Nikki Haley picks up first Senate endorsements from Collins, Murkowski while most GOP senators line up behind Trump

• Nikki Haley has secured her first Senate endorsements since launching her presidential campaign.
• On Friday, Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins said they'd back Haley's White House bid.
• Former President Trump currently has the support of 32 GOP senators, far outpacing Haley.

Since former President Donald Trump entered the 2024 presidential race in late 2022, his candidacy has dominated the GOP primary process, with most Senate Republicans slowly but surely falling into his camp.

With Trump largely cruising toward the GOP presidential nomination ahead of Super Tuesday, he has won the endorsements of a majority of the Senate Republican Conference.

But on Friday, two of the remaining GOP holdouts — Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — announced that they were backing former UN ambassador Nikki Haley over Trump.

"America needs someone with the right values, vigor, and judgment to serve as our next President — and in this race, there is no one better than her," Murkowski said in a statement released by the Haley campaign. "Nikki will be a strong leader and uphold the ideals of the Republican Party while serving as a President for all Americans."

In a response to The Bangor Daily News, Collins said that she voted for Haley over Trump in the GOP primary, adding that Haley has "the energy, intellect, and temperament" to serve in the White House.

The support from Murkowski and Collins is noteworthy, as the two lawmakers are the first GOP members from the chamber to back Haley as she continues her uphill primary campaign against Trump.

But their support of Haley is also in line with their more centrist leanings, as both Murkowski and Collins have been key players on everything from infrastructure funding to Supreme Court nominations, when in 2022 the senators were two of just 3 lawmakers in the GOP conference to back Ketanji Brown Jackson's appointment to the Supreme Court. (Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah was the third Republican who voted for Jackson's confirmation to the high court in a caucus that at the time had 50 members.)

Murkowski and Collins also voted to impeach Trump for "incitement of insurrection" for his role on January 6, 2021, when rioters seeking to stop the certification of now-President Joe Biden's electoral victory breached the US Capitol.

Haley's only other congressional endorser is Rep. Ralph Norman, a conservative lawmaker from her home state of South Carolina.