At a campaign event in eastern New Hampshire, last week, Melinda Tourangeau was wearing a Nikki Haley button on her lapel and a broad smile on her face,
Reuters reports.
Tourangeau, 57, said she would be thrilled to cast a vote for Haley in Tuesday’s Republican primary. Just as important, she said, was that she would not be voting for former President Donald Trump, as she had before.
"I had no choice. I had to subjugate my morals and ethics and his list of misogynistic...," Tourangeau, a Republican, told Reuters, as her voice trailed off and her smile faded.
Ask women who support Haley about Trump and that reaction becomes common. Voting for him was something they hoped to never have to do again. If Trump does become the Republican nominee, as is widely expected, some are unsure what they will do.
Kathy Holland, 75, of Sandown, NH, who voted for Trump in 2016, said if he's the nominee this time, "I will write someone in."
You see women at Haley’s small-scale rallies in Haley-branded shirts and hats, where they typically outnumber men. They like her background as a governor and United Nations ambassador, her tough national-security stance and the fact that she’s a woman.
And they really like that she is not Donald Trump.
Michelle Wright, 53, of Rye, New Hampshire, now casts a critical eye back at the Trump years. "He likes to talk about himself like he was fantastic, but really he wasn’t."
Did she vote for him? "I did. I held my nose."
The hopes of Haley's passionate cohort may be short-lived. Polls show Trump to be heavily favored in Tuesday's primary. Haley needs to keep it close to have a rationale for going forward, although she is expected to press on to her home state of South Carolina for its Feb. 24 primary regardless.
