On Thursday, First Lady Abby Cox and Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson announced their support for Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign and highlighted the growing support for Haley’s candidacy in the state.
The press conference, held at the state Capitol building, was held to announce the full membership of the Nikki Haley for President Utah state leadership team.
According to a press release sent out by the team, it is made up of multiple “Republican heavyweights,” co-chairs and endorsers including Cox, Henderson, state Sen. Mike Mckell and other influential leaders and business owners throughout the state.
Though Haley did not attend the press conference, she was quoted in the team’s press release.
“From skyrocketing inflation to Joe Biden caving to China, Utahns understand what’s at stake in this election,” she said. “Our Utah team is made up of the best the Beehive State has to offer, and I’m incredibly grateful to each of them. We’ve got a country to save!”
Haley is a former governor of South Carolina, former President Donald Trump’s first United Nations ambassador and is now campaigning to be Trump’s rival in the 2024 elections.
Cox said she encourages all Utahns and Americans to vote for Haley because “she sees people, not numbers.”
“As ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley defended American interests,” Cox said. “She brings a steady hand and communicates a clear and honest path forward and never shrinks from principle.”
Henderson added she believes as president, Haley would bring a work ethic to D.C. “that’s been missing for far too long.”
“We’re proud of what she stands for,” she said. “… She gives us hope for the future and I am proud to support her.”
Currently, Haley is trailing Trump in the polls. However, Henderson said Haley is gaining momentum.
“She is proving that she is the leader, the type of leader, that Republicans want, that America wants,” Henderson said.
According to Cox, Gov. Spencer Cox does not publicly support any presidential candidate yet.
Haley’s campaign site lists primary goals including creating jobs and reducing national inflation. This list also includes efforts towards ending abortion, defending Second Amendment rights, supporting Israel and advocating for human rights.
On Wednesday, Haley faced Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a debate on CNN at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. Trump did not attend the debate and opted for a televised town hall in Des Moines that same evening.
Topics of debate included retirement age, abortion policy and expanding Medicaid.
Currently, DeSantis and Haley are respectively the second and third-highest polling candidates to Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
Henderson concluded by saying that “we cannot afford to sleepwalk into our future.”
“It’s time for a new generation of leadership in the White House,” she added. “It’s time for President Nikki Haley.”
John Hedberg • Jan 12, 2024 at 8:39 am
FYI, this is the same governor who approved rationing life-saving COVID medicines for Utahn grandparents based on race. He worships at the altar of the serial-hypocrite Equity bigots, so whatever’s trendy and will make him feel virtuous in his own eyes, he’s evidently all-in! How many Utahns were needlessly allowed to die because of how they looked or identified, just so that this man could feel good about his own narcissistic imaginings?
On a lesser note, this is also the same governor who allows the University of Utah to charge 3 TIMES as much as Salt Lake Community College for the exact same classes (check their respective course catalogs and the rate/fee schedules: on top of ridiculous tuition rates, the U ‘offers’ zero-credit tuition rates before any credits are taken, 14 “mandatory fees”, plus supplemental fees like a “science differential”, e-text fees, program fees, and even a “success fee” which is somehow not included within tuition). BTW, both operate in the same county with the same cost of living, and SLCC fields multiple campuses. I can take 18 credits at SLCC at the same price I would pay for 4 credits here at the U, simply because the governor doesn’t want to be unpopular with his donors. Will any of us be able to afford a house before we turn 35? 😂😋
Just some thought~
Anonymous • Jan 12, 2024 at 12:16 pm
I agree with you that tuition at the U is excessively high, 100%, but genuinely what makes you think the Governor has had any part in the decision-making for that? If you want to be angry about high tuition, please do! But be angry at the right people.
John Hedberg • Jan 12, 2024 at 2:10 pm
I hear you, but if the governor’s job isn’t to lead in providing for the well-being of the citizens of the State of Utah as his (or her) first priority, what are they doing with our executive power and our resources?
Have you looked at those respective catalogs and tuition/rate schedules I suggested? Could there be a more blatant form of financial corruption than the U’s manufacture of apparently endless additional fees for items that even SLCC, a school in the same system, believes are an inextricable part of tuition?
This “padding of the U’s pockets” goes ignored by the state justice and oversight offices, not because Utah’s flagship public students aren’t worth being provided an affordable path to earn a first-class higher education, since this is state education’s original and enduring mission from the beginning. This theft of this generation’s graduates’ ability to afford a family or to buy a home – in the same county with the same cost of living where SLCC delivers the same classes at less than 1/3 the price – only persists because the governor, with his oversight powers, refuses to use those powers to hold the University accountable for their accounting scam, which is driving Utah’s future parents and leaders into a bondage of debt that robs all our future posterity.
The executive’s primary function is to take action to protect the present and future of Utah citizens, and he’s been conscientiously looking the other way like a traffic cop on graft~! Yet he, and his political affiliates, look remarkably relaxed as they talk to us all about responsibility, while the people he swore an oath to protect and defend continue like a factory treadmill into a future of financial bondage: who is he actually representing, that he knowingly allows this parasitical process to continue? The leeches?
So no, I’m not angry, but Yes, I do think I’m holding the right person, who swore an oath he’s also ignored in protecting the lives of our grandparents, to now keep his oath to the grandchildren of those same seniors whose murder he advocated with his racist-regressive Equity-bigot COVID medicine rationing only 2 “seconds” ago~ 😎😋
John Hedberg • Jan 12, 2024 at 2:26 am
“Currently, Haley and DeSantis are the only two Republican candidates running for the nomination against Trump.”
I think Asa Hutchinson and Vivek Ramaswamy would disagree with you, here~! 😊