MILWAUKEE — Republican convention delegates didn’t exactly greet Nikki Haley with open arms when she spoke here Tuesday night. And they don’t expect their party to be welcoming to her vision of the GOP.
Haley took the stage to a blend of cheers and some boos and made her argument for why voters skeptical of Donald Trump should still vote for him in November. Delegates had been expecting a rocky reception after months of bitter feuding between the two over both personality and policy.
“[Republicans] want to be unified around the American First platform, our agenda and Donald Trump,” said one Illinois delegate who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak frankly. “If you’re not about our agenda and our plan and our vision for the next four years, then you are not on board, and we don’t want to be unified with you. We want you to go away.”
Haley acknowledged the disconnect at the outset of her speech.
“For the sake of our nation, we have to go with Donald Trump,” Haley told the crowd as they chanted his name. “But there’s more to it than that: We should acknowledge that there are some Americans who don’t agree with Donald Trump 100% of the time. I happen to know some of them.”
“My message is simple,” she said. “You don’t have to agree with Donald Trump 100% of the time to vote for him.”
Some Republicans say that Haley joining the convention is a sign of unity within the GOP, particularly after the assassination attempt against the former president. But for other Republicans, her appearance onstage is nothing more than her attempt to stay relevant and, more beneficially, a way to move her donors over to Trump.
“I don’t think they are trying to unify the party based on policy. I think instead they are interested in symbolism that signifies unity,” one former Haley adviser told NOTUS. It’s not about adopting policies she supports; it’s about Trump getting her support to win over some moderate Republicans and because “Nikki has a lot of donors that will come to the table if she, if they feel like she’s more included.”
A GOP House lawmaker at the convention told NOTUS that Haley was “very disrespectful” to Trump, so any ill reception will be deserved. Inviting her to speak was the first public step to reconciliation. Eventually, the lawmaker said, the party might accept her for unity’s sake — at least until November.
“Trump did what was right, but I can assure you: She’s going to get booed,” the lawmaker said. “We’re going to bring this party together. Nikki Haley is gonna be part of it. But again, she might get an unwelcome ‘Boo!’ when she gets here. But we’ll move on down the road after that.”
Haley’s future in the Republican Party has been, at best, uncertain since she dropped out of the presidential primary. And now, it does not seem like her specific branch of conservatism — one that leading conservatives said represented the Reagan era — has a place in the party. Nothing has made that clearer than the elevation to the presidential ticket of Sen. JD Vance, who recently declared Reagan politics out and a nationalist approach in.
Haley has been taking baby steps to get on Trump’s good side over the last several months. She announced in May that she was voting for him and then released her delegates this month so that they could support Trump at the convention. But “the MAGA loyalty runs deep,” said Brittany Martinez, a Republican strategist and Haley supporter. “Honestly, I don’t know if there is anything she can say that will change those voters’ opinions of her.” A spokesperson for Haley didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.
The national convention might also not be the best place for her to try to get in Trump Republicans’ good graces. The Illinois delegate told NOTUS that he was familiar with how his state delegates were chosen and claimed that they were “literally handpicked” by the Trump campaign because they were subject to background checks and were then approved by the former president’s team. The Trump campaign did not respond to NOTUS’ request for comment on the matter.
“So what do you think’s going to happen? They put Nikki Haley up there, she’s going to get whacked,” the delegate said, speculating that Haley is being brought onstage so that delegates can “burn her at the stake.”
One delegate from West Virginia, who also spoke anonymously to be candid, said Haley doesn’t represent where the party is anymore. “I think people that probably support Nikki Haley are watching this convention at a country club or something like that,” the delegate told NOTUS.
(During the RNC on Monday, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien — who has not endorsed Trump — closed off the evening reprimanding big businesses and corporate lobby groups, highlighting how significant the labor vote will be in November.)
“I mean, look, in West Virginia, we are not fans,” the delegate said. “At all.”
Even Haley sympathizers had a hard time seeing Trump’s base extending an olive branch.
Charlie Gerow, a Pennsylvania delegate who recently made headlines when he stepped down as vice chair of the American Conservative Union, which organizes the now Trump-aligned Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), told NOTUS he was excited for Haley. He said she is “proof that the Republican Party is truly a big tent party,” but later noted that “in any political gathering, you’re going to have dissonance.”
When asked about Vance’s statement that the Reagan-era GOP is over, Gerow said, “Well, you know, I’m one of the holdovers from the Reagan era. … So, Sen. Vance and I might have to have a discussion about that.”
Jan Wever, an Illinois delegate and Henry County GOP chair who said she liked Haley and “could have supported her during the primary,” told NOTUS that disapproval or hatred within the party is not helpful going into November.
“We’ve got to stress unity,” Wever said. “And I’ll tell you what, if anybody near me boos, I might get up and tell them to sit down.”
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Oriana González is a reporter at NOTUS. Ben T.N. Mause is a NOTUS reporter and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.