Nikki Haley vowed to stay in the Republican presidential primary race at least through Super Tuesday while chiding a tabled plan by the Republican National Committee that called for the party to coalesce around Donald Trump.
Haley said she expects to perform better in her home state of South Carolina than in the Iowa Republican caucus and last week’s New Hampshire primary.
“I think I need to do better than I did in New Hampshire,” she said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “So this is a building situation.”
Haley, whom Trump picked as US ambassador to the United Nations when he was president, stopped short of committing to remain in the race through the Republican nominating convention in July.
“I have every intention of going to Super Tuesday,” she said.
“I take it one state at a time,” she added. “I don’t think too far ahead, but I’m not going anywhere.”
Haley criticized the Republican National Committee, saying it is “clearly not” an honest broker in the party’s primary race.
Last week, following Trump’s win in New Hampshire, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel signaled that the former president’s dominance within the party would only grow following his strong early performances and said Republicans should unite around Trump as the eventual nominee. “I don’t see it for Nikki Haley,” she told Fox News on Tuesday.
The RNC also floated a plan then later dropped it, naming Trump the “presumptive nominee.”
On Thursday, Trump said on his social media platform that the RNC should not move forward with the resolution for the sake of party unity and that he wanted to “finish the process off AT THE BALLOT BOX.”