On the campaign trail, Haley’s time in South Carolina is both an asset and a liability

CNN
 — 

In 2008, Nikki Haley was a woman on the rise.

She was a two-term South Carolina state representative and a Republican majority whip, and she was considering running to chair an influential committee. Then, after her fellow lawmakers voted to grant themselves raises by voice vote, she became the face of an unpopular — but ultimately successful — push to mandate roll call votes for key issues.

For her legislative career, it was a death blow. She lost her leadership position, was demoted to a new committee and was shunned by fellow lawmakers.

“Long story short, when I refused to put the bill away, and when I went around the state telling [voters] what was going on with voice votes, they stripped me of everything,” Haley said at a recent town hall in Rye, New Hampshire. “So I ran for governor.”

After she won, one of the first bills she signed cemented on-the-record voting. Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” played over the Statehouse loudspeakers.

The story is a staple of her stump speech. As her rivals seek to paint her as a moderate, a flip-flopper or an establishment figure beholden to donors, Haley has drawn from her time in South Carolina to portray herself as someone with a tea party background who speaks “hard truths” and takes on tough fights — and who often wins.

But as Haley’s political star has risen, her record in South Carolina has received more attention. Her response to a question about the origins of the Civil War brought up her history of trying to navigate race relations and satisfy both sides of the Confederate flag debate.

Detractors — from former allies to primary opponents — have argued that she strayed from her tea party roots over the course of her governorship and have latched onto her past comments on the state gas tax, transgender bathroom bills, and recruiting businesses and jobs with taxpayer-funded incentives. Democrats have criticized her refusal to expand Medicaid access in the state.

And critics are quick to note that many South Carolina officials and donors — including some former Haley allies — have backed former President Donald Trump ahead of the state’s February 24 presidential primary.

Allies say it’s familiar territory.

“All my colleagues get off on endorsements and things like that,” said Nathan Ballentine, a South Carolina state representative and longtime Haley ally. “Well, Nikki ain’t never going to win that endorsement game and she doesn’t want to.”

Haley’s campaign says the attacks, from Democrats and Republicans, are a sign that she is the candidate they fear most.

“Nikki has always been a tough, anti-establishment conservative. As governor, she signed pro-life legislation, cracked down on illegal immigration, passed voter ID, and took on both parties over spending and transparency issues,” spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement. “That’s the Nikki you see running for president.”

Haley rose to national prominence during her 2010 gubernatorial race as a darling of the tea party, a protege of a governor who tried to reject stimulus funds from then-President Barack Obama and an honorary “mama grizzly” endorsed by GOP former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Friends and critics alike described her as a skilled politician with an ability to sense where the grassroots in the state was heading and tap into it.

As governor, she wielded social media criticism and the threat of primary challengers in an almost Trumpian style to push the GOP Legislature, which had significantly more power than her under the state constitution.

“Nikki is a keen student of history,” said one veteran South Carolina Republican strategist. “This may make her more like Trump than she cares to admit, but [she] really understands the theatrics of politics. She’s built for the modern news cycle.”

A common refrain in Haley’s stump speech is that she’s been underestimated in every race she’s ever run. Her first political campaign — for a state House seat outside of Columbia — pitted her against Larry Koon, a 30-year incumbent whose family roots in the district went back to the 1700s.

“To them, I was ‘Nikki who?’” she wrote of the 2004 campaign in her 2012 memoir, “Can’t Is Not an Option.” “It became a running joke in later campaigns. I always started out as Nikki Who.”

Haley beat Koon in the primary by 9 points, and received what she’s described as a less than warm welcome from members of the “good old boys” network within the Legislature. She also became one of the few allies of Republican Gov. Mark Sanford, who frequently vetoed spending.

But roll call voting became one of the defining issues of her time in the Legislature. Ashley Landess, the former president of the South Carolina Policy Council, recalled having lunch with Haley after the Legislature’s voice vote to raise its pay. Her organization had been researching why the state’s budgets were out of control, and realized part of the issue was that no one could prove how lawmakers voted on the budget.

“She was lamenting it, she was truly horrified by it, and told me, ‘I don’t understand how they can get away with it.’ And I said, ‘Because they don’t record their votes.’ That started the conversation,” Landess said, adding: “It was a very good issue for her to be involved with, and she recognized that.”

Roll call voting was one of the key issues Haley ran on during her 2010 gubernatorial bid. Haley won the Republican nomination for governor against the lieutenant governor, a congressman and then-Attorney General Henry McMaster after a particularly nasty primary that prompted her to describe South Carolina politics as a “blood sport” in her memoir.

As executive, Haley continued to have a contentious relationship with the Legislature.

“There was some tension with members of the legislature,” said Scott Huffmon, a professor of political science at Winthrop University. “But she was — and is — incredibly good about finding the path that conservatives in South Carolina were moving towards, and always having her sails set to sail along that path.”

During her first year in office, she issued report cards for legislators. She frequently used Facebook to voice her displeasure with lawmakers who disagreed with her, backed their primary challengers and called them out at campaign events in their districts.

“Now, did Nikki have problems with the Legislature as governor? Sure,” state Sen. Katrina Shealy told CNN. “She did, because Nikki was tough on the Legislature.”

Haley backed Shealy in her 2012 bid against then-state Sen. Jake Knotts, who used a racial slur against Haley during her gubernatorial race. But the two clashed in 2015 over the head of the state Department of Social Services. Haley stood by her pick, while Shealy, who was a member of the committee investigating the deaths of children under the department’s care, was the first Republican to call for the director’s resignation. The two exchanged words over Facebook. The director eventually stepped down.

“She didn’t bring you in and talk about it,” Shealy said of Haley’s leadership style. “She would just let everybody else know she was mad at you.”

Those differences, however, weren’t personal, Shealy said. She backed US Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina for president until he dropped out, and is now supporting Haley.

“I think sometimes you have to fight back, and I think Nikki can do that,” she said.

Haley has suggested she would take a similar approach to the US Congress, particularly over its inability to pass budgets on time.

“We’re gonna have to do some serious tough love with Congress, and when I say, ‘We don’t pay them if they don’t do their job,’ everybody in America would support me in saying that,” Haley said last month at a town hall in Iowa. “We’ve got to put the pressure on them to get them to do the right thing.”

As polling has shown Haley to be a contender in the GOP primary and, if she were to become the nominee, a credible threat to President Joe Biden, members of both parties have ramped up their attacks on her.

“She laid out the MAGA agenda before it had a name,” said Christale Spain, the chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party.

Spain pointed to Haley’s refusal to expand Medicaid; legislation she signed to restrict abortion after 20 weeks; and her support for former House Speaker Paul Ryan’s proposal to privatize Medicare as examples of the former governor’s conservative agenda.

On the right, some have accused her of becoming too moderate.

Trump allies have sought to push Haley’s record on the gas tax. MAGA Inc, a super PAC supporting Trump, has spent $2 million on a New Hampshire ad accusing her of flip-flopping on the state’s gas tax. Though Haley initially said she would not support the Legislature’s effort to raise the gas tax, she later said she would if it was paired with a cut to the state income tax. That deal didn’t pass, and the Legislature raised the gas tax under Haley’s successor.

Talbert Black, a longtime libertarian activist in South Carolina who isn’t backing any candidate, also cited Haley’s gas tax position as one of the issues that soured him on her. Black, a former constituent from Haley’s Statehouse days, was one of several activists who felt that she compromised too much once she got into office.

When Haley endorsed GOP Sen. Mitt Romney for president in 2011, it “confirmed with a lot of folks that she had left the very conservative, libertarian roots that she ran on,” Black said.

“To be honest, Haley was … a very typical Republican governor,” he said. “It’s just that when she ran, we thought she was going to be atypical, that she was going to be better than that.”

Over time, Haley became known less for her anti-establishment roots and more for her work wooing large companies to the state.

Vincent Sheheen, a Democratic former state senator who ran against Haley in the 2010 and 2014 gubernatorial elections, said Haley was able to win by a larger margin in her reelection thanks in part to closer ties to the business community.

“When she ran in 2010, she very much was channeling the Mark Sanford-tea-party-outsider thing,” Sheheen said. “But by 2014, she was the establishment.”

That shift was clear in their endorsements. In 2010, the state Chamber of Commerce endorsed Sheheen over Haley, prompting her campaign to call the group “a big fan of bailouts and corporate welfare.” Four years later, it backed Haley, praising her for “making job creation and a better business climate her No. 1 priority,” according to South Carolina’s The State.

Haley’s focus on recruiting business often meant staying out of contentious debates over social issues. After North Carolina faced severe backlash over its law banning transgender people from using the bathroom of the gender they identify with — a reaction that led to companies pulling business from the state — Haley said such a bill wasn’t necessary in South Carolina.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies have used that example to paint Haley as out of step with Republicans on transgender rights. (While DeSantis signed legislation restricting transgender rights in recent years, in 2018 he also said bathroom legislation wasn’t necessary.)

“I’m so disappointed that Nikki can’t even just stand up and say, ‘You know what, I will say right now that there wasn’t a rampant issue in South Carolina, and I messed up, I should have thought a little bit more about being proactive instead of reactive,’” said South Carolina state Rep. Ashley Trantham, who is backing DeSantis. “But she didn’t do that.”

Haley has said the government should stay out of transgender health care but has opposed allowing transgender athletes to participate in girls sports.

“If Nikki were not a true conservative, I would never give my name to her,” said Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, the lone member of the state’s congressional delegation to back Haley. “I know what she did as governor. I know what she did as ambassador to the United Nations … and I just know, she is the only candidate that can get elected.”

Haley has sought to bolster her conservative credentials during the GOP primary. Her campaign recently released an ad featuring clips of Palin’s 2010 endorsement of her gubernatorial bid and clips highlighting her record on immigration and the economy.

“And some of the good old boys, maybe they don’t like her too much,” Palin says in the video. “She stands up for conservative principles and she doesn’t back down from a challenge.”

One of the defining moments of Haley’s governorship came in 2015, when a racist shooting prompted her to call for the Confederate battle flag to be removed from the Statehouse grounds. On the campaign trail, she’s cited the moment as an example of her ability to bring people together despite their differences — in this case, what she’s described as one side that views the flag as a symbol of “heritage and tradition” and another that views as one of “slavery and hate.”

“My job wasn’t to judge either side,” Haley said at a CNN town hall Thursday. “My job was to get them to see the best of themselves and go forward.”

Haley’s bungled answer on the origins of the Civil War last month, in which she initially failed to mention slavery before clarifying her answer, has drawn attention to her past comments on the Confederacy and how she talks about race. Her efforts to clean up her Civil War answer hit another snag Thursday after she declared that she “had Black friends growing up” while elaborating on how slavery was often discussed.

“I know the hardships, the pain, that come with racism,” she told MSNBC on Friday when asked about the “Black friends” comment. “Critics can say whatever they want, I am very comfortable in my skin, I’m very comfortable with what I believe in, and my job is not to convince them.”

Over the years, Haley has talked about racist incidents she experienced growing up in rural South Carolina as an Indian American who was neither White nor Black. But on the campaign trail, she has focused on emphasizing that she believes America “is not racist” but “blessed.” She frequently cites the removal of the flag as an example of unity.

While campaigning for governor in 2010, she told a group dedicated to fighting “attacks against Southern culture” that she believed the flag was about “tradition” and “heritage,” and that she did not believe it was “racist,” CNN’s KFile reported. In the same 2010 interview, with a now-defunct group called the Palmetto Patriots, Haley said she would support a Confederate History Month in the state, which she compared to Black History Month.

During her 2014 reelection bid, in which her Democratic opponent Sheheen ran on removing the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds, Haley called the flag “a very sensitive issue” during a debate and described his campaign push to remove it a political stunt.

But in the days after a White supremacist killed nine Black worshippers at Charleston’s Emanuel AME church in 2015, Haley called for the flag to be removed. Though Haley didn’t lead the charge to remove the flag, which required a two-thirds vote in the state House and Senate, her support helped bring in more GOP votes.

“I thought it was important that we forced the issue and forced her and [South Carolina GOP Sen.] Lindsey Graham and others to finally say that it need to come down,” Sheheen said. “But it was also important that they said it.”