By Nikki Haley may not win the Republican primary, but that doesn’t mean she may not be nominated for president.
With the announcement from Joe Manchin that he will not be running for president, the moderate group No Labels finds itself once again in need of a potential candidate for president. With Haley routinely capturing independent and college-educated voters, could she be the one on the No Labels line of the ballot?
According to Joe Cunningham, the group’s national director for the political organization, they’re definitely interested.
“We’re looking for great quality people, folks that have broad appeal to independents, Democrats, Republicans. And, yeah, I mean, Nikki Haley is somebody we’d definitely be interested in,” Cunningham said in an interview on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends Sunday,” The Hill wrote.
Cunningham said he’s optimistic that the group can secure ballot access in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. So far, the group has secured access in 16 states, even though it has not announced which candidates would lead the ticket.
“The truth is we’re talking to a lot of spectacular people right now, and we’re not ready to unveil those folks just yet,” he said.
No Labels was initially formed as a nonprofit organization more than a decade ago with the goal of pushing for bipartisanship and helping find common ground between the two main political parties.
Cunningham said he’s hopeful No Labels can be on the ballot in all 50 states in Washington, D.C. The group has qualified to be on the ballot in 16 states so far.
The comments came in the wake of the Republican South Carolina presidential primary on Saturday, where Haley experienced another significant defeat. This time in her home state. Despite calls for her to withdraw from the race, the former UN ambassador said she’s determined to forge ahead, acknowledging her substantial challenges in securing the GOP nomination.
Ari Fleischer, writes Newsweek, argued that Nikki Haley’s speech on Saturday night “sounded like a ‘No Labels’ one after she lost to Donald Trump in South Carolina’s GOP primary.
Fleischer pointed to Haley’s margins with independent voters and the wording in her speech to back up his claims that the former United Nations ambassador may be the ultimate pick for the ‘No Labels’ organization’s ticket.
According to Fox News’ voter analysis, Haley won independent voters in South Carolina by 19 percentage points.
On a Fox News panel after the South Carolina primary, Fleischer, a contributor on the network and a media consultant, said, ‘I’ve been around a lot of these candidate speeches, I’ve written a few. That was a ‘No Labels’ speech tonight by Nikki Haley. That was a speech, when she says, ‘No matter what I am running.’ When she trashes Joe Biden, trashes Donald Trump, she is setting herself up to run down the middle.’
Fleischer continued: ‘But when you look at independent voters, she sees a huge group out there. And when you look at the country, independent voters are 43 percent of the country, Republicans are 27 percent, Democrats are 27 percent.'”
If Haley were to accept running as a third party, it would immediately transform the prospects of the general election from leaning towards a Trump victory to favoring Biden’s reelection.
That may be the point. Haley could have a financial incentive to be the one that blocked Trump’s return to Washington.
NBC News noted that “while campaigning for his father in South Carolina this week, Donald Trump Jr. charged that Haley was staying in only for her own benefit, in hopes of cashing in after she’s out of the race.
“She’s trying to hurt Trump because there will be benefits to her financially to do that. She will become the CNN spokesperson, the conservative view on CNN, she’ll get a board seat at some of these companies as the lone Republican,” he charged. “That’s what she’s gunning for. It’s purely about the future payday and there’s literally no other excuse for it. And we all know that if we’re being intellectually honest.”
The next Republican primary will be held in Michigan on February 27. Although polling has been sparse in the Great Lakes State, all of it has pointed to another huge victory for Trump, despite The Detroit News, the largest conservative-leaning newspaper in the region, endorsing Haley.
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