In years to come, Nikki Haley may remember this pleasant, unremarkable school library in small-town New Hampshire as a moment that marked the beginning or the end. A sparkling morning and there’s a last-minute rush for parking outside Gilbert H Hood middle school in snowy New England suburbia. For such an epic spectacle, this phase of the eventual election of the 47th president is disconcertingly local. When Haley enters the room in Derry, latecomers can simply lean against the library windows and watch her speak. It’s one of the quirks of hosting the first primary.
When Shannon Spence woke up in her home in Boston on Saturday morning, she felt compelled to take a drive across the state line on Sunday to see Haley for herself. So, she’s here with her two-year-old son Eric, who is comfortably the most relaxed participant at the talk.
“New Hampshire has such an amazing privilege to be able to come and see events like this, to wait in line and talk and shake their hands,” Spence explains.
“It doesn’t set the agenda but it’s a privilege as a voter to get to do that because the rest of the country doesn’t get to. And this is the only candidate to see, really. We know where Donald Trump stands and what he is like. We already know Joe Biden is the Democrat nominee.”
This is Haley’s final shot at persuading New Hampshire voters that there is an alternative outcome to that 2024 presidential narrative. For months, her reluctance to antagonise the former president with explicit criticism blunted the message her most ardent supporters wanted her to deliver. This morning, she takes the podium in front of a standing crowd – the library tables were cleared for the occasion – and calls out the various accusations Trump made against her as lies.
“Let’s set the record straight,” she tells the audience.
“First of all, he said I’d raise taxes. I have never raised a tax; I think the government has too much money already. But if he wants to lie about me, I will tell the truth about him. He proposed a 25 cent gas tax increase as president in 2018. He said I want to cut social security. Not once did I say I wanted to tax social security. Not once. What I did say is you can’t put your head in the sand, you can’t act like it’s not going to go bankrupt in 10 years or eight years. What did he say? He wants to raise the retirement age to 70. So, in this race, I’ve seen what you’ve seen. I have seen the commercials that you’ve seen. And God bless Donald Trump: he’s lying in every single one of them. It’s very telling. If you have to lie to win, you don’t deserve to win.”
She did not stand still all weekend. Haley turned 52 on Saturday and bombarded unsuspecting diners and bar-stool regulars with fleeting visits to their locals. She is, of course, three decades younger than the leading contenders and her stamina and optimism have not flagged. At his heavily choreographed mega-rally in Manchester’s main hockey arena on Saturday night, Trump portrayed Haley as a Democrat pawn and seized on a shout from the crowd to repeat through the microphone his nickname for her, “Birdbrain”.
[ Keith Duggan: DeSantis suspends campaignOpens in new window ]
[ Keith Duggan: Trump triumphs with peculiar mix of rhetoricOpens in new window ]
He lined up an array of South Carolina political grandees who love-bombed the New England crowd with Southern ‘y’alls’ and explained why they were endorsing the former president. It was a flamboyant show of strength by Trump. But he was in an arena filled with staunch believers in his message. The lines of merch – hoodies and caps and banners – were significant in how frequently they bore the candidate’s surname and how seldom they mentioned the Republican Party. As she crept further up the New Hampshire polling, so Haley entered the line of sardonic and often vicious verbal fire Trump trains on enemies.
“It was obviously very disrespectful but that is his rhetoric, and we are used to that,” says Rob Sternberg, who, coincidentally, also made the short drive to Derry from his Massachusetts home to listen to Haley.
“To me he is more of a comedian anyway. He’s an entertainer. And she is real.”
Sternberg believes there is substance in Haley’s loudening argument that the issue of gerontology matters in this election. Trump has mercilessly poked fun at Biden’s age and supposed infirmity – “If you got on an aeroplane and Joe Biden was the pilot, how quickly would you walk off?” – was one of his recent quips. But Haley has rounded off the age bracket between the two men and presented them as ailing 80 year-olds.
“I am worried about the age aspect,” Sternberg says.
“And I am worried about my kids. She made a good point – 81 per cent of people polled think kids are going to be worse off than my generation. The average person gets a house at 49. She is throwing out these statistics but I kind of believe it. I have kids – I have a 23-year-old with a few thousand dollars in the bank and no debt. But where are these kids going to go? Number one is keeping this country safe, and I think she will do that.”
Haley is a conservative Republican but the message she has been repeating at gatherings like this is in marked contrast to the testosterone-fuelled nature of the Trump rallies. In short, she promises to bring a former accountant’s sensibility to the White House and, as the daughter of immigrants, presents herself – with nothing like the same weight of narrative reference – as a Republican alternative to the Obama legend that in America, anyone possesses limitless possibility.
Whether she read the mindset of the voters of New Hampshire correctly will be debated and agonised over after the votes are collated on Tuesday night.
“New Hampshire is full of independent voters, and they make up their mind at the last moment,” says Shannon Spence, who is an independent voter.
“And I think she got the message right – she is kind of a return to sanity. She’s a moderate Republican by modern standards and, yeah, I think she has a message that can really cut through. But frankly, the only message that should really matter for Republicans is that she can beat Joe Biden in a general election and Donald Trump cannot. She is playing to just Republican voters here. And she needs to pick off a few Trump supporters. I do think she can win. I’ve thought for a while that she can eke it out. But this is the whole ball game. If she doesn’t win here, she is in trouble.”
There were fleeting glimpses, through Trump’s Saturday night show of invincibility, of some interior doubt or nervousness. Just because Iowa held absolutely no surprises doesn’t mean New Hampshire won’t.
“Being honest, I voted for him in the last two cycles,” Ron Sternberg says at one stage before he heads for home.
Why not this time?
He nods his head to the room, where Haley is posing for photographs and handshakes with a line of supporters. “We have better candidates this time. And ... because he’s whacked.”
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