PAC to work for their 2022 campaigns, Haley is collecting political chits she can cash in later — possibly in 2024.

“Upside — Haley could bring back the suburban voters who loved Mitt Romney but rolled their eyes, or worse, at Trump,” a Republican strategist said, referring to the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, who is now a senator from Utah. “Downside — she wouldn’t motivate low-propensity voters who like Trump more than anyone else in politics and are willing to check out and stay home.”