By Nathan Layne and David Morgan
(Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley raised $24.5 million between October and December, her campaign said on Wednesday, more than doubling the prior quarter’s haul in her latest sign of momentum ahead of the party’s primary fight.
The total easily beat the $11 million her campaign brought in during the third quarter and the $7.3 million raised in the second quarter, underscoring growing interest in her bid to unseat former President Donald Trump for the party’s nomination.
With less than two weeks before Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses on Jan. 15, the former South Carolina governor is trying to overtake Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and position herself as the primary alternative to Trump, the frontrunner in the race to take on President Joe Biden in November’s general election.
Haley’s campaign said she had $14.5 million cash on hand and had raised money from 83,900 new donors in the October-December period, which it said was nearly equal to the number of unique donors in all the previous quarters combined.
Haley’s poll numbers have risen in the past few months on the back of solid performances in Republican debates, but Trump still dominates the contest.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll last month showed Haley and DeSantis tied for second place with 11% of Republican support each. Trump, who has skipped the Republican candidates’ debates, towered above them with 61%.
Haley, who served as U.N. ambassador under Trump, came under fire last week for how she responded to a question about the origins of the U.S. Civil War at a New Hampshire town hall, declining to cite slavery as one of the main causes. Haley later corrected that omission but not before drawing rebukes from Democrats and some of her Republican opponents.
Here are some other takeaways from the campaign trail:
HOUSE REPUBLICANS BEND THE KNEE
Trump won the full support of Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives this week, as Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Tom Emmer, the chamber’s No. 3 Republican, issued full-throated endorsements.
The second- and third-ranked House Republicans endorsed the former president just weeks after he opposed their separate bids for House speaker in the aftermath of Republican Kevin McCarthy’s ouster from the top congressional job. Trump instead backed conservative leader Jim Jordan’s unsuccessful bid.
At a time when Emmer appeared to be the leading Republican candidate for the speakership, Trump blasted him on social media as a “globalist RINO” whose election would be “a tragic mistake,” using the acronym for Republican in Name Only.
Wall-to-wall fealty for Trump at the top of the House Republican hierarchy could help shore up support for party incumbents in this year’s primary election campaigns, where Trump supporters are often the most active bloc of voters.
But Republican leaders could see the strategy backfire in November, if Trump proves unpopular with swing voters needed to win general elections in congressional districts Republicans must capture to protect their House majority, now at 220-213.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republican conference chair Elise Stefanik, the No. 4 House Republican who is viewed as a possible Trump running mate, also have thrown their support behind the former president.
“It’s time for Republicans to unite behind our party’s clear frontrunner,” Emmer said in a Wednesday post on the social platform ‘X,’ warning that Biden could be reelected unless Republicans are unified.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut, and David Morgan in Washington; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Howard Goller)
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