Nikki Haley kept her eye on the ball for the New Hampshire primaries. Her largely secular electorate and the possibility of obtaining independent votes had caused the candidate to focus a lot of time and money on trying to take first place from Donald Trump. However, she fell short by more than ten points, and the defeat has already begun to affect her donors emotionally.
One of them is Reid Hoffmann, founder of LinkedIn and partner at Greylock Partners, who does not plan to continue contributing to the former ambassador's campaign. This was confirmed by a source to CNBC, who asked not to be identified to speak more freely about the matter.
Hoffmann often donates to Democratic causes, but he shelled out $250,000 to a pro-Haley super PAC in 2023, claiming he believed she could defeat Trump in the Republican primary.
"If America is to avoid another Trump presidency, it will be because Trump loses an election next year. If he is to lose, it will either be to Nikki Haley in the primary, or Joe Biden in the general," Hoffman wrote on his LinkedIn page last December.
However, this isn't the only bad news for Haley's team. It turns out that another Republican fundraiser told the same outlet that three clients who helped the campaign raise up to $100,000 each are choosing not to make further financial contributions to the Republican.
Trump defeated Haley in New Hampshire
With 97% of the votes counted, Trump obtained 54% of the votes against 43% for Haley, who, far from stepping out of the ring, declared that the Republican primaries were just beginning.
"New Hampshire is first in the nation. It is not the last in the nation. This race is far from over. There are dozens of states left to go. And the next one is my sweet state of South Carolina. (...) At one point in this campaign, there were 14 of us running, and we were at 2% in the polls. Well, I'm a fighter. And I'm scrappy. And now we're the last ones standing next to Donald Trump," she declared after learning the results.
Minutes later, Trump took the stage alongside Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy. "She did very poorly actually. The governor said she's going to win, she's going to win, she's going to win. Then she failed badly," he said of his rival and then assured that he would prevail in both the primaries and the general elections.
