DALLAS — If you use polling as a guide, things do not look good for Nikki Haley in Texas.
She’s down more than 60 percentage points to Donald Trump in a couple of different recent polls.
Haley said a win for her in Texas is staying competitive and moving on to the next state.
“70% of Americans don’t want to see a Trump-Biden rematch. 59% of Americans think Trump is too old and Biden’s too old to be President. We need a new, generational conservative leader to right the ship,” Haley told WFAA's Jason Whitely in a sit-down interview for Inside Texas Politics.
Other than the age factor, one of Haley’s main pitches to voters is that America can’t survive four more years of chaos when the country is in disarray and the rest of the world is on fire.
Despite trailing badly in polls, the former South Carolina Governor is still raising money and producing ads.
Haley has even named leadership teams in California and Minnesota, with both states also holding their primaries on Super Tuesday, March 5, same as Texas.
“We don’t name a king in America. Let people come together. Let them vote,” Haley argued. “After South Carolina, Michigan’s three days later. And then within 10 days, we’ll have hit 20 states. This is about giving the people the options to decide what they want.”
And Haley argues that if someone wants to focus on the numbers, they should take a look at general election polling. She said Trump loses to Biden in most, and on Trump’s best day, he’s only within the margin of error.
“If Donald Trump is our nominee, we lose,” she told WFAA. “There will be a female President of the United States. It will either be me. Or it will be Kamala Harris.”
Texas has been no stranger to gun violence, from the Allen mall shooting, to the Uvalde massacre, to the El Paso Walmart tragedy, just to name a few. And since there has been no change to gun laws in the aftermath of all of those deaths, we asked Haley what she would say to the families of the victims.
She, like most Republican candidates before her, would focus on mental health in those conversations.
“If we want to fix this, let’s do the hard work, lets go to the root cause. We have got to deal with the cancer that is mental health,” Haley said.
When it comes to possible red flag laws or raising the minimum age to purchase some guns, she only told us: “I think If you’re able to fight in a war, you should be able to purchase a gun.”
When it comes to abortion law, Haley said the issue should be in the hands of the people and that a wrong was made right when it was removed from unelected Supreme Court Justices.
And then there’s the case of Kate Cox, the Dallas mother who sued the State of Texas – and lost – for the right to get an abortion to end a pregnancy doctors say the baby would not have survived. While the Texas Supreme Court denied Cox’s request, she had already traveled out-of-state for an abortion.
Haley said Cox’s example should force a reexamination of the law.
“I think that Texas now needs to look at that law and say what can we do to make sure that never happens to another woman,” Haley said.
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