Nikki Haley lost Iowa. Then he lost New Hampshire. Now, some of the biggest donors to the Republican Party — a Trump-resisting donor class that has fueled her candidacy for months — are at least opening the door to former President Donald J. Trump.
A network of some of the nation’s wealthiest Republican donors gathered this week at a winter meeting in Florida hosted by the American Opportunity Alliance and heard from top aides to both Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley. The gathering on Monday and Tuesday was one of the first major steps in Mr. Trump’s reluctant return to reality for some of those donors, after Mr. Trump’s aides did not receive such an invitation to the group’s fall.
Ms Haley has a series of fundraisers in the coming days and held one in New York on Tuesday night. Money will not be an obstacle to her candidacy. But privately, some of the party’s big donors — including some who support Ms. Haley — say they are ready for the contest to end in order to focus on President Biden and concede that Ms. Haley has little chance of overtaking Mr. Trump absent some unforeseen event.
At the American Opportunity Alliance retreat, Ms. Haley had far more supporters than Mr. Trump. Kenneth Griffin, a billionaire hedge fund executive and major Republican donor who attended the retreat, gave $5 million to her super PAC this month, according to a person close to him.
Before Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida dropped out of the race, he and his allies expected support from Mr. Griffin because the investor had given generously to him in the past. But Mr. Griffin was frustrated by what he saw as an incompetent campaign coupled with deep policy mistakes, such as Mr. DeSantis’ description of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “territorial dispute,” according to several people familiar with his thinking.
Mr. Griffin had been holding out for a younger candidate who could challenge Mr. Trump and it took him months to decide to back Ms. Haley. He praised Ms. Haley in a statement to reporters, saying “America would be well served by someone with her foreign policy credentials and policy priorities in the White House.”
But speaking at an event earlier on Tuesday, Mr Griffin admitted her path was “narrower” than it was two months ago, before Mr Trump won Iowa and New Hampshire. The $5 million he contributed to Ms. Haley’s super PAC, while a substantial amount by any normal accounting, is a relatively modest donation for Mr. Griffin. In 2022, he spent $50 million trying to defeat Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat.
Another donor, Las Vegas developer Robert Bigelow, is not a member of the AOA network but had supported Mr. DeSantis with a $20 million donation to his super PAC. This week he said he was giving the same amount to Mr Trump.
Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokeswoman for Haley’s campaign, said: “No one said this would be easy, but we continue to run a smart campaign that will ensure Republicans don’t keep losing. Nicki is the only thing standing in the way of a Trump-Maiden rematch that 70% of Americans don’t want.”
Susie Wiles, a top adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign, told the AOA gathering at the Four Seasons in Palm Beach, Fla., a simple story, aided by diagrams, that portrayed Mr. Trump as the inevitable Republican nominee. He outlined to donors how he would win in the fall and said the campaign would welcome support from the party’s top donors, according to three people familiar with the event.
Ms. Wiles’ invitation to the AOA event was the first time the group, which meets twice a year, has hosted a representative from the Trump camp in the 2024 primary cycle. At their fall meeting last year in Dallas, only AOA advisers were invited Ms. Haley, Mr. DeSantis and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. Both Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Scott have since dropped out of the presidential race.
Ms. Haley’s campaign manager, Betsy Ankney, gave the AOA meeting what two people described as an impassioned pitch, calling her candidate an alternative to a chaotic and unpopular presidential candidate who could trigger a domino defeat of the House and of the Senate for the party in November.
Ms. Ankney presented what she described as damning facts about the Trump candidacy. Her litany included the $83.3 million Mr. Trump was ordered to pay last week in a defamation case filed by author E. Jean Carroll, whom a previous jury found he had sexually abused, according to the people. who know her comments.
Ms. Ankney acknowledged that Ms. Haley, a former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, faced an uphill battle to defeat Mr. Trump. But he insisted Ms. Haley would stay in the race as long as she had the money and momentum, the people said.
Ms. Haley has longstanding ties to several donors to the American Opportunity Alliance, and the network is not moving in unison. Still, Ms. Wiles’ presentation to the largely anti-Trump group of donors reflects that many of them are finally, after much fussing and hustling, entering the acceptance stage of the cycle of grief. Whether those offended by Mr. Trump decide to join him, run in the primaries or stay on the sidelines in a general election remains to be seen.
Ms Wiles’ presentation came days after the former president, in a post on his social media site, Truth Social, threatened to freeze all major donors to Ms Haley. Ms. Wiles acknowledged her nominee’s comments, but cited the various ways her team tried to set up the nomination for Mr. Trump as quickly as possible. For example, he highlighted how the Trump team had worked behind the scenes, with a group of veteran strategists, to get state GOP parties to change their rules so he could garner as many delegates as possible.
He also promoted the Trump campaign’s powerful online fundraising operation and cast doubt on Ms. Haley’s general election prospects, saying he doubted the former president’s die-hard base of supporters would vote for Ms. Haley. Mr. Trump has criticized Ms. Haley for appealing to Democrats and independents in the open primary, and his advisers said he overstepped the mark by saying over the weekend that he had confidence in the New York grand jury that found he had defamed Ms. Carroll. .
The presentations and their reception by the assembled donors were described by three people who were there or briefed on the matter and were given anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the meeting.
The winter meeting of the group — founded a decade ago by wealthy investors including Paul Singer and Mr. Griffin, both hedge fund tycoons — came at a critical juncture in the Republican primary race. Mr Trump, fresh off decisive victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, hopes to crush Ms Haley in the South Carolina primary on February 24, dealing a potentially fatal blow to her candidacy.
For the Trump team, which is simultaneously fighting four criminal charges against Mr. Trump in 2023, spending money against Ms. Haley until February, weeks before one of the trials begins, is an unwelcome proposition.
This week’s event, as many described it, was far less confrontational than the last AOA meeting. At that meeting, the DeSantis team faced specific questions that were borderline hostile, according to people who were present.
An ally of Ms. Haley, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the event publicly, praised Ms. Wiles for coming forward to confront a skeptical public.
“The bridge was never burned,” said a senior Trump adviser, Chris LaCivita, when asked in an interview about the Trump campaign’s attitude toward major Republican donors, such as Singer and Mr. Griffin, who stood up to Trump.
“The bridge is there,” Mr. LaCivita added. “It’s up to them if they want to cross it. These are all smart people. They know there is no path to victory, no matter what Nikki and Co. dream up.”
