NORTH CHARLESTON, South Carolina — Nikki Haley returned to South Carolina on Wednesday as a political outcast in her own home.
Seeking to regain her footing a day after her defeat in the New Hampshire primary, the former South Carolina governor urged supporters at a rally here to show up for her as they had done more than a dozen years ago, when they sent her to the governor’s office.
But the terrain for Haley in her home state has never seemed more forbidding. It’s not only that Haley is polling 30 points behind Donald Trump in her home state. Or that her state’s Republican leadership has overwhelmingly flocked to Trump. It’s that as the campaign unfolded over the past two weeks, even one-time allies like Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina have elected instead to endorse Trump.
To her supporters here, it smacked of betrayal.
“It bothers me that she did a lot of things for people, and they’ve all turned their backs on her,” Pat Pope, 67, said outside of the convention center ballroom where Haley held her rally. Pope said she switched her allegiance to Haley after Scott exited the race.