Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley indicated on Sunday she does not feel bound by her pledge to the Republican National Committee that she would support the eventual GOP presidential nominee.
The RNC required candidates who qualified for the primary debates last year to pledge to support the eventual nominee, a pledge which Haley signed.
Asked by Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker if she is still bound by the pledge, Haley signaled she is not.
“No, I think I’ll make what decision I want to make, but that’s not something I’m thinking about,” she said, noting that “if you talk about an endorsement, you’re talking about a loss. I don’t think like that.”
“When you’re in a race, you don’t think about losing. You think about continuing to go forward,” she added.
Haley also said the RNC is “not the same RNC, now it’s Trump’s RNC,” referring to Trump’s plan to install his allies, including his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, to take over the organization’s leadership.
“I mean, at the time of the debate, we had to take it to where, ‘Would you support the nominee,’ and in order to get on that debate stage, you said, ‘Yes,’” Haley said.
Welker asked Haley if voters who will cast their ballots on Super Tuesday deserve to know where she stands on endorsing Trump. Haley turned the tables, saying, “When you all ask Donald Trump if he would support me, then I will talk about that. But right now, my focus is, ‘How do we touch as many voters? How do we win?’”
Meanwhile, as recently as July, Haley said she would in fact support Trump if he wins the nomination “because I’m not going to have a President Kamala Harris.”
The Haley campaign is still plugging along despite having notched eight consecutive losses to the former president in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, the Virgin Islands, Michigan, Missouri, and Idaho — and despite her major outside benefactor, Americans for Prosperity, pulling its financial support.
Ahead of her 20-point defeat in her home state last month, the Haley campaign sought to temper expectations, saying it had its sights set on a number of upcoming open or semi-open primaries on Super Tuesday. In an open primary, voters do not have to formally register with a political party ahead of Election Day in order to vote in that party’s primary. In a semi-open primary, voters who are not affiliated with a political party can choose which party’s primary they would like to participate in.
Of the 874 delegates up for grabs on March 5, nearly two-thirds are in states with open or semi-open primaries, including Texas, Maine, and Virginia. Haley’s campaign is eyeing several states that have a large contingent of college-educated voters, suburban voters, and independents, who tend to support Haley over Trump. Those states include Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia.