2023-11-25 15:12:02
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump plans to take advantage of a college football rivalry this weekend for a crowd bath in South Carolina, where he hopes to upstage rival Nikki Haley. for the Republican presidential candidacy, in the state where she is local.
Trump, the favorite to win the 2024 nomination, will be on hand Saturday when the University of South Carolina hosts archrival Clemson, of which Haley is a graduate, in the annual Palmetto Bowl.
The Trump campaign has not provided details of his itinerary. But if his visit is similar to the one he made to Ames, Iowa, for the game between the University of Iowa and Iowa State University, he will stop by pregame parties and join the more than 80,000 spectators at Williams Stadium. Brice.
“In the South we do things big,” said Brandon Beach, a Georgia state senator and staunch Trump supporter, who attended the game in Ames with him in September. “President Trump knows he can connect with people and they are going to connect with him.”
Haley is a member of Clemson’s board of trustees and an avid fan of the university’s sports teams, but her campaign has not said whether she will attend the game. Asked regarding the imminent primary dispute in her state, her spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said that Haley “is the only candidate who has momentum” and recalled that she was not the initial favorite in the races for a legislative seat and the governorship. who finally won.
“The people of South Carolina know their governor has what it takes to win because they have seen her overcome the odds, not once but twice.”
Haley was governor of South Carolina when Trump appointed her ambassador to the United Nations in 2016. Trump maintains a wide lead over Haley and other challengers, both in the state and nationally.
“In 2016, South Carolina gave us 44 of 46 counties, not bad,” Trump said at a state Republican Party dinner in August. “I can’t wait to win all 46. We want to win all 46.”
South Carolina is the fourth state on the Republican primary calendar following Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, and the first in the South, on February 24, 2024. It is followed by several southern states on March 5, the so-called Super Tuesday, when more voters are at stake than on any other day of the primaries.
In 2016, victories in South Carolina and Super Tuesday gave Trump a lead he would not lose once more.
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