Ahead of his rematch with Donald Trump in November, Joe Biden is looking to expand his electoral coalition in a unique way: by wooing supporters of Nikki Haley, the former Republican president’s last major opponent in the GOP primaries before leaving the race earlier this month.
The ad — entitled “Save America. Join Us.” — features Trump calling Haley, who served in his administration as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, “bird brain,” “crazy” and “very angry.” It also shows Trump saying “I don’t need votes, we have all the votes we need” and ends with a reporter asking the former president about how he’ll bring Haley voters into the fold.
“I’m not sure we need too many,” Trump replied.
“Nikki Haley voters, Donald Trump doesn’t want your vote,” Biden wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. "I want to be clear: There is a place for you in my campaign.”
“Donald Trump has made it crystal clear he doesn’t want support from voters who cast their ballot for Nikki Haley so let us be equally clear: there is a home for everyone on this campaign who knows Donald Trump cannot be back in the White House,” Michael Tyler, the Biden-Harris campaign’s communications director, said in a statement. “Joe Biden is building a broad and diverse coalition of voters who want more freedoms not less, who want to protect our democracy, and who want to live in a country that is safe from the chaos, division, and violence that another Donald Trump presidency would bring.”
The ad is part of the campaign’s $30 million spring ad campaign in swing states, and will run for three weeks in eight states, targeting Haley voters in suburban zip codes where she performed well against Trump in the primaries, according to the Biden-Harris campaign. It will run across digital platforms like Meta, YouTube, online video and connected TV.
While Haley only won two primaries in the 2024 GOP primary — just Vermont and Washington, D.C. — but she performed well, particularly in battleground states, even after leaving the race. She garnered more than 77,000 votes (13.2%) in Georgia and nearly 111,000 votes in Arizona (17.8%) after dropping out. According to exit polling in Ohio, where she garnered 161,000 votes (14.4%), nearly half of her voters say they’d back Biden in November, per an ABC News exit poll. An Emerson College poll from earlier this month showed that Haley voters break for Biden 63-27 in the general election.
In a statement when she exited the race, Biden commended Haley for her “courage” in taking on Trump and made clear that her supporters have a home with his campaign.
“Nikki Haley was willing to speak the truth about Trump: about the chaos that always follows him, about his inability to see right from wrong, about his cowering before Vladimir Putin,” Biden said at the time. “Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters. I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign.
“I know there is a lot we won’t agree on,” he continued. “But on the fundamental issues of preserving American democracy, on standing up for the rule of law, on treating each other with decency and dignity and respect, on preserving NATO and standing up to America’s adversaries, I hope and believe we can find common ground.”
Haley did not endorse Trump when she dropped out of the race, calling on the ex-president in her concession speech “to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him.”
“I hope he does that,” she added.
Spectrum News' Ryan Chatelain contributed to this report.