COLUMBIA, S.C. — COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Donald Trump is using a college football rivalry weekend to bask in his supporters in a state and region crucial to his presidential fortunes, potentially trailing his Republican opponent Nikki Haley on her home field leave.
The former president and current frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination will be on hand Saturday when the University of South Carolina Gamecocks host the Tigers of Clemson University, Haley’s alma mater, in the annual Palmetto Bowl.
Trump’s campaign has not detailed his route. But if his visit is similar to his trip to Ames, Iowa for the Iowa State-Iowa game, he will attend pregame parties, perhaps stop by a fraternity house and then join more than 80,000 fans for the nationally televised game.
“We’re doing it in a big way in the South,” said Brandon Beach, a Georgia state senator and top Trump supporter who traveled with him for the Ames game in September. “President Trump knows he can connect with people, and they will connect with him.”
Haley, a Clemson alumna and member of the board of trustees, is an avid Clemson sports fan, but her campaign has not said whether she will attend the game. Asked about the upcoming primaries with Trump on her home turf, spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas called Haley “the only candidate with momentum” and referenced her past come-from-behind victories in legislative and gubernatorial contests.
“The people of South Carolina know their governor has what it takes to win because they’ve seen her beat the odds before — not just once, but twice,” she said.
Haley was governor of South Carolina until Trump tapped her as ambassador to the United Nations in 2016. Trump continues to have a wide lead in the polls over Haley and others in the state and nationally.
“In 2016, South Carolina gave us 44 out of 46 counties — that’s not that bad,” Trump said at a Republican Party state dinner in August. “I can’t wait to win all 46 of them. We want to win all 46.”
South Carolina comes in fourth on the Republican voting calendar, behind Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, with the first primaries in the south of the state on February 24, 2024. Several southern states will follow on March 5 as part of Super Tuesday. slate with more delegates up for grabs than on any other day in the primary campaign.
Trump’s performances in South Carolina and Super Tuesday in 2016 earned him a delegation leader he would never relinquish.
Haley has responded to Trump in recent weeks by emphasizing her roots as she campaigns in Iowa, where voting opens nationally with the Jan. 15 caucuses.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said recently in Ankeny, predicting strong turnout in the caucuses. “Then I will face Trump in my home state of South Carolina. And we will take it.”
An appearance at the state’s biggest sporting event of the year will bring a Trump-friendly crowd.
Flagship public universities, especially in the South, bring together much of a state’s business, civic, and political leadership, from small towns to cities.
Moreover, major college football games are full of the kind of spectacle — giant American flags on the field during pregame festivities, military flyovers piloted by home team alumni to close out the national anthem — that Trump is looking for.
“These are American values,” Beach said, noting he saw the same thing in Ames when some fans shouted “USA! USA! USA!” chanted. when they saw the former president. “They realize how much Trump loves our country. … They want what he wants: good energy policy, a secure border, security.”
Trump, who tried to buy an NFL team in the 1980s and ended up being part of a failed alternate league, has enjoyed sports cameos over the years. But college football has offered him its most generous reception, including at the 2018 national championship game in Atlanta and the 2019 Alabama-LSU regular season game in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
That game in Alabama came just days after Trump was booed by professional baseball fans while attending a World Series home game of the Washington Nationals.
___
Barrow reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writer Hannah Fingerhut in Ankeny, Iowa, contributed to this report.
