Former South Carolina Governor and US Ambassador Nimarata Haley shut out disgraced former President Donald Trump in the tiny community of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, where six GOP primary voters cast ballots at midnight.
Continuing a 60-year-old tradition, the residents of the small community in the northern part of the state cast the nation’s first presidential primary votes at midnight.
Dixville Notch has been in the spotlight since 1960, when the owner of the Balsams resort, Neil Tillotson, arranged for residents to vote at midnight
There are six registered voters, four Republicans and two independents who could have voted in either party primary.
Once all six of the votes were cast, the polling place closed and reported its results.
Haley swept all six voters who cast the first ballots in the first in the nation New Hampshire primary, and if she does well statewide it could provide significant momentum when the GOP race heads to South Carolina, her home state where Trump failed to score above 50 percent among Republicans throughout 2023.
Granite State Republicans are less conservative and less religious than those who attended their GOP caucus in Iowa, where Trump barely captured half the vote.
Over the past quarter century, victories by candidates who captured support among socially conservative evangelical GOP voters in Iowa have been defeated in New Hampshire by more moderate mainline conservatives or outsiders, who appealed to a broader part of the primary electorate.
Five of the last seven winners in New Hampshire went on the snag the GOP nomination, including Donald Trump, Mitt Romney, John McCain, George H.W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan.
It has been more than two decades since the contender who finished first in Iowa went on the become the nominee, George W. Bush in 2000 and Bob Dole in 1996, and only one of them was successfully elected.
Polls suggest that Trump maintains a lead but since Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended his campaign the former president’s mental acuity seems to be slipping as he finds himself in a two-person race where a victory would be a potential boost to Haley’s momentum going into her home state.
The challenger was born Nimarata Nikki Randhawa to Punjabi Sikh parents who were living in South Carolina after emigrating from India in the 1960s.
She has typically gone by her middle name and took her husband’s last name when they married, but Trump intentionally butchered it in what is widely seen as an appeal to racist Republicans.
Trump has also elevated false conspiracy theories on far-right online forums asserting that Haley is not eligible to run for president because her parents were not U.S. citizens when she was born.
The bigotry, lies, failed coup attempt, criminal indictments, and effort to escape blame for things that are clearly his fault have served Trump’s political agenda but demagoguery may be running out of steam as voters with some patriotism and maturity start to weigh in on who wins the Republican presidential nomination in a year that Democratic President Joe Biden has virtually no chance to win.
It is going to be a long day.