Trump, Haley brawl in North Carolina battleground preview By Reuters

By James Oliphant and Gram Slattery

GREENSBORO, North Carolina (Reuters) – Republican presidential contender Nikki Haley slammed frontrunner Donald Trump for hurting Republicans’ election prospects as the rivals collided in North Carolina on Saturday ahead of a contest next week that could carry deep implications for the November general election.

Speaking to roughly 1,000 supporters at a train station in downtown Raleigh, Haley, who faces vanishing odds of beating Trump, blamed the former U.S. president for major state-level and congressional losses for Republicans in recent years.

“We lost in 2018. We lost in 2020. We lost in 2022,” Haley said. “How many more times do we have to lose before we realize maybe Donald Trump is the problem?”

North Carolina’s March 5 primary is part of a Super Tuesday slate of 16 nominating contests that will bring Trump close to clinching the Republican nomination. It also is the only race that day that will be held in a battleground state that could decide the next occupant of the White House.

Trump, who drew a larger crowd than Haley for his rally on Saturday at a coliseum in Greensboro, is heavily favored in North Carolina’s primary. But Haley’s performance should give a sense of his vulnerabilities in the Southern state, particularly among moderate and independent voters, said Thom Little, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.

The state’s election rules allow independents who are not affiliated with a party to vote in the Republican primary. Those voters have been a source of strength for Haley in states such as New Hampshire and her home state of South Carolina, where she scored about 40% of the vote.

Some voters at Haley’s event in Raleigh, the state capital, said they had voted for Trump in the past and would do so again, while others said they might seek out a third-party option or simply stay home.

“I voted for Trump twice, and I just don’t think he’s the right person right now,” said Terry Johnson, 57, of Cary, North Carolina.

Of her choice in a potential Biden-Trump rematch she added: “It’d be really hard. I might vote for an independent person. I’m not sure right now.”

Haley has vowed to stay in the race through Tuesday, when 874 of the 2,429 delegates at play in the Republican primary will be up for grabs. Trump is expected to capture the vast share of them, and his campaign has projected he will secure the nomination by March 12 or the week after.

Voters who come out for Haley in North Carolina will have to decide in November whether to switch to Trump, stay home without voting or cross over to Biden, Little said.

Those voters would be targeted by both the Biden and Trump camps. Unaffiliated voters now make up a larger segment of the electorate in the state than registered Democrats or Republicans.

“It’s a state where both parties are going to spend a lot of time,” Little said. “And money.”

The last Democratic presidential candidate to win the state was Barack Obama in 2008. Both the Biden campaign and the main super PAC backing it, Future Forward, have identified North Carolina as a priority along with other Sun Belt states such as Arizona and Georgia.

Early opinion polls of a head-to-head matchup show Trump leading Biden in North Carolina.

In January, Future Forward said it would include the state in a massive $250 million battleground state ad buy ahead of the November election.

Biden traveled to North Carolina in January to trumpet infrastructure spending, and Vice President Kamala Harris discussed economic issues during a visit to the state on Friday.

Abortion has emerged as a key issue in North Carolina after the Republican-dominated state legislature last year largely banned the procedure after 12 weeks. The legislature overrode a veto of the measure by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper.

Cooper is leaving office after two terms, and the election to replace him this year is also expected to be hard fought.