Former South Carolina governor Nimarata Haley won her first contest in the Republican presidential nomination race by defeating disgraced former President Donald Trump by a margin of almost two-to-one in the District of Columbia’s primary on Sunday.
The electoral shellacking came a day before the Supreme Court is expected to announce a ruling that could take Trump off the ballot entirely if the justices agree with Colorado’s top court, which determined that the Republican engaged in insurrection.
Haley was declared the winner Sunday night after D.C. Republican Party officials revealed that she won all 19 delegates at stake. With all the votes counted, Haley got 63 percent of the vote to 33 percent for Trump — and she won all of the delegates.
On Friday, Haley received the endorsement of longtime Maine Sen. Susan Collins ahead of Tuesday’s primary in Maine, one of the Super Tuesday states.
Her victory may stunt Trump’s presumed juggernaut for the Republican nomination right before several hundred more delegates are awarded in this week’s Super Tuesday voting contests.
Trump has only 244 delegates, but to win the Republican nomination, a presidential candidate must receive support from at least 1,215 delegates.
The contestants will edge closer to that number as the two Republicans head into Super Tuesday on March 5, when 15 states vote and a third of the GOP delegates are at stake.
“It’s not surprising that Republicans closest to Washington dysfunction are rejecting Donald Trump and all his chaos,” said Haley spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas, noting that the former U.N. ambassador is the first woman to win a Republican primary in U.S. history.
Shortly after Haley’s victory, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, “While Nikki has been soundly rejected throughout the rest of America, she was just crowned Queen of the Swamp by the lobbyists and DC insiders that want to protect the failed status quo.”
The Supreme Court is set to announce a ruling on Trump’s eligibility for elected office, in response to an appeal filed when Colorado’s top court ordered the Republican off the ballot in December after finding that he engaged in insurrection around the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump appealed the Colorado ruling to the Supreme Court, and his lawyers urged the justices to resolve the issue nationwide.
Maine’s secretary of state and a judge in Illinois both reached the same conclusion about Trump’s eligibility as Colorado; those decisions are also on hold pending the Supreme Court decision.
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