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Haley says 'we didn't even count' Nevada after losing primary without Trump on ballot; calls caucus 'rigged'
LOS ANGELES — Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has her eyes on the next major contest in the GOP nominating calendar — the primary later this month in her home state of South Carolina, as well as on Super Tuesday in early March.
And Haley is downplaying this week’s primary and caucus in Nevada, saying they weren’t “anything we were looking at” and charging that the caucus is “rigged” for former President Donald Trump.
Haley made her comments Wednesday, one day after she lost by a more than two-to-one margin to the “none of these candidates” option in Nevada’s state-run GOP presidential primary. The contest was open only to registered Republican voters.
HALEY LOSES NEVADA REPUBLICAN PRIMARY WHERE TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump motions before speaking at a campaign event in Las Vegas on Jan. 27. (AP Photo/John Loche)
Trump, the commanding front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination as he bids a third straight time for the White House, was not on Tuesday’s ballot. And voters casting ballots in the state-run Republican nominating contest couldn’t write in Trump’s name, but they could vote for a “none of these candidates” option.
Trump supporters that Fox News spoke with at polling stations on primary day in Las Vegas said they were casting a ballot for “none of these candidates.”
While Haley’s name was on the ballot, the former two-term South Carolina governor who later served as U.N. ambassador in the Trump administration ignored the Nevada primary.
HALEY CAMPAIGN CHARGES NEVADA GOP CAUCUSES ‘RIGGED’
Haley didn’t campaign in Nevada ahead of the primary and hasn’t been in the state since speaking in late October at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership conference.
“In terms of Nevada, we have not spent a dime nor an ounce of energy on Nevada,” Haley campaign manager Betsy Ankney told reporters on Monday. “So Nevada is not and has never been our focus.”
Haley, speaking Wednesday in separate interviews with Fox News Digital and with FOX 11 Los Angeles during stops in Southern California, emphasized that “we knew months ago that we weren’t going to spend a day or a dollar in Nevada, because it wasn’t worth it. And so we didn’t even count Nevada. That wasn’t anything we were looking at.”
Former U.N. ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican presidential candidate, signs autographs following a campaign rally at American Legion Hollywood Post 43, on Feb. 7, 2024 in Los Angeles, California (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)
Hours earlier, as the votes were being counted on Tuesday night, the former president took to his Truth Social network to take aim at Haley.
“A bad night for Nikki Haley. Losing by almost 30 points in Nevada to “None of These Candidates.” Watch, she’ll soon claim Victory!” he argued.
And Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita charged: “More embarrassment coming in South Carolina …the @NikkiHaley Delusional Tour continues,’ he claimed in a social media post.
BIDEN HITS THE JACKPOT IN NEVADA’S DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY
While Trump wasn’t on the primary ballot, his name will be listed on Thursday in a presidential caucus being run by the Nevada GOP.
The confusion over having two competing contests dates to 2021, when Democrats, who at the time controlled both Nevada’s governor’s office and the legislature, passed a law changing the presidential nominating contest from long-held caucuses to a state-run primary.
The Nevada GOP objected, but last year their legal bid to stop the primary from going forward was rejected. In a twist, the judge in the case allowed the state Republicans to hold their own caucuses, where all 26 delegates will be up for grabs.
A voting sign is seen outside a polling station in Las Vegas on Tuesday as Nevada holds its presidential primary. (Fox News – Monica Oroz )
The state GOP ruled that candidates who put their name on the state-run primary ballot could not take part in the caucuses.
Haley and some of the other now-departed Republican presidential candidates viewed the Nevada GOP as too loyal to Trump and decided to skip a caucus they believed was tipped in favor of the former president.
Nevada GOP chair Michael McDonald and both of the state’s members of the Republican National Committee are supporting Trump.
WHAT NIKKI HALEY TOLD FOX DIGITAL ABOUT WHAT SHE NEEDS TO DO TO KEEP RUNNING
“We made the decision early on that we were not going to pay $55,000 to a Trump entity that, you know, to participate in a process that was rigged for Trump,” Ankney argued on Monday.
And Haley on Wednesday charged that “Nevada – it’s such a scam. They were supposed to have a primary. Trump rigged it so the GOP chairman – who’s been indicted – would go and create a caucus.”
“We knew that it was rigged from the start,” Haley argued in her Fox News interview.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley waves to the crowd during a campaign event at New Realm Brewing Co. in Charleston, South Carolina, on Sunday. (AP Photo/Sean Rayford)
McDonald, responding, claimed that Haley “is not a real serious candidate.”
“The fact of the matter is she didn’t show up. She did not campaign in Nevada and neither did ‘none of the above’ and ‘none of the above’ won,” the Nevada GOP chair told Fox News Digital.
Haley, looking ahead, reiterated that “our focus is on South Carolina, Michigan, Super Tuesday.”
Michigan holds its primary on Tuesday, Feb. 27, three days after the South Carolina Republican primary. Fifteen states, including the behemoths of California and Texas, hold contests a week later, on Super Tuesday.
Former U.N. ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican presidential candidate, holds a campaign rally at American Legion Hollywood Post 43, on Feb. 7, 2024 in Los Angeles, California (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)
Haley’s two campaign stops on Wednesday in California were her first to date in any of the Super Tuesday states. And the swing to the Golden State appears in part to be a marker for Haley as she pushes back against calls by some Republicans to drop out of the race and give up her uphill climb for the nomination.
The trip also included a series of fundraisers. And as Fox News Digital first reported on Wednesday, Haley hauled in $1.7 million in fundraising during her two days in California.
Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.
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More than a quarter-million Nevadans had participated in the state’s primary elections as of Friday afternoon, a few hours before the two weeks of early voting concluded.
The 270,008 people who had voted in person or returned a mail ballot amounted to a roughly 11 percent participation rate out of the more than 2.4 million active and inactive registered voters in Nevada as of Monday.
At least 181,139 ballots had been returned statewide, and 86,869 people had voted in person since May 23.
Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, Nevada’s chief election official, said Friday that the early voting process had proceeded without hiccups, crediting county clerks and election workers.
“Everything has gone very smoothly,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Clerks have been preparing for this moment since the day after the 2024 election.”
Aguilar said he otherwise wished turnout was higher.
Nevadans who want to vote in person still have one final chance: on Election Day Tuesday.
Those who wish to mail back their ballots can do so through that day, although Aguilar recommends that they take them to drop boxes or polling locations instead, to ensure that they are counted.
For now, Nevada law allows returned mail ballots to be counted several days after Election Day. Ballots postmarked by Election Day are accepted for up to four days, while mail returned without a legible postmark is accepted for up to three days.
A Supreme Court ruling — which is expected to come down after the primaries — could lead to the reversal of laws in Nevada and about a dozen other states that allow the counting of mail ballots received days after Election Day.
If the higher court rules against Mississippi, whose law was challenged by the Republican National Committee and the Mississippi Libertarian Party, the change could go into effect as early as November’s midterm elections.
“As opposed to any of the president’s executive orders, we can’t challenge a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court or file a lawsuit against it,” Aguilar said in late May. “We have to accept it.”
About 57,000 Clark County residents had voted early and in person as of Friday afternoon, state data showed. Almost 108,000 had returned their mail ballots.
Aguilar said that he’s been encouraging clerks to push voters whose mail ballots require signature verification, a process known as curing, to get it done as soon as possible.
Clark County had flagged at least 1,621 ballots that needed curing as of Friday afternoon. At least 543 of those voters had since verified their signatures.
There is a plethora of nonpartisan and partisan local, state and federal races on the ballot. Some can be won outright this month. For others, like congressional and the governor’s races, voters will have a chance to dwindle the field that will then face off in November.
Nevada offers same-day, in-person registration for inactive voters, which requires a state identification card. Registered voters can track their ballots at myballot.nv.gov and update their contact information at vote.nv.gov.
Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at rtorres@reviewjournal.com.
What to know about Oregon State Hospital in Salem, Oregon
The Oregon State Hospital treats three types of patients who need hospital-level care in Salem and Junction City.
The Oregon State Hospital remains in contempt of court as defendants continue to sit in jail past the seven-day deadline for them to be admitted and has racked up nearly $4.5 million in fines since a federal court order in June 2025.
A new order is expected to bring the state back into compliance by the end of 2026.
For Emily Cooper, the legal director for Disability Rights Oregon, the organization that sued the state more than two decades ago, every additional day of waiting means another day a person with mental illness “could be irreparably harmed.”
At least two people have died waiting to receive treatment for mental health issues a judge has deemed severe enough to prevent them from aiding and assisting in their own legal defense.
Since 2002, the state psychiatric hospital has been ordered to admit people who have been found unable to aid in their own legal defense for competency restoration within seven days.
The state has been out of compliance with that requirement for most of the last eight or so years.
Oregon has been fined nearly $4.5 million for late admissions
Disability Rights Oregon asked U.S. District Court Judge Adrienne Nelson to hold the Oregon Health Authority, which oversees the state hospital, in contempt of court for failing to meet that standard in January 2025.
On June 6, 2025, Nelson did just that, finding Oregon in contempt and ordering fines of $500 per-person for every day an aid and assist patient was waiting longer than a week to be admitted to OSH.
From June 7, 2025, to May 14, 2026, defendants cumulatively waited more than 9,000 days in jail beyond the seven day allowance, averaging about eight additional days each.
OSH reports four weeks of data on the first of each month.
The nearly $4.5 million the state has been fined will be spent in some way on helping people struggling with mental illness, Cooper said.
Those fines are paid from the budgets for the hospital and OHA’s behavioral health division.
The fines have lowered in recent months after spiking in the winter but continue to add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the total bill.
Oregon is expected to be back in compliance this year
Aid and assist patients are admitted to OSH for short stays – 90 days, six months, or a year – depending on the charges. The purpose is to stabilize someone enough that they can, on a basic level, understand what they are being charged with and help their attorney.
Nelson eliminated most extensions to those stays on June 1 by granting a remedial order. People who have committed Measure 11 felonies, serious violent crimes, are now the only aid and assist patients eligible for an extension on their stay at OSH.
The elimination of most extensions, along with limiting what charges can make defendants eligible to be sent to OSH, are designed to open beds for new patients more quickly.
After reviewing data on the prior extensions, Dr. Debra Pinals, who has served as a neutral expert and is now a court monitor on the case, found that in many cases they did not result in the person being restored to competency.
Metropolitan Public Defense and Disability Rights Oregon asked Nelson to issue the order back in March. The request is based on recommendations from Pinals, who has provided a series of reports on the hospital.
Beyond changing the time someone can be in restoration treatment at OSH, the order changes who can be admitted.
People charged with low-level, non-violent felonies and misdemeanors, like resisting arrest or disorderly conduct, will no longer be admitted to the hospital for competency restoration.
The courts will decide where those defendants are directed. Some options include community restoration, civil commitment or dismissing the charges, OSH spokesperson Marsha Sills said.
“The subtext of this is stop charging these people for crimes, when these are really manifestations of mental illness,” Cooper said.
Pinals had found diminishing clinical returns and high costs of treatment for people who “if they’d been convicted, they would have spent a long weekend in jail,” Cooper said.
“The duration of hospitalization may exceed the time an individual would have served if convicted, particularly when sentences are less than 90 days, with the average length of stay for restoration reaching 116.5 days,” Pinals wrote in a March 16 report.
Pinals estimated in March that with the changes to extensions and admissions the state could likely comply with the seven-day admission requirement within two and a half months.
The order is projected to bring the state into compliance by the end of the year.
“It’s forcing the system to think about an alternative rather than forced institutionalization on the state’s dime,” Cooper said of the order.
Remedial order draws criticism
Not everyone is in support of Nelson’s decision.
“The Board of Commissioners is very opposed to the new request from Disability Rights Oregon because they are only considering the interest of the individual who has committed the crime,” Marion County Commissioner Danielle Bethell told the Statesman Journal a few days before the order. “They are not considering the harm or challenge in the community.”
Counties have been stuck and frustrated because the responsibility to provide community-based care falls on them, Bethell said.
“Nobody wants anybody with a mental illness to be stuck in jail and not be able to move through the process of the criminal justice system. Nobody wants that on either side of the ideological divide,” Bethell said.
She highlighted Salem’s REACH, Rapid Engagement, Assessment and Community Health team as one way the community is working to relieve pressure on emergency services that have been responding to mental health crises, “but it’s still inadequate because we don’t have all the stairs of that escalator for that system.”
State leadership, staffing issues challenge Oregon State Hospital
Both Cooper and Bethell pointed to the state’s top leaders and the hospital’s staffing challenges as major issues plaguing progress at OSH.
The hospital’s changing patient population and the pandemic have meant more patients with higher needs, fewer programming options and more pressure on staff, Cooper said.
Four of the eight top OSH executives are interims, including the superintendent and medical and nursing officers.
“I think at the end of the day, what we’ve been concerned about is less about OHA, less about the state hospital, and from a leadership top down,” Cooper said. “Like, from the governor’s office, from the legislature – are you really funding the hospital and the Oregon Health Authority in a way that really allows them to do their jobs?”
The governor and legislature should “walk and chew gum at the same time” by hiring more staff for the hospital while working with local leaders on prevention, Bethell told the Statesman Journal.
“There’s no state law that says they cannot increase capacity and provide better care for individuals that come into the state hospital and a better environment for employees who work in the state hospital,” she said.
Problems with Oregon’s behavioral health system ‘are not fixable overnight,’ court monitor says
Gov. Tina Kotek’s office did not respond to a question about future funding for the hospital, instead pointing to increases in community treatment beds during Kotek’s term.
“I am committed to ensuring Oregonians can access the health care they need, when they need it,” Kotek said in a provided statement. “Together, we are building a system with the capacity to meet the behavioral health needs of Oregonians in the timely fashion they deserve.”
Her administration has helped facilitate the development of 930 new and in-progress residential treatment beds, increasing the state’s capacity by over 30%, spokesperson Hanna Seay Thomas said.
“The Governor has been clear that increased treatment and workforce capacity are essential to having a complete continuum of behavioral healthcare across the state that will serve people better and help to relieve pressure on OSH,” she said.
The most straightforward way to address the intake delays is by adding treatment capacity to help divert people from being admitted to the hospital and provide a place for patients leaving to be discharged, Sills said.
Those projects take time, two to four years on average. The hospital and OHA’s behavioral health division, she said, are working with community programs to make the discharge process better.
Leaders at OHA and OSH were not made available for comment.
While Cooper pointed to the slowly decreasing wait list as a positive sign, Bethell believes things have only gotten “more volatile and negative” since the contempt finding last year.
Hospital leadership and OHA’s behavioral health division meet with Pinals each week, Sills said.
“Despite the lack of compliance with the 7-day admission requirement, in my opinion, at this time OHA is working reasonably and appropriately to address the needs that this Court has required,” Pinals wrote in a March report. “The problems that the behavioral health system is facing are not fixable overnight, but there are many steps that have been taken to help.”
Anastasia Mason covers state government for the Statesman Journal. Reach her at acmason@statesmanjournal.com or 971-208-5615.
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