By Nathan Layne and Tim Reid
WAUKEE/DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) – Nikki Haley got a late Christmas present on Tuesday morning: the state of Iowa free of her main rivals for the 2024 Republican nomination just six days before the party’s first nominating contest.
With one stuck in court and another tending to his day job back home, Haley made her pitch to about 100 voters who braved snow-blanketed roads to attend a rally at Mickey’s Irish Pub in Waukee, a suburb of the state capital Des Moines.
Haley’s comments regarding the “hard truth” about the mounting legal troubles facing former President Donald Trump, who was some 1,000 miles away in Washington for a court hearing, prompted voter Valerie Bantz to nod in agreement.
“I think he is a walking dumpster fire, and I don’t want any part of that,” said Bantz, a 55-year-old nonprofit volunteer who voted for Trump when he was first elected in 2016 but not in 2020, when he lost to Biden.
Bill Kirk, a retired carpenter, said he made the 30-minute drive to see Haley, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, after watching her performance during a TV town hall on Monday night.
“I’m hoping she’ll finish the wall and get that thing zipped up,” he said, referring to the U.S-Mexico border.
Kirk voted for Trump twice but said he was tired of the drama.
“I don’t like his mouth. It gets old,” he said.
Trump, who opinion polls show is the favorite to win in Iowa and the overall nomination to take on President Joe Biden in November, attended a court hearing on Tuesday where his legal team argued that he is immune from federal criminal charges accusing him of trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis, who is vying for second place in Iowa against Haley as they aim to be the clear alternative to Trump, was in Tallahassee, Florida, for his annual governor’s speech to the legislature. DeSantis was due to back in Iowa by evening for a live town hall on Fox News.
TRIMMING THE LEAD
Two polls released on Tuesday showed Haley cutting Trump’s lead in the second state due to pick its Republican candidate, New Hampshire, where a primary will be held on Jan. 23.
Both showed the former president still ahead by a sizeable margin, however.
In a CNN poll conducted with the University of New Hampshire, Trump was seven percentage points ahead of Haley, down from a 22-point lead back in November.
A poll by USA Today/Boston Globe/Suffolk University showed him with a larger lead at 20 percentage points, down from a 30-point advantage in a poll released in October.
In Iowa, Alan Koslow, a self-described Democrat, said he planned to switch his registration to Republican on caucus night and vote for Haley as a way to stop Trump.
“I want to weaken Donald Trump, and I think if she has a strong showing in Iowa that would help her going into New Hampshire,” he said, adding he would back Biden in November’s election.
JUDGE JUDY’S RULING: HALEY FOR PRESIDENT
Haley’s campaign blasted out a mass email on Tuesday announcing an unconventional endorsement: the support of Judge Judith Sheindlin, better known as TV’s “Judge Judy,” who meted out no-nonsense justice from the bench in her long-running reality daytime courtroom show.
Calling Haley “whip smart,” Sheindlin, 81, said, “I truly think she can restore America and believe she is the future of this great nation.”
Haley will hope Sheindlin’s endorsement brings better luck than her pick in 2020, when she backed the ill-fated and short Democratic presidential run of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne, Timothy Reid and Costas Pitas; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Daniel Wallis)
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