‘They’ve all turned their backs on her’: Haley hosts a homecoming in a hostile state

NORTH CHARLESTON, South Carolina — Nikki Haley returned to South Carolina on Wednesday as a political outcast in her own home.

Seeking to regain her footing a day after her defeat in the New Hampshire primary, the former South Carolina governor urged supporters at a rally here to show up for her as they had done more than a dozen years ago, when they sent her to the governor’s office.

But the terrain for Haley in her home state has never seemed more forbidding. It's not only that Haley is polling 30 points behind Donald Trump in her home state. Or that her state’s Republican leadership has overwhelmingly flocked to Trump. It’s that as the campaign unfolded over the past two weeks, even one-time allies like Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina have elected instead to endorse Trump.

To her supporters here, it smacked of betrayal.

“It bothers me that she did a lot of things for people, and they've all turned their backs on her,” Pat Pope, 67, said outside of the convention center ballroom where Haley held her rally. Pope said she switched her allegiance to Haley after Scott exited the race.

Haley returned to South Carolina after a third-place finish in Iowa and, after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out, a second-place showing in New Hampshire. But with Trump winning both states convincingly, pressure is mounting on Haley even here to abandon her campaign.

On Wednesday, Rep. Ralph Norman, who served with Haley in the South Carolina statehouse and is her sole congressional endorsement, told POLITICO he has gotten calls from Republicans who wanted Haley to bow out.

“These pundits are saying get out. Why?” Norman said in an interview. “Nikki's got the courage to continue on. She would have liked to have done better in both New