Nikki Haley: a Candidate for the 2024 South Carolina State Senate – Predictions for An Octagonal Launch
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is expected to announce she’s running for president on February 15 in Charleston, according to a person familiar with her plans.
Sources familiar with the matter tell me she is preparing to send an invite to her supporters to announce a special event in the coming days. The precise details of her launch have yet to be revealed. One source said they believed she could publicly signal the announcement is coming with video in the coming days, but that possibility isn’t set in stone.
The location and date of the expected announcement was reported by The Post and the Washington Post.
Dave Wilson, president of the Christian nonprofit Palmetto Family Council told CNN that since she left the governor’s office for the United Nations there was a sense in South Carolina that she was going to be preparing for a larger launch. We are in a presidential window. Everyone had better buckle up.”
“When you’re looking at a run for president, you look at two things: You first look at, does the current situation push for new leadership? The second question is, am I that person that could be that new leader?” she told Fox News.
Haley’s expected campaign launch will highlight a political persona with considerable appeal as Republicans wonder how to broaden their coalition after their general election loss in 2020. Haley’s career path has been on a trajectory to a presidential race because she is the former governor of a southern state that could be one of the most decisive primary battlegrounds. Her candidacy would bring the historic potential of the first woman in the Oval Office and her South Asian heritage could help the GOP win back women and more moderate voters. She added some foreign policy experience to her resume with a spell as the US ambassador to the United Nations under Trump.
One of the defining early questions of the 2024 presidential election seems about to be answered with some of the ex-president’s potential rivals for the Republican nomination making clear moves toward the race.
On Tuesday, Trump wished Haley luck, but he was mad that she would challenge him as his UN ambassador. Trump has remained anxious about the other challenger. In the past months, Trump asked his advisers to suggest a new nickname for him to refer to as Ron Desanctimonious because he felt it would focus on the weight of his potential rival.
Increasingly clear indications of several forming campaigns are notable because they appear to show that Trump, who has been the most influential force in the GOP ever since 2016, is not so prohibitively formidable that he cannot be challenged by serious rivals.
It would not be enough to say that his rivals feel weakness because of the former president’s bond with activists. His low-energy launch last year and his frequent campaign appearances underscore his electoral liabilities.
Still, having multiple rivals would help Trump, as it did in 2016, since the winner-take-all nature of most Republican primaries allows a candidate with a mere plurality of votes to build up big delegate leads in a crowded field.
In other words, if Trump can split the opposition, he can win the primary, but that’s no guarantee for the general election given that the twice-impeached former president left Washington in disgrace after trying to steal an election and fomenting a mob attack on the US Capitol.
It’s time for a new generation. It is time to take more leadership. … We have to remember, too, we have lost the last seven out of eight popular votes for president,” Haley said in a Fox News interview last month. “It is time we get a Republican in there that can lead and that can win a general election.”
There is a fundamental question that Haley will have to answer if the Republican base is interested in what she plans to sell.
Her credentials look formidable in isolation but less so when considering the values of the party whose nomination she is seeking. Is there really a market in the GOP for a less strident delivery vehicle for Trump’s “America First” creed? After all, the ex-president’s bombast, occasional profanity and laceration of liberal government and media elites create more of an emotional rather than a directly ideological connection with his biggest fans.
The former president focuses on her ambition and perceived shifting loyalties, which suggest she is vulnerable to counter-attacks from him.
After leaving the administration on good terms she rebuked her party for following Trump down a “path he shouldn’t have” followed with his election denialism. But with Trump still a powerful figure in the GOP, she repositioned herself in October 2021.
The former South Carolina governor’s choice to join the GOP sweet spot has some wondering how she will get the support she will need to win the nomination.
I have traveled to Iowa and New Hampshire. He said at a forum in Washington, DC that this is not random. We are just trying to figure it out. It is an unbelievably momentous decision to say you believe you should be the leader of the United States of America,” he added.
What Does a Woman Need to Win in 2024? The Case For Tulsi Gabbard’s “Signals as a Candidate”
Pompeo appears to have an even more acute positioning issue than Haley, since he was the ex-president’s effective enforcer at the State Department and while director of the CIA, and shared many of the populist, nationalist foreign policy instincts of his former boss. Almost everything that a GOP primary voter could get from Pompeo, they might be able to get from Trump, although the West Point graduate and former Kansas congressman would no doubt argue that he boasts a calmer temperament.
She is not the only female who will matter in the next GOP nominating process, as many of her predecessors were in the past.
South Dakota’s two-term Gov. is also likely to run, as she has published a memoir, taken on abortion and immigration issues and been critical of some of her potential competitors.
Noem has stated in the past that she would vote for Trump if he asked for the party’s nomination again. But, also like Haley, she declined to endorse him when he declared formally in November. Instead, Noem told The New York Times that Trump “does not offer the best chance” for the GOP in 2024.
The woman who once was considered a lock to become speaker of the House fell out of favor when she co-chairs the House Select Committee on the January 6th Attack on the Capitol. Cheney declared “whatever it takes” to prevent Trump’s return to office after she was a prominent member of the panel that condemned him.
There will be a challenge to the former president in 2024. But after Cheney lost her own primary in August, her future prospects seemed all but extinguished in the party she had long served (as had her father, former Vice President Richard Cheney).
Other women with conservative credentials or points of view are interested in the office of president as well. This past week when a congressional panel had a hearing on how the Biden administration was “weaponizing” federal agencies against citizens, one witness getting a lot of attention was Tulsi Gabbard.
In 2002, the left the Democratic Party and since then has appeared often on Fox News as a critic of Democrats and “Big Tech” social media.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/13/1155861015/haley-signals-a-new-direction-for-the-gops-national-ticket
The Birth and Death of the First Woman: The Journey from the White House to the Presidency to the Next-to-Leading Order
There is a clear reason for the scramble to define women as presidential as never before. It is embodied in the arrival of Vice President Harris, the first woman to occupy the job famously described as a “heartbeat away from the presidency.”
The conversations about women on the ticket went to their logical next step after Harris was elected. The culture has changed over time. There was a novelty to gender balance. The party that tries to resist that nature in the future will be under a lot of pressure.
For a century after the first woman declared herself a protest candidate for the White House in 1872 (before women’s right to vote was added to the Constitution in 1920), when women ran for the White House it was more to make a point than to win an office. The first woman to get votes in a primary was Margaret Chase Smith, a senator from Maine.
Two women have indeed been nominated for vice president by the major parties, Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Republican Sarah Palin in 2008. Both managed to shake up the party’s convention, the media coverage and even the contest itself for a period of weeks.
Both could not help the underlying dynamics of those races or provide what the presidential candidates didn’t have. Women voters across party lines were disappointed by supporters who thought these gender discoveries would appeal to them.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/13/1155861015/haley-signals-a-new-direction-for-the-gops-national-ticket
Bringing Pence and DeSantis to the White House: Predictions for a Woman’s Superpower in the era of the Hickenabee Campaign
DeSantis is regarded as the likeliest challenger to match Trump in polls and fundraising. But New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu has been “testing the waters” as well, and there could be others such as Maryland’s popular former Gov. Larry Hogan, who just retired due to term limits.
Pence, too, for his part, has been showing up in the early primary states, but not showing well in the polls. The true believers of Trump think that he’s disloyal and that he’s part of the Trump legacy to those who want the party to move on.
Would opposing him in the primaries automatically kill any chance of being his running mate? Taking on Biden in the early Democratic debates did not kill Harris’ chances. Biden got the endorsement from Harris early in March, even though she had already dropped out before the primaries began.
It is possible that the ideal space for a woman candidate would be just outside of Trump’s circle and not involved in the controversy surrounding him. It would give a prospective running mate a period of time to find a new home, so that they can join Trump at some point or another person’s ticket.
It may have been during Huckabee’s response to Biden’s State of the Union that some of this posturing was going on. It’s often seen as an opportunity for politicians with national ambitions to speak. Sanders used it to deliver a strong message of condemnation against the Biden administration and against Democrats in general, especially on social issues.
Without mentioning the name of the president she served, she mentioned her role as White House press secretary going to Iraq to visit with troops with the president and first lady without specifying what she was doing. For this she was also criticized by many conservatives and Trump supporters.
It has not been determined whether the two have broken with each other. But she may be seeking a safe distance not unlike that sought by her father, Mike Huckabee, who once also served as Arkansas’ governor. Huckabee was a candidate for president in 2008 and 2016 but did not get a job in the Trump administration because he was busy with his talk show and speaking engagements.
Other recognizable political personalities among Republican women might also find themselves divided between gratitude for Trump’s past help and a desire to be part of what Sanders called “a new generation of Republican leaders.”
Some, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, may be too closely associated with Trump already to have other options. But someone such as Elise Stefanik, the New York congresswoman who replaced Cheney as the House GOP’s third-ranking leader, might have maneuvering room in either direction.
A revived Trump may look beyond the current office holders for an outsider with mediagenic appeal who is ready to embrace his “stolen election” obsession to be his running mate.
Lake, a former local TV anchor in Phoenix, has shown that kind of dedication to her attempt to be elected governor of Arizona in the year 2022. Lake has been mentioned as a Senate candidate next year, but this weekend she will be visiting Iowa, the site of the first Republican caucuses a year from now.
If it weren’t for the weird voting system Alaskans adopted one year after her defeat in the election, she would be their congress member right now.
Dancing in South Carolina: The Emerging Leaders of the South Carolina Democratic Legislative Process and Aftermath Embedding of Mother Emanuel Church
Editor’s Note: Gavin J. Smith is a public relations professional and political strategist. He is CEO of a public relations and marketing consulting firm in South Carolina. He was a deputy communications director in the Department of Health and Human Services during the Trump administration. The Executive Office of South Carolina Gov. Haley had an intern and a interim executive assistant namedGavin. The views expressed here are his own. You can give more opinion on CNN. This piece has been updated to reflect the latest news.
As someone who has worked for both Haley and Trump, I believe Haley is exactly the right candidate for the Republican Party at this moment – and fellow Republicans should think twice before underestimating her.
Haley shocked the political establishment in South Carolina when she won the Republican primary just a month later. Haley became both the first female governor of South Carolina and the second governor of Indian descent when she was reelected in November 2010 to a second four-year term.
Palin, who also appeared in a campaign ad calling Haley a “strong, pro-family, pro-life, pro-second amendment, pro-development, conservative reformer” helped boost Haley’s campaign, which went from being on life-support to frontrunner-status in a field of all White male opponents.
Under Haley’s leadership, South Carolina thrived. The unemployment rate fell, the Department of Commerce said tens of thousands of jobs had been created, and billions in capital investment flowed into the state. She also spearheaded efforts to pass a law that added transparency to the legislative process and required South Carolina lawmakers to vote on the record more frequently.
In the aftermath of the Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting, Haley worked hard to unify our state and lead the removal of the Confederate flag from the State House grounds.
She was calm and composed after Hurricane Matthew came and historic floods devastated our state.
When she resigned in 2018, she was one of the few Trump administration officials to stay in the good graces of the former president, with the New York Times editorial page praising Haley as “that rarest of Trump appointees: one who can exit the administration with her dignity largely intact.”
Haley: A South Carolinan Embedded in the Post-Newtonian Era During the Pregalactic Civil War
“The railroad tracks divided the town by race. I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants. Not Black, not White. I was different. But my mom would always say your job is not to focus on the differences but the similarities. And my parents reminded me and my siblings every day how blessed we were to live in America,” Haley said.
She was the first woman to serve in the South Carolina House. In 2010, she became the first woman elected governor of the state and was the youngest when she took office in 2011. She served as Trump’s ambassador to the UN until the end of the year, when she resigned in the middle of her second term.
Haley said some people look at America and see vulnerability. “The socialist left sees an opportunity to rewrite history. China and Russia are on the march. All of them think we can be kicked around. You should know this about me: I don’t put up with bullies and when you kick back it hurts them more if you’re wearing heels.”
Some advisers have reminded Trump how it could benefit him if he faced multiple challenges in the race.
Nancy Mace, a member of the South Carolina House, told CNN Tuesday that she was worried about the size of the GOP primary field because she was endorsed by Haley.
“I have concerns if there are too many people on the ballot by the time it gets to South Carolina that it lessens the chances of anyone else coming out in this thing,” Mace said.