Nikki Haley’s own state party doesn’t love her, and she’s fine with that
Timothy P. Carney
Video Embed
Nikki Haley’s likability among voters is one of her main assets, but speaking on background, multiple state Republican operatives told a story of Haley’s rise to power as a tale of her stepping on toes, upsetting the party establishment, and in many cases never making amends.
When Republican operatives and officials in the state speak on the record to talk about Haley, you can see the subtle hints of tension between Haley and the rest of the party edifice. In a recent Washington Post article, some colleagues of her and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) compared the two: “She was not afraid to rock the boat when necessary,” said Garry Smith, a former state representative who served with Haley. “Tim was someone who knew the system, knew how to work within the system, two very different personalities in that regard at how they actually operated.”
BIDEN THROWS GAS ON INFLATION FIRE
“Tim hasn’t had as contentious or tough races as Nikki has,” said Katon Dawson, the former state party chairman. “Nikki’s every one of them, just disastrously hard.”
You see the insinuations: Haley rocks the boat, is contentious, and doesn’t work within the system.
Haley doesn’t run from this image. She actually runs toward it.
Describing her first campaign, for state house in 2004, she said Thursday in Boiling Springs, “I did not know you weren’t supposed to run against a 30-year incumbent in a primary.”
When she tells of her time in the state house, it’s a tale of her becoming a pariah. Her stump speech focuses on her fight to require recorded floor votes on more measures in the legislature.
Her story starts with a voice vote to raise lawmakers’ pay and the subsequent refusal of a single lawmaker to admit he voted to raise his own pay.
“I was furious because we had a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and a Republican governor,” she said. “And I filed a bill that said anything important enough to be debated on the floor in the House or the Senate is important enough for the people of South Carolina to know how their legislators voted.”
When the speaker of the House refused to give her bill the light of day, Haley says she went to the grassroots, traveling around the state, whipping up voters to pressure their representatives to pass Haley’s transparency bill.
For that, she was punished, Haley tells. “My first year in office, I was chairman [of] the freshman class. Second year, majority whip. Third year, I was on a powerful business committee. Fourth year, I was subcommittee chair of banking.”
“The year that I didn’t do what they wanted me to do, the year that I didn’t put a bill away, they stripped me of everything,” she said. “I could take the well, no one would hear me speak. I could sponsor a bill, no one would co-sponsor. So I ran for governor.”
The 2010 Republican nomination battle, to replace scandal-plagued Mark Sanford, was always going to be tough. Gresham Barrett had been named as a possible future governor since winning his congressional seat in 2002. Andre Bauer was Sanford’s lieutenant governor and so plausibly next in line. Henry McMaster was the state attorney general and had the endorsements of David Beasley, the most recent non-disgraced GOP governor, and John McCain, the most recent Republican presidential nominee.
Haley was a state representative without many friends in Columbia. Winning that primary counted as skipping the line, at best.
Haley relishes this story of a woman who doesn’t “know her place.”
In this way, Haley tries to bolster the idea that she is tough, which is a crucial counterweight to her perceived niceness — especially as a woman running for president.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
She can also hope to use this story in a place like New Hampshire, where the average GOP primary voter may hold South Carolina Republicans in suspicion.
More importantly, the Haley-against-the-good-old-boys story allows her to play the role of political outsider despite being in elected or appointed office consistently for two decades.