Former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley is telling a group that says they speak for former Haley voters who support Vice President Kamala Harris’s bid for president to stop using her name.
Kamala Harris and I couldn’t be more different when it comes to any topic. “It is dishonest and wrong to try to use my name to support her or her plans,” Haley said in a statement first seen by Fox News on Tuesday. “I support Donald Trump because he understands we need to make America strong, safe, and prosperous.”
The political action group (PAC) that Haley was talking about used to be called “Haley Voters for Biden.”
The group began using Harris’ name on Sunday after President Biden dropped his re-election bid and backed his vice president as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate.
In February of last year, Haley started her own campaign for the White House. She was the first big Republican to run against former President Trump for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024. Before she quit the race in early March, she was the last person left running against Trump. Haley kept getting up to 20% of the vote in some of the next Republican presidential primaries after she stopped running for office.
During the very heated primary race, Haley spoke out against the previous president. But at the end of May, Haley said she would vote for Trump. This was her first public statement since she said she was ending her bid for 2024. She also gave a speech last week at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in which she officially backed Trump.
The group, which calls itself a coalition of former Haley backers, promised to back Harris soon after Biden backed his running mate.
We agree with @JoeBiden’s advice and will change the name of our group right away to Haley Voters for Harris. “We don’t have time to waste,” the group wrote on social media on Sunday afternoon.
The group changed the name of its section on X and its website. It also made it clear that it is not connected with Haley or any of the political parties she works with.
“We also don’t speak for Nikki Haley, and we never said we did.” A small group of Haley voters who will vote their consciences are being reached out to, the group wrote. “Haley said Trump had to earn our support.” He hasn’t done anything to help her, and he chose Vance to be his running mate instead.
Newsweek saw a letter from a law firm that worked for Haley’s presidential campaign. It told the group to “cease from any unlawful use of Ambassador Haley’s name in your political action committee name and from any use of her name, image, or likeness that suggests she supports the election of Kamala Harris as President of the United States.”
“You have her permission to not use Ambassador Haley’s name, picture, or likeness in any way.” Ambassador Haley has made it clear that she backs Harris’ opponent. “Any implication that Ambassador Haley backs Harris is purposely false and misleading,” the letter said.
The letter says that the Haley campaign will tell law enforcement, such as the Justice Department and the FBI if the group raises money under the name “Haley Voters for Harris” or a name that sounds like it.
In less than 36 hours after Biden’s big news, Harris said she had locked up the nod.
The vice president wrote on social media just after midnight on Tuesday, “I am proud to have earned the support needed to become our party’s nominee.”
Harris showed off the fact that she has the support of most of the nearly 4,000 delegates to the Democratic National Convention next month, which starts on August 19 in Chicago.
A lot of people in the Democratic Party, like governors, senators, House members, and party leaders, quickly sided with Harris after Biden’s big news. At the same time, state delegates to the convention began to gather and say they supported the vice president over the last two days. And by late Monday night, a poll of Democratic delegates by the Associated Press showed that Harris had gone too far.
Before Biden dropped out of the race last week, Haley said again that she didn’t trust Harris to handle the situation at the southern border of the United States.
Haley said that the vice president “had one job, and that was to fix the border” in her speech at the GOP conference. Imagine that she was in charge of the whole country.
