Mere hours after President Biden issued a statement announcing that he was dropping out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement, the presidential field started morphing in interesting ways. On the night of Sunday, July 21st, a voters’ PAC that had formed around former Presidential candidate Nikki Haley—a Republican—pledged its support to the Harris run.
Biden’s announcement came via a letter issued to the public rather than in the form of a televised statement. His decision to drop his re-election bid follows weeks of pressure from fellow Democrats and important party donors that has mounted since his embarrassing June debate performance against Donald J. Trump. The former President was the Republican front-runner at the time and has since been officially nominated by his party with running mate J.D. Vance of Ohio.
The support of a block of Haley voters is less surprising than it may seem at first, given that the Haley PAC in question had previously called itself “Haley Voters for Biden.” The Political Action Committee is now seeking to emphasize the voices of former Haley voters who prefer the presumptive Democratic nominee to a return of the former President, who represents a very different segment of Republican voters than those who backed Haley.
The group’s director Craig Snyder, in speaking to Newsweek via email shortly after the Biden announcement, said that, in the PAC’s estimation, Harris is the candidate best positioned to defeat Trump in November’s general election.
Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, has also served as the United States ambassador to the United Nations. She ended her primary run for the Republican nomination in March following decisive losses at the ballot box on Super Tuesday. While Haley served in Trump’s administration, she appealed to a set of Republicans with a more institutional-friendly vision that prioritized America’s post-Cold War role as the agenda setter for the free world, as opposed to Trump’s America First vision.
