Haley Says She Is Not Dropping Out: ‘I Feel No Need to Kiss the Ring’

Days away from a heated Republican primary on her home turf, Nikki Haley on Tuesday pushed back against skeptics who have long urged her to drop out of the race, saying that while other members of her party had given into a “herd mentality” and fallen in line behind former President Donald J. Trump, she would not.

“I feel no need to kiss the ring,” she said in a major speech in Greenville, S.C., pledging to continue her pursuit of the nomination past Saturday’s primary in South Carolina, her home state. “And I have no fear of Trump’s retribution. I’m not looking for anything from him.”

Ms. Haley also contended that many of the same Republican politicians “who now publicly embrace Trump privately dread him” and were “too afraid” to speak up, despite knowing he had been “a disaster” for the party. She argued that Americans deserved a choice and not a “Soviet-style election,” which she described as only one candidate drawing 99 percent of the vote.

“We don’t anoint kings in this country,” she said. “We have elections. And Donald Trump, of all people, should know we don’t rig elections.”

The remarks were her sharpest yet against Mr. Trump and the way he has remade the Republican Party in his image. After taking a calibrated approach toward Mr. Trump for much of the race, Ms. Haley has assumed a more combative stance as she has become his last major rival.

But Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and a United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump, is trailing her former boss in her home state by double digits. The national outlook for her campaign does not look much brighter.