MANCHESTER, N.H. - Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has stayed neutral since the very start of the 2024 GOP presidential nomination race.
While McDaniel and the national party committee are still not taking sides in the 2024 battle between former President Trump and former U.N. ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, the RNC chairwoman appears to be sending a signal.
"I’m looking at the math and the path going forward, and I don’t see it for Nikki Haley," McDaniel told anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum in a Fox News Channel interview late on Tuesday night.
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"I think she’s run a great campaign, but I do think there is a message that’s coming out from the voters, which is very clear," McDaniel emphasized.
She urged that "we need to unite around our eventual nominee, which is going to be Donald Trump, and we need to make sure we beat Joe Biden."
McDaniel's comments didn't appear to be sitting well with some national party committee members.
"The RNC has to be neutral," one committee member who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely told Fox News.
"We have a one-on-one competitive race. Is there a favorite? Well, sure there is. But it's a competitive race. Two states have gone. We're a long way from anybody having 1,215 delegates to wrap this thing up," the RNC member said. "So for her to hint that Nikki needs to get of the race is beyond obnoxious and it's certainly not neutral."
The nomination race and whether to coalesce around Trump will be a topic of conversation as all 167 RNC committee members and top staff huddle starting a week from Wednesday at their annual winter meeting, which this year is being held in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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McDaniel was interviewed hours after the former president won a second straight double-digit victory, but he did not land a knockout blow in New Hampshire's Republican presidential primary, as his last remaining major rival in the GOP nomination race vowed to keep on fighting.
"This isn’t the RNC speaking, this isn’t the establishment speaking, this is voters speaking," McDaniel said.
When asked by MacCallum if she was suggesting that Haley needed to suspend her campaign, McDaniel would only say that Haley and her team needed to "reflect" about the upcoming contests in Nevada and South Carolina and to consider "what's the most important thing going forward."
In a speech to supporters Tuesday night in New Hampshire after Trump's primary victory was quickly projected, Haley said, "You’ve all heard the chatter among the political class. They’re falling all over themselves saying this race is over. Well, I have news for all of them: New Hampshire is first in the nation. It is not last in the nation. This race is far from over."
Haley now heads back to her home state, which holds the next major contest in the Republican nominating calendar on Feb. 24.
A rally Wednesday night in Charleston, South Carolina, is the first in a series scheduled over the coming days. Additionally, the campaign launched a new $4 million ad blitz in South Carolina on Wednesday.
Trump, in an interview with Fox News Digital's Brooke Singman, argued that it was time for Haley to suspend her campaign so he could begin targeting President Biden in what is expected to be a general election rematch.
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"She should because, otherwise, we have to keep wasting money instead of spending on Biden," the former president emphasized. "If she doesn’t drop out, we have to waste money instead of spending it on Biden, which is our focus."
Trump's victory in New Hampshire came eight days after he captured a majority of the vote and crushed the competition in Iowa's low-turnout Republican presidential caucuses. It came two days after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended his campaign, making the race a two-candidate contest between Trump and Haley.
New Hampshire – where independent voters who make up roughly 40% of the electorate can vote in either major party's contest and have long played an influential role in the state's storied presidential primary – was considered fertile ground for Haley. She spent plenty of time and resources in the state, and secured the influential endorsement of popular Republican Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire.
Pundits viewed New Hampshire's primary as Haley's best and possibly last chance to slow down or derail the former president's march toward renomination.
The former president's nearly 12-point margin over Haley was below what most of the final public opinion surveys conducted ahead of the primary had suggested.
Sununu pushed back against McDaniel in a "Fox and Friends" interview on Wednesday morning.
"With all due respect to Ronna McDaniel, to say that we're just going to call it after two states, 40 states to go, the head of the Republican Party saying, we don't want to hear from the all the other Republicans in the nation because it's getting too close, that's nonsense," the New Hampshire governor emphasized. "You got to let the voters decide, not a bunch of political elites out of D.C."
And Haley campaign communications director Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement to Fox News that "we don’t do coronations in this country. We do elections. The political elites can back Donald Trump, but Nikki Haley will continue to fight for the nearly 50% of Republican primary voters and the 70% of all Americans who don’t want a Biden-Trump rematch."
A Republican source said there did not appear to be any conversations between the RNC and Haley's campaign.
McDaniel, in a Fox News Digital interview on Monday, highlighted the benefits of the GOP nomination race coming to an early conclusion.
"Obviously, it’s helpful from an organizational standpoint, from a fundraising standpoint," McDaniel said. "The Democrats have the White House. They’re using the power of Joe Biden having the White House to raise a huge amount of money and the sooner we can merge our operations and be focused on him and not on each other is always good for the party."
