January 21 - 2024 campaign updates

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley picked up the endorsement of the New Hampshire Union Leader's editorial board on Sunday, just days before the first-in-the-nation primary.

The paper's typically conservative editorial board not only touts Haley's background and credentials, but also contrasts her with the leading two candidates in each party -- incumbent President Joe Biden and GOP frontrunner former President Donald Trump.

"Nikki Haley is an opportunity to vote for a candidate rather than against those two," it says.

Underscoring Haley's central argument that she can bring generational change that the country needs, the endorsement argues, "putting forward a rematch of the last election means putting an octogenarian in the White House and putting a less-than-capable vice president in the on-deck circle.”

"New Hampshire can prove that nothing is inevitable," it reads, as Haley faces a showdown with Trump, who remains widely popular in her home state of South Carolina.

The paper's editorial board backed Joe Biden in the 2020 general election, endorsing a Democrat for the first time in more than 100 years.

Fresh off his recent endorsement of former President Donald Trump, Sen. Tim Scott is defending the former president's recent attacks against Nikki Haley, including references to her birth name and questioning her citizenship.

When asked if he thinks Trump's comments are appropriate, Scott said: “I think there's so much negativity and toxicity in this aim to becoming president again, or for the first time, that we should be very clear, and look at both sides of the comments made.” 

Scott told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday that he endorsed Trump for president because he has worked with him in the past and while he was president the country had a “stronger economy, a healthy military and a safer world.” 

“I say that because I worked with President Trump on really important issues impacting American voters and American families,” Scott said. 

Scott’s endorsement earlier this week surprised some, as Haley had appointed Scott to the Senate when she was the governor of South Carolina. Haley indicated yesterday she was disappointed in Scott’s endorsement. Scott told CNN he texted Haley the day before he made his announcement endorsing Trump for president. 

Republican lawmakers are split on whether to support former President Donald Trump if he’s convicted of a crime before Election Day, even as Trump is getting a rush of endorsements on Capitol Hill. 

Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, who has come out to endorse Trump, said he would “absolutely” support Trump “even if he’s convicted.” 

Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, another staunch Trump ally, echoed the unfounded allegations that the charges against Trump are purely political. 

“I fully expect one of these political prosecutions they’re going to manage to get a prosecution somewhere, somehow, some way,” he told CNN, adding: “Yeah, on totally trumped up charges.” 

But while other members of Congress have been less full throated in their support for Trump, they wouldn’t say if they would support the former president if he was convicted. 

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who’s part of the Senate GOP leadership team, said he would “cross that bridge when we come to it.” And Rep. Dusty Johnson said that, for him, it depends ultimately on what the conviction would be. 

Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee said he wasn’t endorsing Trump yet but “I plan on very soon.” And Senator Mike Braun of Indiana emphasized that he would support whoever the Republican nominee is and that it’s likely to be Trump. 

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu said he believes former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley can still win the New Hampshire Republican primary, but reiterated that she doesn’t “have to win” in order to gain momentum heading into future primary contests.  

Sununu clarified his expectations for Haley’s performance in New Hampshire in an interview with NBC News on Sunday after initially forecasting a victory for Haley in the state shortly after he announced his endorsement of Haley last year.

Sununu touted the strength of Haley’s campaign, pointing to her gains in New Hampshire, the narrowing of the primary field and the relatively underwhelming poll numbers for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as evidence. 

“The fact that she's knocked all the other candidates out, nobody thought that was possible, but she's really knocked everybody out. Even Ron, I mean, he's in it, but he's not really in it,” he said. 

Sununu said it won’t be critical for Haley to win primary contests until the slate of Super Tuesday primaries in March.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a former longshot GOP presidential candidate, characterized former President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on Nikki Haley’s heritage as “the norm for politics” in a Sunday interview.

“Joe Biden launched his campaign a couple weeks ago with a set of personal attacks on President Trump,” Burgum said on ABC "This Week."

His defense of Trump comes as the former president used Nikki Haley’s birth name, “Nimarata,” in a post on his social media platform Truth Social (though he misspelled Nimarata as Nimrada) and disseminated false conspiracy theories that the former UN ambassador is ineligible from holding office because of her immigrant parents’ citizen status at the time of her birth in South Carolina.

Haley was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, and is a US citizen.

Burgum, who endorsed the former president on the eve of his decisive victory in the Iowa caucuses, initially dodged an inquiry about Trump’s attacks, saying, “All I know is that I believe the primary election is going to be over after Tuesday.”

Pushed by ABC’s Martha Raddatz to offer a reason for the former president’s rhetoric, Burgum said, “I think it’s politics.” He argued former Biden challengers – such as Vice President Harris – said “vicious things” about the president during national debates leading up to the 2020 election.

If the New Hampshire primary results come in on Tuesday night looking like our final CNN/UNH poll results today, there is going to be one question hanging over the race for the Republican presidential nomination: Is it over?

Nikki Haley has said plainly that “the road is never going to stop." Ron DeSantis has indicated that he intends on competing for delegates at least through the month of March.

But it is hard to imagine how Haley and DeSantis continue to fund their campaigns at a competitive level, never mind convincing Republican voters and power brokers that there is a rationale to continue onward following back-to-back sizable Donald Trump victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, where the former president collects a majority of the votes and the delegates.

There has never been a non-incumbent Republican candidate for president who has won both Iowa and New Hampshire. In fact, in modern presidential campaign history, since the Iowa caucuses have served as the official kickoff followed by the New Hampshire primary, the two people who have won both contests outright were Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry, both of whom went on to become their party’s nominee.

In the new CNN/UNH poll, there is one finding that really pops out to me as a very telling element in this race: When we asked likely GOP primary voters for their overall opinion of the candidates, Donald Trump’s favorability rating is in a different stratosphere than his competitors.

The relentless pounding of DeSantis by Trump and his allies for the better part of the last year and the more recent takedown of Haley by Trump and his allies in the last two to three months have had their intended effect in bringing up their negative ratings.

But the strategic decision by both DeSantis and Haley to only sharpen their criticism of Trump at the very end of these contests is also on display here.

The constant concern that taking on Trump directly would push away some of the very voters they were spending much of 2023 trying to attract has left Trump’s popularity with Republicans largely unscathed, if not improved.

Perhaps there was no way for any candidate to truly chip away at Trump’s incredible bond with the majority of Republican voters, but it is also clear that not attempting to do that for the entire year before voting began leaves these non-Trump candidates with very limited options for a path forward in this campaign.

A top Biden campaign manager said Sunday this election is not “going to be about age” when asked about recent polling that suggests that President Joe Biden’s mental acuity is a big concern among voters.

Biden principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks told ABC’s “This Week” that Biden’s age has helped him bring “people together from both sides of the aisle to deliver results for the American people.”

“Our opponents are hammering that because they have no platform and nothing else to think about,” he said. “I'm sure it's much easier for them to talk about age than it is to talk about the fact that they want to rip away a woman's right to choose or take away reproductive freedom from a third of women across this country that are living under a national abortion ban because of Donald Trump.” 

He continued: “This election is about freedom and democracy and the fact that Democrats under President Biden's leadership believe that people deserve more freedom, not less and Republicans want to roll that back and rip it away.”

These comments come just a couple days before Biden is expected to hold a joint event with Vice President Kamala Harris where they will focus on abortion rights.

The Biden campaign will hit the airwaves in battleground states with its first abortion-focused ad of the year, featuring stark, emotional testimony from a woman personally affected by a state abortion ban who lays the blame directly on former President Donald Trump.

It comes as the campaign is launching a full-court press this week to put abortion rights front and center in the 2024 race, including with events headlined by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The push marks the campaign’s first organized effort to emphasize the issue, seeking to further galvanize voters around reproductive rights in the first presidential election after the Supreme Court ended the federal constitutional right to an abortion.

The minutelong ad, titled “Forced” and shared first with CNN, features an emotional direct-to-camera testimonial from Dr. Austin Dennard, a Texas OB-GYN and mother who traveled out of her state, which has a strict abortion ban, to terminate her pregnancy after learning her fetus had a fatal condition. Dennard calls the situation “every woman’s worst nightmare” and criticizes Trump for the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The former president has taken credit for overturning Roe v. Wade due to the justices he appointed to the Supreme Court, recently saying in a Fox News town hall, “For 54 years they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it. And I’m proud to have done it.”

“Two years ago, I became pregnant with a baby I desperately wanted," Dennard says in the ad. "At a routine ultrasound, I learned that the fetus would have a fatal condition and that there was absolutely no chance of survival.

“In Texas you are forced to carry that pregnancy, and that is because of Donald Trump overturning Roe v. Wade,” Dennard says as an image of Trump flashes across the screen. “The choice was completely taken away.”

Biden campaign officials hope stories like Dennard’s will resonate with voters heading into November’s election as the campaign looks to stress Trump and other Republicans have worked to limit reproductive rights. Democrats saw success around the issue of abortion in the 2022 midterms and other recent elections, which the Biden campaign hopes to replicate in 2024.

About two-thirds, or 63%, of likely New Hampshire primary voters on the Democratic side say they plan to write in President Joe Biden on Tuesday's ballot.

Biden did not file to be a candidate on the state’s primary ballot because the primary is in violation of the Democratic National Committee’s rules for the nomination process, but supporters have mounted a write-in effort on his behalf.

Most in the Democratic primary electorate say they would be at least satisfied with Biden as their party’s nominee – 70% say they would be enthusiastic or satisfied – but enthusiasm for Biden among Democratic primary voters, which is at 31%, is lower than enthusiasm for Trump on the GOP side, which is at 46%.

Read more from CNN's New Hampshire poll here.