PORTLAND, Maine — Victoria Henderson has mostly voted for Democrats her entire life, but she was at a Republican rally on Sunday hoping that both parties could find alternatives to President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
The 73-year-old from Portland thinks Democrats spend too much money unwisely. If Trump goes back to the White House, she fears that “our country and our whole planet will die.”
“I think my best-case scenario is Nikki Haley against a real good, smart, compassionate Democrat, and they have the conversation,” she said of the former South Carolina governor running a longshot primary against Trump. “I think she’s capable of crossing the fence.”
In a normal presidential election, Henderson would be the kind of voter who is up for grabs. The crowd of 500 people that packed an Elks lodge to see Haley two days before Maine’s Super Tuesday primaries was a microcosm of a broad coalition that could win her the White House, but it also showed why her primary challenge to the divisive Trump is nearly dead.
Trump has won the first seven states to vote in the Republican nominating contest and looks ready to romp in the 15 states voting Tuesday. He held 77 percent support to just 19 percent for Haley in a University of New Hampshire poll of Maine Republicans released last month. Here and in other states, she and her allies are targeting independent voters.
Yet Trump is leading Biden in national polls despite the former president facing four separate criminal cases that threaten to upend his campaign. His favorability rating is in the low 40s, though that mark is higher than Biden’s approval as voters worry about his age of 81.
Haley generally does better against the president in polls. But she has only won about 14 percent of the delegates awarded so far and got her first victory on Sunday among the tiny Republican electorate in Washington, D.C. She projected confidence in Sunday’s speech, noting that she was the last Trump opponent standing from a large Republican field.
“We’ve defeated a dozen other fellas,” she said, prompting laughs from the crowd. “I just have one more I need to catch up to.”
It takes idealism to attend a rally for a candidate virtually assured of losing, but many of the attendees were realistic about Haley’s chances. Neil Cote, a 66-year-old former newspaper editor from Saco, joked that it was an odd scene with her campaign “in the death rattle.”
Signs of Trump’s hold on the party were evident. Haley’s speech was interrupted by a Trump supporter who aped the former president’s attacks on the former South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, calling her “birdbrain” and a “neocon.”
Aside from U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a centrist Trump critic, Haley’s Maine supporters are mostly former officeholders who feel they can go further in defecting from the former president. One of them, former U.S. Rep. David Emery of the 1st District, backed a challenge to Trump’s ballot status that may be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday.
But there were some in the audience who would back Trump in a race with Biden. One of them was Richard Arreguin, who came from the Down East town of Addison and said he hoped Trump would pick Haley as his vice president. (Haley ruled that notion out in January.)
“I think she’s as tough as Trump is,” Arreguin said. “She’s young. She’s ambitious. I think she’s a mover and a shaker, and I think she’ll do well.”
For now, she has to defeat Trump. Many in the audience could not help her much there. Mary Iyer, a Democrat from Saco, took a Haley yard sign home and said she would keep it in her car window for two days. After that, she would vote for Biden.
“I just can’t understand how anybody is supporting Trump,” she said.
Haley gave a calibrated speech. She hit Trump for his embraces of Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying the U.S. can shore up its own border while aiding Ukraine and Israel. She singled out Biden on several fronts, including his abrupt 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. Republicans in Congress spend too much money, she said, noting her background as an accountant.
Henderson tapped a reporter on the shoulder to say she liked Haley even better after hearing her talk. Yet the coalition that boosted her on Sunday won’t decide the Tuesday primary.
