The influential rightwing US billionaire Charles Koch endorsed Nikki Haley for the Republican presidential nomination, choosing the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador over Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner, and Ron DeSantis, the hard-right Florida governor.
“The moment we face requires a tested leader with the governing judgment and policy experience to pull our nation back from the brink,” Emily Seidel, senior adviser to Americans for Prosperity Action, the political arm of the Koch network, wrote in a memo first reported by the New York Times.
“Nikki Haley is that leader.”
Trump is the clear leader in polling, nationally and in battleground states. But Haley has climbed into second, passing DeSantis with assured debate-stage performances (in contests Trump skipped) and consequent fundraising success.
In her memo, Seidel lamented recent Republican electoral defeats widely seen to be fueled by Trumpist extremism and by the conservative movement as a whole on issues prominently including threats to abortion rights.
“Republicans have been nominating bad candidates who are going against America’s core principles [a]nd voters are rejecting them,” the Americans for Prosperity memo said.
But Seidel also accused Democrats of “responding with extreme policies that also cut against core American principles” and said voters wanted to “move on” from a political era represented by Trump and Joe Biden, who contested the 2020 election.
Polls do show that more Americans think Biden is too old for a second Oval Office term, at 81, than think the same about Trump, who is 77.
Seidel wrote, “Our internal polling confirms what our activists are hearing and seeing from voters in the early primary states: Nikki Haley is in the best position to defeat Donald Trump in the primaries.
“Between her surging to second place in the polls since August and being well-positioned among supporters of the other candidates, she is in a strong position to gather more support.
“In addition, our internal polling consistently shows that Nikki Haley is by far the strongest candidate Republicans could put up against Joe Biden in a general election – winning every key battleground state and up nationally by nearly 10 points.
“While our polling shows Donald Trump loses to Joe Biden, Nikki Haley outperforms Trump by eight to 14 points in the key presidential battleground states.”
Haley, Seidel said, could also “boost [Republican] candidates up and down the ballot, winning the key independent and moderate voters that Trump has no chance to win”.
The Koch network was not expected to back Trump, having indicated its wish for a new candidate in a similar memo earlier this year.
On Tuesday, a Trump spokesperson called Americans for Prosperity “the political arm of the China First, America Last movement”, which was spending “shady money [and choosing] to endorse a pro-China, open borders, and globalist candidate in Nikki ‘Birdbrain’ Haley”.
Haley was appointed to her former UN role by Trump. The 51-year-old said she was “honoured to have the support of Americans for Prosperity Action, including its millions of grassroots members all across the country … We have a country to save.”
A DeSantis spokesperson said the Koch endorsement showed the conservative “establishment … lining up behind a moderate who has no mathematical pathway of defeating the former president.
“Every dollar spent on Nikki Haley’s candidacy should be reported as an in-kind [contribution] to the Trump campaign. No one has a stronger record of beating the establishment than Ron DeSantis, and this time will be no different.”
Among commentators, Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, issued a warning over claims that Haley is a conservative moderate.
“Perennial memo to reporters and editors: any reference to Nikki Haley as a ‘moderate’ is journalistic malpractice,” Ornstein wrote. “National abortion ban. Slash social security and Medicare. Blow up the federal workforce. Helluva platform.”
But Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic pollster, suggested that the Koch network may not be throwing its endorsement away.
Offering “a reminder to everyone writing about Nikki Haley today”, Rosenberg said: “Trump is only at 60% in the primary now. 40% of Republicans are not currently supporting him. This is a big number.
“Trump is under 50% in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina [the first three states to vote]. A majority of Republicans in these early states are not supporting him.”
