Nikki Haley's Michigan Republican delegates are divided on their support for Trump

Most of former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s Michigan delegates — some of whom have devoted their careers to GOP causes — said in recent days they were still unsure whether they would vote for their party’s presumptive nominee, Donald Trump, in November.

His comments, made in a series of interviews with The Detroit News ahead of this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, pointed to a Trump vulnerability: Republican-leaning voters in a battleground state who see Trump as an unpredictable factor for four more years in the White House. The interviews occurred both before and after a gunman attempted to assassinate Trump on Saturday in Pennsylvania.

Further: Trump assassination attempt destabilizes already tumultuous Michigan presidential campaign

Jimmy Greene, a Saginaw Republican who previously led an association that advocated for nonunion construction contractors, was one of Haley’s Michigan supporters in the primary race. Greene called the shooting a “tragedy” but said he won’t vote for Trump on Election Day. Instead, Greene said he might vote for Democratic President Joe Biden.

Greene said she knows what to expect from Biden. She said her life won’t change significantly with another Biden term, except for possible higher taxes and gas prices. “The world won’t explode” if Biden wins another term, Greene said.

“With Donald Trump… I don’t believe the world will ever be the same again,” Greene said.

The Republican National Convention, a weeklong event during which Trump will be officially nominated for president, begins Monday at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee.

Trump won 51 of Michigan’s 55 delegates to the convention. However, Haley, a former South Carolina governor, picked up four delegates by earning 27% of the vote in Michigan’s Feb. 27 statewide primary election. That means Haley could have as many as eight supporters (four delegates and four alternates) as her Michigan representatives at the convention.

Five of Haley’s eight delegates or alternates told The News they would not vote for Trump or were unsure which candidate they would support in November. Three of the eight said they would definitely not attend the convention.

Asked if she would attend the convention, Haley delegate Greene simply replied: “No way.”

Haley represents true Republicanism, but Trump focuses on a different political philosophy, Greene argued.

Jason Watts, a longtime Republican political consultant from Allegan County, will attend the convention as an alternate delegate for Haley, but Watts said he plans to represent “those Republicans who don’t believe the current candidate represents them.”

“As a former election administrator, I don’t believe that if you just cry foul because there was election interference that it will miraculously become true,” Watts said, referring to Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

On Sunday, Watts said the possibility of voting for Trump in November was “the rarest of possibilities.”

In Michigan in 2020, Biden won by 3 percentage points over Trump, 51%-48%. Court rulings, bipartisan canvassing boards and an investigation by state Senate Republicans upheld the result, but Trump has maintained, years later, that there was widespread fraud with no evidence to support the allegations.

“The majority of the officials in this state, and many other states, are Republicans,” Watts said. “They are not willing to rig elections.”

Watts, 47, said he has been a Republican his entire life.

Elusive voting bloc

State Rep. Mark Tisdel, a Republican lawmaker from Rochester Hills, is another Haley convention delegate. Unlike some of the others, Tisdel said he plans to vote for Trump in November.

“Many of his policies were very well received by a broad base of Republicans,” Tisdel said of the former president.

Tisdel criticized Biden’s handling of the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel and the national debt.

Similarly, when asked last week whether she would support Trump in November, Kristin Combs, a Lansing political consultant and Haley delegate, responded in an email: “I am a Republican. Joe Biden and his ‘Bidenomics’ have not only been an undisputed failure for Michigan families and small business owners, he is clearly no longer even capable of performing a job as demanding as President of the United States.”

Asked to clarify whether he plans to vote for Trump, Combs again shared the answer, which makes no reference to Trump or details how he will vote.

Combs, who will attend the Republican convention, agreed that Haley’s Michigan voters could be crucial in November. He noted that nearly 300,000 people in Michigan voted for Haley in the Feb. 27 primary.

“In a general election that will be won or lost by the margins, Haley voters represent a significant but elusive bloc of voters that I’m sure the presidential camp is already working to woo into its fold,” Combs said.

‘In the air’

Another Haley delegate, Daylen Howard, a 29-year-old Republican from Shiawassee County, said he will not attend this week’s convention.

“The reason I want to go is simply because I want Nikki to be represented. The reason I don’t want to go is… it’s going to be a MAGA festival,” Howard said last week, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

On Sunday, Howard said he had not yet decided how he would vote in November and wanted to see how Trump responded to the shooting at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. But Howard predicted Trump would win in the wake of the assassination attempt.

To the frustration of some longtime Republicans, Trump supporters have broadly taken over the national political apparatus of the Republican Party.

His daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, is co-chair of the Republican National Committee. Former Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, who served as ambassador to the Netherlands during Trump’s last presidential administration, is the chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.

On Tuesday, Haley, who previously blamed Trump for election losses in states like Michigan, freed her delegates to vote for Trump, rather than her, at the national convention. In March, Haley said she planned to vote for Trump in November after spending months on the campaign trail criticizing the former president, blaming him for sowing chaos in the Republican Party and costing the party losses in the 2022 midterm elections.

“Joe Biden is not fit for a second term and Kamala Harris would be a disaster for America,” Haley tweeted last week. “We need a President who will hold our enemies accountable, secure our border, reduce our debt, and get our economy moving again.”

“I encourage my delegates to support Donald Trump next week in Milwaukee.”

Howard, who ran unsuccessfully for the Michigan state Senate in 2022, said Trump is doing everything in his favor. This fall’s election will be the third presidential election Howard has been able to vote in, and in all three, he said he hasn’t been thrilled with the options on the ballot.

Casey VanderWeide, 29, of Grand Rapids, an alternate delegate for Haley, said last week that she is conservative and that Biden does not align with her values. VanderWeide said she was not enthusiastic about supporting Trump at the polls.

“I don’t know what to do yet,” VanderWeide said. “I don’t like voting for Biden, but I’m not excited about voting for Trump either.”

VanderWeide is a resident of Kent County, a former Republican stronghold that has shifted toward Democrats in recent years.

In February, Haley won 34% of the vote in the Kent County primary, compared to Trump’s 59%. Statewide, the former president received 68% of the primary vote.

The race ahead

Jeff Litten, 29, of Oakland County, an alternate delegate for Haley, said he decided not to attend the national convention because he has attended Trump rallies before and doesn’t like them.

On Sunday, Litten said he’s not sure how he’ll vote in November, but he’s considering voting for Trump.

“Both sides hate each other so much,” Litten said. “They don’t respect differences. They just hate each other.”

Litten said he has concerns about Biden’s mental acuity and whether the current Democratic president is capable of handling a national emergency that occurs in the middle of the night. As for Trump, Litten said he wants a leader the next generation can look up to.

In Michigan, 297,124 voters cast ballots for Haley in the Republican primary. In 2020, Biden won Michigan by about 154,000 votes over Trump.

Further: Biden attacks Trump and media in Detroit amid calls to leave forum

During the primaries, Trump repeatedly criticized Haley, who served as his ambassador to the United Nations. Before the Michigan primary, Trump said Haley was “not even a factor.”

Haley, who has won support from some moderate Republicans, has questioned Trump’s divisive politics and “isolationist” approach to foreign affairs.

With less than four months until the general election, Trump is still struggling with voters who lean Republican, said Richard Czuba, a pollster and founder of the Lansing-based Glengariff Group.

“Trump is not winning back Nikki Haley voters at this stage,” Czuba said.

Many former Haley supporters are lining up behind third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., giving Biden a chance to win the Michigan race and the state’s 15 Electoral College votes, Czuba said.

But Watts, the longtime Republican consultant, noted that Haley’s support for Trump could play a role in her supporters’ decision-making.

“I think they will reluctantly defect to Trump, as Haley herself has,” Watts said.

He then added: “But I have not committed myself.”

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