Former President Donald Trump is pressing his surrogate advantage against Nikki Haley in South Carolina, seeking to cast her as a fish out of water in her home state.
The Trump campaign said it will march out South Carolina Reps. Russell Fry and Nancy Mace as well as a slew of state lawmakers at a pair of press conferences Thursday “highlighting the repeated failures of Nikki Haley.”
The two media events — one in the morning in Columbia and one in the afternoon in Conway — will focus on Ms. Haley’s record on illegal immigration and China.
The surrogate events will steal some of the limelight from the former South Carolina governor, who is kicking off a swing through the state with a pair of meet and greets Thursday.
She also has campaign events slated for Friday and Sunday.
Her hopes of upsetting Mr. Trump in the nomination race will likely hinge on her exceeding expectations in South Carolina’s first-in-the-South primary on Feb. 24.
Mr. Trump has a big lead in polls.
The discrepancy between the support Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley have among the state’s GOP elected officials is jarring, given she served as governor from 2011 to 2017 before becoming U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration.
Mr. Trump unveiled his South Carolina leadership team over a year ago at the Statehouse, where he was joined by Gov. Henry McMaster, Sen. Lindsey Graham and other members of the state’s congressional delegation.
The support has continued to grow. Sen. Tim Scott and Ms. Mace recently endorsed him.
The Scott endorsement was seen as a slap in the face of Ms. Haley, who as governor appointed him to a vacant Senate seat in 2013.
For her part, Ms. Haley attributes the strong support Mr. Trump has from top South Carolina Republicans to her rattling their cage as governor by beating them at the ballot box, bringing transparency to votes at the statehouse and vetoing spending.
“The political class was never there,” Ms. Haley said this week on TV’s “The Breakfast Club.” “You mean Lindsey Graham, who is so stuck next to Trump [and is] scared to say anything against him? You mean Tim Scott, who I appointed as senator, but I defeated in this race?”
Ms. Haley said Mr. Trump has surrounded himself “with a group of the political elite who have done nothing for Americans.”
“I didn’t want any of them,” she said. “It is the people I want.”