If Nikki Haley really is a serious challenger to former President Donald Trump in the GOP primary race, then she needs to put up in New Hampshire — or one of her billionaire backers will, at least partially, shut her up.
The Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone, who started backing Haley’s candidacy last month, said he’s prepared to throw “a nice sum of money” her campaign’s way but is waiting until after the New Hampshire primary before making the “major gift,” the U.K.’s Financial Times reported Wednesday.
“If she doesn’t get traction in New Hampshire, you don’t throw money down a rat hole,” Langone told the outlet, while also predicting that we’ll likely see a 2020 presidential rematch of Trump and President Joe Biden in November.
“Right now, if I had to bet, I think the two candidates will be Biden and Trump,” he said, adding that he “probably” would vote for Trump were that the case.
Langone, as the Financial Times noted, is one of the anti-Trump mega-donors who are apparently either coming around to the former president or at least looking to withhold money from his competitors, Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
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“Trump showed that from Election Day 2020 to Jan. 6, his whole focus, in my opinion, was himself — not what was good for the country,” the billionaire said of Trump’s election challenge and the 2021 Capitol incursion.
However, he said, “away from the histrionics, away from the drama, away from the lack of decorum … [Trump] did some pretty good things.”
“My problem is we’re going to need a very competent manager, as well as a president-statesman. … I am supporting Nikki Haley because I think she comes [as] close to what you could hope for as anybody out there,” Langone said.
The paper reported that on Wednesday, “private equity billionaire Stephen Schwarzman — a former large donor to Trump who told the FT in 2022 that he would not support another bid by the former president — told CNBC he was also watching for ‘surprises’ in the primary race before deciding whether to back Trump.
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“Other big donors have made similar calculations in recent months. In November, DeSantis’s biggest donor Robert Bigelow, a real estate investor, told the FT he was considering backing Trump instead. Harold Hamm, the shale oil magnate, has also indicated that he is willing to back Trump in the general election despite calling for him to withdraw from the race.”
While DeSantis and Haley are neck and neck in national polls, donors perceive the former South Carolina governor as having a better path — if a very narrow one — to become a credible Trump challenger.
While the Florida governor expended considerable resources in Iowa in the hopes of securing an upset, he still finished 30 points behind Trump and just ahead of Haley, who hadn’t made the Hawkeye State a focus.
Rather, her energies have been directed toward New Hampshire, the first primary of the season. The thing is that, on paper, it looks (or perhaps looked) like she had a chance there.
According to the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate, Haley is second in the state, trailing Trump 46.3 percent to 33.5 percent. However, the key to closing the gap, at least to Haley’s people, was the man in third place in the aggregate: now-former candidate Chris Christie, who was polling at 12 percent.
Take him out of the race and you have a double-digit anti-Trump vote suddenly up for grabs. Furthermore, DeSantis is a distant fourth, pulling only 6 percent in the Granite State.
Unfortunately, that plan works out on paper better than it’s worked out in reality. In the two polls taken since Christie’s decision to drop out, Trump has maintained his lead over Haley, beating her 52 to 38 in a St. Anselm College poll and 50 to 36 in a Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll.
While part of that can be attributed to Haley nemesis Vivek Ramaswamy dropping out and endorsing Trump, he was still averaging only 6 percent; the new polls show Trump’s advantage virtually unchanged.
Furthermore, while the race has tightened considerably in New Hampshire since mid-December — when Trump had a nearly 30-point lead in the aggregate — a 12.8-point spread still doesn’t equal “striking distance” for Haley.
Without a win in one of the first few primaries before the Super Tuesday extravaganza or some other surprise that shifts the primary landscape, nobody stands a chance of puncturing Trump’s aura of invincibility. Plenty of megabucks donors have poured money into potential Trump rivals over the past year hoping that one would stick.
When DeSantis didn’t fit the bill, it was on to South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott. When Scott failed to inspire, it was on to Haley. And while she has seen an upswing in her poll numbers and her visibility, it’s still a relative upswing — and one which has been negated by the fact Trump’s numbers have been rising, too.
If Haley were to pull off an upset in New Hampshire, yes, it would change the race. Not only would the money start pouring in, but Nikki’s home state of South Carolina votes fourth in the primary process — and slaying Trump in New Hampshire would dramatically shake up the numbers there or elsewhere.
But that’s just an if — and it’s a hypothetical that, if the first polling numbers since Christie’s withdrawal are any indication, we’ll never get to see. And Nikki Haley will never get to see that “nice sum of money” from Langone.
