New Hampshire
Haley faces uphill battle in New Hampshire after Iowa disappointment
Nikki Haley faces an uphill slog in the race for the GOP nomination after a disappointing third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses kept Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the race and blunted the former South Carolina governor’s momentum.
Haley and her supporters had hoped a second-place finish, as projected in one promising Iowa poll over the weekend, might have brought a stronger result in Iowa that could have given her a real boost ahead of the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 23.
Instead, Haley enters the Granite State seeking to reel in the runaway winner in Iowa, former President Trump, even as she continues to battle with DeSantis.
Finishing in third means “the hill in New Hampshire is steeper,” said Dante Scala, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire, who described her caucus results as not “the ride out of Iowa she was hoping for.”
“You don’t get that many opportunities to deliver a clear message to New Hampshire voters, and one of those opportunities is the day after Iowa, if you can credibly say, ‘I have momentum.’ And I think that opportunity was lost,” Scala said.
After the results became clear, Haley insisted she was now in a two-person race and that she had no interest in taking part in debates with anyone other than Trump or President Biden.
“We’ve had five great debates in this campaign,” Haley said in a statement from her campaign. “Unfortunately, Donald Trump has ducked all of them. He has nowhere left to hide. The next debate I do will either be with Donald Trump or with Joe Biden. I look forward to it.”
The likelihood of Trump agreeing to a debate with either Haley or DeSantis remains slim, given the political benefits he’s seen from ignoring the scrums.
Trump won the Iowa caucuses with 51 percent of the vote, according to polling data from The Hill and Decision Desk HQ, while DeSantis finished with 21.2 percent and Haley earned 19.1 percent.
“I think she would’ve loved to clear the field with a second-place finish in Iowa,” Republican strategist Alex Conant said of Haley. “Instead, the non-Trump vote remains divided going into the critical New Hampshire primary.”
Conant argued that while Iowa didn’t get her a big boost, by finishing close to DeSantis she emerged in a relatively strong position. New Hampshire strategists also suggested voters in the state might not be paying much attention to the Iowa outcome.
Jim Merrill, a GOP strategist based in the Granite State, argued Haley may even have “overperformed” in Iowa, given her lower expectations compared with those of DeSantis, who spent significant time touring the state’s 99 counties and scored the endorsement of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R).
Haley is primed for a strong performance in New Hampshire, where she’s backed by state Gov. Chris Sununu (R).
“She’s the one candidate in these early states that has a chance to break though,” Merrill said. “We’ll see what she does with these seven days, but I don’t think Iowa changes her trajectory here at all.”
An Emerson College Polling/WHDH New Hampshire survey released last week found Haley with 28 percent support among Republican primary voters in New Hampshire, up from 18 percent in November and well ahead of DeSantis’s 7 percent.
But she’s still 16 points behind Trump, who won 44 percent support in the poll — 5 percentage points less than what he scored in November.
The latest polling averages from The Hill and Decision Desk HQ put Trump at around 41 percent support, with Haley at 33 and DeSantis at 6.
Haley may need a victory in New Hampshire to give herself a real chance of winning the GOP nomination.
“I think right now we’re at the beginning. It could very well be the end,” said Republican strategist Matthew Bartlett. “If Nikki, or Ron for that matter, can make it competitive in New Hampshire, then you have a chance at a race.”
Haley is well behind Trump in polls in her home state of South Carolina, which holds its primary on Feb. 24.
“It’s a very narrow path for anyone not named Trump,” Bartlett said.
Last week, Haley and DeSantis were the only two candidates to participate in a CNN-hosted debate in Des Moines. ABC and CNN have both announced plans to host GOP presidential debates in New Hampshire, but Haley’s announced intention to skip them unless Trump agrees to participate could leave DeSantis on his own.
“Anything is possible in New Hampshire. But it ain’t easy,” Bartlett said.
“Make no mistake, it’s still a very steep, snowy mountain to climb here in New Hampshire. She’s got some granite heels, but it’s gonna take everything she’s got and then more.”
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New Hampshire
More businesses would be exempt from a key state tax under a proposal heading to Ayotte’s desk
The New Hampshire House and Senate stopped shy of cutting a major state business tax outright Thursday, but did pass a plan to lift the tax’s filing threshold, and spend $2.5 million to lift Medicaid provider rates at state nursing homes.
“What you have before you is a bill that will protect our nursing homes, and protect our small businesses,” said Republican Sen. Tim Lang of Sanbornton.
Under the bill, the threshold on the state business and enterprise tax would be lifted from $297,000 to $400,000, a move GOP leaders expect will exempt about 4,000 small businesses from having to pay the tax.
The bill’s inclusion of money to boost provider rates for nursing homes was a policy the Senate prioritized, and its inclusion in the bill earned the plan some Democratic support. But that evaporated when Republicans in the House pushed to add a trigger to the bill to automatically reduce the rate of the tax when collections from the levy far exceeded estimates.
“The rate cuts are reckless and irresponsible and would potentially cost hundreds of millions of dollars in the future,” said Sen. Cindy Rosenwald of Nashua.
Under the plan, the tax rate, which now stands at 0.55%, would automatically drop by .005% anytime collections on the tax surpassed estimates by $100 million until the rate of the levy reached 0.25%, equivalent to the rate when the tax was created in 1993. Any reduction would also require the state’s Rainy Day Fund to hold a strong balance.
Cutting business taxes has been a focus for GOP leaders in Concord for years, and they’ve dropped the rate of the Business Enterprise Tax four times since 2016.
Lebanon and Israel provisionally agreed in Washington to a new ceasefire Wednesday. But hours later Israel continued attacks and the militant group Hezbollah said it rejected any ceasefire that did not start with the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanese territory.
The fighting appeared to jettison immediate prospects of a wider ceasefire between the United States and Iran. Iran has said it will not agree to a ceasefire with the U.S. and Israel unless there is one in Lebanon.
UNIFIL, the U.N. peacekeeping operation for Lebanon, announced Thursday that one of its peacekeepers had been killed and others wounded when mortars hit their position near Marjayoun in southeastern Lebanon.
A U.N. source said the mortars appeared to have come from Hezbollah. The attack came as Israel and Lebanon were negotiating a ceasefire in Washington. The person asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the issue. Hezbollah has been targeting Israeli army installations in the vicinity.
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Esmail Qaani was quoted by Iranian state media Thursday saying that Israel must withdraw to pre-war positions as the first step in a ceasefire with Lebanon. Before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, Israel held five positions across the border in Lebanon. It now occupies large parts of the south of the country.
The U.S. does not speak directly to Hezbollah, which it classifies as a terrorist organization. Lebanon’s negotiations in Washington were carried out without direct inclusion of the Iran-backed group.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said Thursday that the ceasefire would come into force within 24 hours of all concerned parties approving it, especially Hezbollah.
A Hezbollah official told NPR that Hezbollah officially informed the Lebanese president that it would not accept any ceasefire that did not begin with the withdrawal of Israeli forces from south Lebanon.
The official asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.
Israeli defense minister Israel Katz said Israel was demanding the creation of what it called a de-militarized zone within Lebanon while being able to continue attacks against Iran-backed Hezbollah. He said Israel would not be withdrawing from the south.
Jawad Rizkallah contributed reporting from Beirut.
Copyright 2026 NPR
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