On March 5, known as Super Tuesday, 15 states will hold Republican presidential nominating contests, and the odds are good that Donald Trump will win them all. The deluge of adverse votes and Trump delegates could even knock Nikki Haley out of the race. But if she does fold her tent, she won’t go out a total loser: On March 3, she won the District of Columbia primary, nearly doubling Trump’s vote (63 percent to 33 percent) and winning all 17 delegates at stake (she now has 43 to Trump’s 244). That gives Haley one victory as opposed to nine for the overwhelming front-runner.
Our nation’s capital is, of course, a profoundly Democratic city. Just over 5 percent of registered voters are Republicans. And Haley won just 1,274 votes. It’s also never been a particularly Trumpy place, as you can imagine. In 2016, Marco Rubio won the D.C. primary just a few days before he dropped out of the race with John Kasich finishing second and Trump a very distant third.
The symbolism of Washington as the city Republicans profess to hate even as they crave to possess its power made the post-primary spin a little tricky for Haley. But she gave it a go:
Team Trump was predictably dismissive, as the New York Times reported:
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, said in a statement, “While Nikki has been soundly rejected throughout the rest of America, she was just crowned Queen of the Swamp by the lobbyists and D.C. insiders that want to protect the failed status quo.”
It’s a bit ludicrous to dub Haley the queen of anything on the basis of just over a thousand votes, but she is finally on her way to winning the five delegations it would take for her name to be formally placed in nomination at the convention in Milwaukee in July, if that’s what she wants. Getting the second one is going to be a whole lot more difficult.
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