Top Haley Surrogate Warns “Vote for Christie Is A Vote for Trump”

Nikki Haley won’t say it. Allies and her top campaign surrogate will. They want Chris Christie to drop out before he, in their estimation, hands Donald Trump the Republican nomination again.

“A vote for Christie is a vote for Donald Trump. There’s no question about it,” New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu said of the former New Jersey governor who has spent much of the last three years offering public penance for his support of the previous president. “Chris knows he can’t win.”

Christie was once a friend of Trump, then a close advisor to Trump, and finally a candidate hell-bent on undoing Trump. Now critics, even sympathetic ones, see the latest iteration of Christie as a Kamikaze capable of doing more harm than good in his anti-Trump mission.

“If Christie stays in the race, he helps Trump win. That’s it. He’s helping Trump. Trump wants Christie in the race,” Sununu told RealClearPolitics. “I know that’s not what [Chris’] original strategy was, but again, that strategy has kind of come to an end.”

And then the governor who has barnstormed the country with Haley offered this blunt assessment of the Christie candidacy: “We don’t want folks to waste their vote going that route.”

While the former president remains the frontrunner, Haley is the only challenger rising. She tied Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last week in the RealClearPolitics national average for the first time. And then, Haley surged in New Hampshire. Two polls from this week tell that story, fueling the current pressure play to get Christie out of the way.

The first was a USA Today/Suffolk University Poll that showed Haley brushing past the rest of the field to solidify second place against Trump. He leads her 46% to 26%.

The second was a CNN/University of New Hampshire poll that has the former president slipping to 39% while Haley, his former ambassador to the United Nations, jumps to 32%.

Christie has made New Hampshire his Alamo, and the former New Jersey governor polls at just 12% in both surveys of the state. Nationally, however, he would poll dead last if it were not for former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who has not qualified for a primary debate since September but has stubbornly refused to exit the contest. In the RealClearPolitics Average, Hutchinson polls at 0.8%. Christie, 3.3%.

Campaigns often call on longshot candidates to drop out. It has become a natural part of the political life cycle, especially as Republicans desperately try to cobble together whatever support they can to compete with Trump. With Christie though, data suggests that his departure would directly boost Haley. He can’t win New Hampshire, the theory goes, but she still can.

“Haley would likely move even closer to Trump if former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie were to withdraw, as two-thirds of Christie’s supporters select Haley as their second choice,” the UNH survey center said in a statement. “Undeclared voters who plan to vote in the Republican primary favor Haley over Trump by more than two to one, while Trump holds a large lead among registered Republicans.”

Sununu agrees with that analysis and prefers the CNN/UNH poll. “If Chris Christie got out, the vast majority of all of his votes would go to Nikki Haley,” he said pointing to that survey. “And she wouldn’t just be within the margin of error, she’d be beating Donald Trump today with Christie out of the race.”

Christie bills himself as a one-man wrecking crew capable of taking down Trump. A seasoned brawler, he helped cut down Marco Rubio, spoiling the Florida Republican’s chances in the 2016 GOP primary. Back on the debate stage eight years later, this time as a Trump foe, the New Jersey Republican has done his best to brow-beat Haley and DeSantis into going after his old boss more aggressively.

“It’s often very difficult to be the only person on the stage who’s telling the truth, and the only person who’s taking on [Trump],” he said at the last debate, before mocking the rest of the field on stage for “acting as if the race is between the four of us.”

More and more though, the national race may be leaving Christie, whose campaign did not return RCP’s request for comment, behind. The only candidate surging late happens to be the only woman running, and increasingly, Trump has been focusing his attacks on her.

Christie could reprise his role as spoiler, though.

“While Gov. Christie claims to be a tough-talking politician who is running to stop one person, the truth is he’s in the same position today as he was the last time he ran for President,” said Brittany Yanick, a spokeswoman for the pro-Haley super PAC, SFA Fund, adding that “his campaign isn’t stopping anyone and frankly, it’s helping Trump, whom he proudly endorsed in 2016 and supposedly opposes in 2024.”

Sununu was more tactful. “There’s a huge opportunity for Chris to take a big, big win here and deny Trump’s victory,” he said of the New Hampshire primary. A Haley win in his state, Sununu said, would set the former president up for “another loss in South Carolina” and “now the whole country is looking at this thing as a one-on-one race with a lot of opportunity to beat Trump.”

But first, Iowa. DeSantis has gone all out there, and so has Trump. Haley and allied super PACs, meanwhile, have spent more than either on a state her campaign doesn’t even consider a must-win.

Between the last week of December and now, Stand for America has spent $6 million to flood the airwaves, according to analysis by AdImpact, a media tracking firm. The Haley campaign spent another $1.2 million during that time. The DeSantis campaign spent just $386,969 on ads while two allied super PACs, Good Fight and Fight Right, spent around $2.4 million each. The Trump campaign, meanwhile, spent $3 million on ads in Iowa ahead of the final stretch.

One week after predicting that she would finish in a “strong second” in Iowa, Sununu said Haley would do well in that race but “hasn’t really set any expectations for herself there.”

There is one candidate the Haley surrogate isn’t worried about: Vivek Ramaswamy. “He’s gonna do really, really well with single, middle-aged men who live in their parents’ basements and love conspiracy theories,” Sununu said of the millennial businessman turned politician. “He’s gonna rock that constituency, but frankly, he can have them.”

A spokeswoman for Ramaswamy, Tricia McLaughlin, fired back by taking a shot at the centrist Republican’s donors. “Nikki Haley,” she told RCP, “is gonna do really, really well with the associates of Larry Fink, Reid Hoffman, and Democrat megadonors who like candidates they can easily control.”

Rivals have taken notice of Haley’s rise and her large war chest. “Donald Trump is running for his issues. Nikki Haley’s running for her donors’ issues,” DeSantis now argues on the campaign trail before adding, “I’m running for your issues.” His campaign has zeroed in on a series of gaffes down the stretch, such as when Haley flubbed an answer about the reason for the American Civil War.

“What folks thought would be significant gaffes and missteps don’t change who she is,” Sununu countered, noting that Haley continues to rise regardless and that the governor, who retired the Confederate flag in South Carolina, “immediately clarified” that the Civil War was indeed about slavery.

Haley now breaks late in the final stretch. “We’ve broken through this facade of the inevitability of Trump, which clearly is a falsehood,” Sununu said. “The emperor has no clothes, right?” The way the governor sees it, the electorate is starting to reject a national narrative that Trump is a fait accompli.

Voters are watching a real race develop, he said, and they are starting to line up behind Haley. “She has just done a phenomenal job,” Sununu said. “I think she’s gonna win here in New Hampshire. And that is a giant reset button on the entire election.”

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.