Politics
As Nikki Haley tours California, even some of her most ardent supporters don't see a path
Nikki Haley had barely taken to the makeshift riser Wednesday at the Wild Goose Tavern in Costa Mesa when the interruptions started.
“You already lost, Nikki!” a Donald Trump supporter shouted, prompting security to shuffle the man outside. As the saloon door opened, a blast of chants and boos from Trump protesters outside filled the room.
“Don’t ever get upset at people like this,” Haley said over the noise, sidestepping the incident with the practiced comfort of a politician who has navigated similar situations before. “My husband is deployed right now. And they sacrifice their lives every day for us to have the ability for them to do that — to have freedom of speech. So we should never be upset at that.”
The crowd of about 100 people cheered and Haley gracefully moved on with her stump speech. But as Haley toured California this week, drumming up votes and donor dollars, the incident highlighted her campaign’s biggest challenge: overtaking former President Trump. And in California, which is expected to handily deliver Trump all of the Republican delegates in its March 5 primary, the question looms: Why would Californians support Haley?
“It feels like a waste of time because she’s not going to be the nominee,” said Jared Sichel, who watched the incident unfold from the back of the bar. As co-founder of the Republican marketing firm Winning Tuesday, Sichel keeps a close eye on electoral politics, and he said the Republican Party is “Trump’s party now, for better or worse.”
In Tuesday’s Nevada primary, Haley received fewer votes than the ballot entry labeled “none of these candidates.” On Thursday, Trump was poised to win the Nevada caucuses, which actually award delegates for the state.
A Trump supporter holds up a sign outside Nikki Haley’s appearance in Costa Mesa.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
Despite the odds, Austin, 34, who declined to give his last name, insisted that Haley could bring “a return to normalcy” to the country. The Los Angeles resident brushed off her standing in the polls, saying he had “a lot of trouble believing polls after 2016,” when broad predictions that Hillary Clinton would win proved false.
“I think she’s the right candidate to put our country on the path of optimism — for the future of us here domestically and strength on the global stage,” Austin said.
While the former United Nations ambassador has endured the longest in the race against Trump, she has so far been unable to mount a significant challenge. As anticipated, she came in third in January’s Iowa caucuses, behind Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who dropped out less than a week later.
Haley then went to New Hampshire for her first one-on-one race against Trump. She saw her biggest bump in support, but still lost with 43% of the vote to Trump’s 54%. Still, she pledged to fight on, telling supporters after the primaries that night: “This race is far from over.”
“In my mind, the big question is whether or not she stays in,” said Jon Fleischman, Republican strategist and former executive director of the California Republican Party. “She’s saying that she’ll stay in the race through Super Tuesday, but it just seems to me that it’d be an awfully hard pill to swallow to get really trounced by Donald Trump in the state that elected you governor.”
Unless she manages to pull a major upset on Feb. 24 in her home state of South Carolina, which is currently stacked for Trump in the latest polling, she is expected to continue losing to Trump through the remainder of the primary season. FiveThirtyEight.com, the polling aggregator, has Trump at 75.8% support across the board in the Republican primary, with Haley at 17.6%.
“Why are they supporting her?” Jon Gould, dean of the School of Social Ecology at UC Irvine, said of California voters. “Number one: Protest. Protest against Trump. Two: Hope that maybe there’s a chance that she can pull it off. And three: The backup plan, because I think there’s still a number of people who are wondering whether he will be the candidate by September, given … whether some of the criminal cases end up in a conviction for him.”
Tustin resident Jane Horrocks, 46, said she doesn’t usually attend political events, but came to the Wild Goose on Wednesday morning to support Haley for one reason: “We just want an alternative to Donald Trump.”
“And also I think she has the best chance of taking on Joe Biden,” added her 18-year-old son, Jack, who’s already registered to vote as a Republican in his first election.
The candidate herself frequently champions polling that shows her surpassing Biden in a general election — discounting the challenge she faces in winning the primary. For Republicans who are tired of losing by large margins in the last several national elections, Haley’s electability is attractive.
John Cox, a previous gubernatorial candidate in California, has pledged to be a delegate for Haley — despite being endorsed by Trump in his 2018 run for governor. Trump is the only Republican that Biden could beat, Cox wagered, adding, “I don’t think any of the Democrats can beat Nikki.”
“I want to win in November. I’m not a Trump hater or a never Trumper by any stretch of the imagination. But I want to win,” Cox said. “I want to win congressional seats, I want to win the Senate. I just feel the president has just turned off so many people.”
Haley has been increasingly targeting that demographic of disaffected Republican voters. She has ramped up her attacks on Trump and Biden, calling them too old and chaotic for another term in office.
“For a long time, she was playing nice with Trump to the point where a lot of people were like, well, is she really running for vice president?” Fleischman said. “In the last few weeks, [she] has really tilted hard negative on Trump and I think she’s seen a response from anti-Trump donors because of that.”
In many ways, Gould said, Orange County Republicans are Haley’s target audience.
In his recent polling on the county’s political seesawing, Gould found an emerging group of the O.C. electorate he called “modestly partisan Republicans” — a demographic of mostly non-white and wealthy people who are attached to the Republican Party, despite feeling left out in the national conversation. They don’t care about culture war issues, the poll found, and may support taxpayer-funded measures for progressive issues.
“It seems to me that her target audience is probably people who would have previously supported George H.W. Bush, and maybe Reagan,” Gould said. “The expression that they sometimes say to me is, they wonder what happened to their party? Where did their party go?”
Mario Guerra, a member of the California Republican Party board of directors and former mayor of Downey, voted for Trump in both elections, but he signed up to be a Haley delegate this year.
Nikki Haley, on her campaign tour of Southern California, addresses supporters at the Wild Goose Tavern in Costa Mesa.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
“I think we do need change. I think we need youth, we need leadership,” Guerra said. “I think she’s shown her leadership skills and I think she can lead our country. I think there are a lot of good things she can do for our country.”
Haley’s tour this week brought her to fundraisers in Northern California before heading south for a whirlwind Wednesday. After the stop in Costa Mesa, Haley headed to the Pacific Club in Newport Beach for an exclusive luncheon with donors, before finishing her day in Los Angeles with another donor reception and supporter rally.
“It’s clear that she’s coming here because there’s a lot of money that can be raised,” Gould said of Haley.
Sporting a blue blazer, Corona del Mar resident Steve Gabriel, 75, strolled into the Pacific Club fundraiser. He had met Haley previously, and is convinced she is the best presidential candidate, hands down. Her foreign policy experience equips her for the job better than Trump or Biden, he said.
“There’s nobody in this country, in my opinion, that is stronger than her because of her history,” Gabriel said. “There’s no better person in this country right now to deal with China than her. And China is a threat.”
Still, does Haley have a shot at the presidency?
“Unfortunately, no,” he said. “But you never know. … Fingers crossed.”
Times staff writer Hannah Fry contributed to this report.
Politics
Trump stirs GOP primary drama with visit to Massie’s Kentucky home turf
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President Donald Trump is taking his feud with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to the libertarian lawmaker’s home turf on Wednesday.
Trump is expected to hold an event in Hebron, Kentucky, on Wednesday, the Republican Party of Kentucky announced on social media Monday. It’s located in the northern part of the state’s 4th Congressional District, which Massie represents.
Massie’s primary rival, Ed Gallrein, will attend the Hebron event, his campaign confirmed to Fox News Digital on Tuesday, while deferring all other questions on the matter to the White House.
Massie himself will miss the event due to a previously scheduled official engagement, his spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
KHANNA AND MASSIE THREATEN TO FORCE A VOTE ON IRAN AS PROSPECT OF US ATTACK LOOMS
President Donald Trump will be visiting Rep. Thomas Massie’s congressional district on Wednesday. (Win McNamee/Getty Images; Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
When asked about the visit, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston told Fox News Digital, “President Trump will visit the great states of Ohio and Kentucky on Wednesday to tout his economic victories and detail his Administration’s aggressive, ongoing efforts to lower prices and make America more affordable.”
The president has thrown his considerable influence behind Gallrein to unseat Massie after the GOP lawmaker publicly defied Trump on multiple occasions.
MASSIE, KHANNA TO VISIT DOJ TO REVIEW UNREDACTED EPSTEIN FILES
Massie most recently was one of two House Republicans to vote to stop Trump’s joint operation in Iran with Israel, though the legislation was successfully blocked by the majority of GOP lawmakers and a handful of Democrats.
Ed Gallrein, left, seen with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House. (Ed Gallrein congressional campaign)
He was also one of two Republicans to vote against Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” last year.
Trump in turn has hurled a slew of personal attacks against Massie, including calling him “weak and pathetic” in a statement endorsing Gallrein in October.
“He only votes against the Republican Party, making life very easy for the Radical Left. Unlike ‘lightweight’ Massie, a totally ineffective LOSER who has failed us so badly, CAPTAIN ED GALLREIN IS A WINNER WHO WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN,” Trump posted on Truth Social at the time, one of numerous criticisms targeting the Kentucky Republican through the years.
He called Massie the “worst Republican congressman” in July amid Massie’s bipartisan push to force the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release its files on Jeffrey Epstein.
Then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, and Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
But Massie has so far appeared to defy political gravity despite making political enemies out of both Trump and House GOP leaders.
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He handily defeated multiple primary challengers in 2024 and 2022, despite public feuds with Trump, and has served his district since 2012.
Gallrein is a retired Navy SEAL and farmer who launched his campaign days after Trump made his endorsement. Their primary election day is May 19.
Politics
California Democrats launch pricey polling effort to winnow crowded gubernatorial field
As anxiety mounts among California Democrats about the potential of a Republican being elected governor, the state party will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on polling to assess the viability of the sprawling field of candidates hoping to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom, according to plans released Tuesday.
The move comes after nearly every Democratic candidate refused party leaders’ call last week to withdraw from the race to avoid splitting the vote in the June primary — an outcome that could lead to a Republican being elected to statewide office for the first time in two decades.
“Candidates have filed, and now they’ve got the opportunity to showcase their viability, their path to win. I want to simply ensure that everybody has information to fully understand the current state of the race,” said Rusty Hicks, the leader of the California Democratic Party.
As campaign season ramps up, the series of six polls will allow “candidates, supporters, the media, voters, anyone and everyone to have a clear understanding of what is or is not happening in this particular race,” he said.
The filing deadline to appear on the June 2 ballot was Friday. Three days earlier, Hicks released an open letter urging candidates who did not have a path to victory to withdraw from the race. Of the nine prominent Democrats who had announced runs for governor, only one heeded his call: former state Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon.
That means the eight other candidates’ names will appear on the ballot, regardless of whether they decide to later drop out. And that creates the possibility of a Republican winning the race because of how California elections are decided.
The state has a voter-approved top-two primary system, under which the two candidates who receive the most votes in the June primary advance to the November general election, regardless of party.
Two prominent Republicans will appear on the ballot: former conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. Even though Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1, and the state’s electorate last elevated Republicans to statewide office in 2006, it is mathematically possible for Democrats to splinter the vote, allowing the two GOP candidates to advance.
Under such a scenario, not only would Republicans be guaranteed the leadership of the nation’s most-populous state, but Democratic voter turnout also would probably be depressed in November, potentially affecting down-ballot races such as those that could determine control of Congress.
Hicks’ call last week prompted concerns among candidates of color, including former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, that the effort was aimed at every nonwhite candidate in the race.
The state party chairman responded that his letter was not aimed at any specific candidate.
“It’s not something I lose sleep over,” Hicks said when asked about the racial claims. But he added that the voter surveys will be conducted by Los Angeles-based Evitarus, the state’s only Black- and Latino-led full-service polling firm, and will oversample historically underrepresented communities: Latino, Black and Asian American voters.
Hicks said the polling will cost “multiple six figures” but did not specify the exact amount.
The first poll will be released on March 24, and then five additional surveys will come out every seven to 10 days until voters start receiving mail ballots in early May.
“We’re putting this forward to ensure everyone is armed with the information they need to clearly have an eyes-wide-open assessment of where the state of the race currently is between now and when ballots land in the mailboxes of voters,” Hicks said.
Politics
Trump reveals top issues GOP should focus on to secure midterms victory: ‘I’ve never been more confident’
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President Donald Trump outlined five key items he believes will tip the upcoming midterm elections in the GOP’s favor — if Republicans can muscle them through Congress.
“No transgender mutilation surgery for our children,” Trump told an audience at the Republican Members’ Issues Conference. “Voter ID, citizenship [verification], mail-in ballots, we don’t want men playing in women’s sports.”
“It’s the best of Trump. Those are the best of Trump. This is the number one priority, it should be, for the House,” Trump said.
Trump’s exhortations to Republican lawmakers come as the GOP wages an uphill campaign to hang on to a controlling majority in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. He framed his legislative priorities as a way for Republicans to capitalize on popular demands within the GOP base that would increase their chances of preserving a Republican governing trifecta.
President Donald Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One before departing Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, on March 1, 2026. (Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)
HOUSE REPUBLICANS PUSH ELECTION OVERHAUL WITH VOTER ID, MAIL-IN BALLOT CHANGES AHEAD OF MIDTERMS
Currently, Republicans hold just four more seats than Democrats in the House of Representatives.
The GOP holds six more than Democrats in the Senate.
To keep the numbers in their favor, Republicans will need to beat historical trends. In the vast majority of past cases, parties that capture the White House in presidential elections face blowback in the midterms. Notably, the last time a majority party gained seats in both chambers of Congress in the midterms came under the Bush administration in 2002, following devastating attacks on the World Trade Center.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, left, and President Donald Trump shake hands during an Invest America roundtable in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, District of Columbia, on June 9, 2025. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
REPUBLICANS, TRUMP RUN INTO SENATE ROADBLOCK ON VOTER ID BILL
Trump said he believes Republicans have a shot at bucking the trend come November if they focus on his list.
“It’ll guarantee the midterms,” Trump said of his legislative priorities.
Republicans have already taken strikes towards two of them through the SAVE America Act, a piece of legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and cast a ballot. That bill cleared the House last month for a second time in the 119th Congress.
Its future is uncertain in the Senate, where Republicans would need the assistance of seven Democrats to overcome the 60-vote threshold to defeat a filibuster. Democrats, for their part, believe the legislation would disenfranchise voters who cannot readily provide documented proof of citizenship through a passport, REAL ID, or birth certificate.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. has promised a vote on the package despite its long odds.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, talks with a guest during a “Only Citizens Vote Bus Tour” rally in Upper Senate Park to urge Congress to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
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Several members have introduced bills on transgender issues, although none of them have cleared either chamber.
“I’ve never been more confident that if we keep these promises and deliver on this popular agenda, the American people will stand with us in overwhelming numbers, just as they did in 2024,” Trump said.
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