Nikki Haley won her first Republican presidential primary Sunday, with District of Columbia voters choosing her over frontrunner Donald Trump.
She got 63% of the vote to win all of 19 delegates from Washington, D.C., Politico reported, citing local party officials. Trump scooped up the other third.
The former South Carolina governor lost every GOP contest before that, most recently on Saturday in Idaho and Michigan. She also lost the primary in her home state of South Carolina last week.
Super Tuesday will see primaries or caucuses held in 15 states and one territory, contests that Trump is mostly expected to win.
The 45th president lost the D.C. Republican primary in 2016 but won when he ran unopposed in 2020.
Just 5% of registered voters in the nation’s capital are Republican, about 23,000 people. And most of them know all the players.
That fact was not lost on Trump, who posted a sarcastic statement dubbing his rival “Queen of the swamp,” anointed by “the lobbyists and D.C. insiders that want to protect the failed status quo.”
Haley’s camp noted that she was the first woman in U.S. history to win a Republican primary.
“It’s not surprising that Republicans closest to Washington dysfunction are rejecting Donald Trump and all his chaos,” Haley spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement obtained by The Washington Post.
She is the last Trump challenger standing after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Ohio businessman Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out early on.
After a dominating run so far this election cycle, Trump is considered to have a lock on the Republican presidential nomination.
In recent weeks, Haley has argued he’ll lose to President Biden in the November general election, though.
She rallied in D.C. on Friday before traveling to North Carolina and several of the states that are holding Super Tuesday contests.
“We’re trying to make sure that we touch every hand that we can and speak to every person,” Haley said.
With News Wire Services
