US Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has bagged the endorsement from influential rightwing US billionaire Charles Koch leaving behind Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner and Ron DeSantis, the hard-right Florida governor, reported the Guardian. The decision was announced by Americans for Prosperity Action, the political arm of the Koch network, in a memo on Tuesday.
“The moment we face requires a tested leader with the governing judgment and policy experience to pull our nation back from the brink,” Emily Seidel, senior adviser to the group, wrote in the memo, as per the report.
“Nikki Haley is that leader,” the memo added.
In her memo, Seidel addressed the recent Republican electoral defeat which were widely seen to be fuelled by Trumpist extremism and the conservative movement as a whole on issues prominently including threats to abortion rights.
“Republicans have been nominating bad candidates who are going against America’s core principles [a]nd voters are rejecting them,” she said in the memo.
However, Seidel also accused Democrats of “responding with extreme policies that also cut against core American principles” adding that the voters wanted to “move on” from a political era represented by Trump and Joe Biden.
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Seidel said that their internal polling has confirmed what the activists have been hearing from voters in the primary state, that is, Haley is in the "best position" to defeat Trump in the primaries.
“Between her surging to second place in the polls since August and being well-positioned among supporters of the other candidates, she is in a strong position to gather more support," the memo stated.
“In addition, our internal polling consistently shows that Nikki Haley is by far the strongest candidate Republicans could put up against Joe Biden in a general election – winning every key battleground state and up nationally by nearly 10 points," it added.
“While our polling shows Donald Trump loses to Joe Biden, Nikki Haley outperforms Trump by eight to 14 points in the key presidential battleground states," Seidel said in the memo.