Republican former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley has dropped out of the race for the party’s presidential nomination, sealing a historic election rematch between United States President Joe Biden and her former boss Donald Trump.
“I am filled with the gratitude for the outpouring of support we’ve received from all across our great country. But the time has now come to suspend my campaign. I said I wanted Americans to have their voices heard — I have done that. I have no regrets,” Haley said in a televised address in Charleston, South Carolina Wednesday.
Haley was in a two-person contest with Trump for the chance to face Biden in November’s election but won just one state — Vermont — on “Super Tuesday” and never presented a serious obstacle in Trump’s path to the nomination.
She called on Trump “to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him.”
Trump, the presumptive Republican standard-bearer, invited Haley’s voters to “join the greatest movement in the history of our nation” while Biden, who is sure to win the Democratic nomination, said there is “a place for them in my campaign.”