CHARLESTON, S.C. — Nikki Haley hardly mentioned her former political boss Donald Trump’s name Wednesday as she leaped into the race for president. But she made clear she represents a break from his style during her campaign kickoff.
“We’re ready to move past the stale ideas and faded names of the past,” the 51-year-old former South Carolina governor said to cheering supporters in her home state. “And we are more than ready for a new generation to lead us into the future.”
In carefully calibrated remarks, Haley swiped overtly at Joe Biden, the oldest president to take the oath of office, and more subtly at Trump, a 76-year-old now waging his third quest for the White House since 2016.
“Let me be clear, we can’t win the fight for the 21st century if we keep trusting politicians from the 20th century,” Haley said, later pointedly saying that she supports a “mandatory mental competency test for politicians over 75.”
“Today, our enemies think that the American era has passed. They’re wrong,” she added. “America is not past our prime. It’s just that our politicians are past theirs.”
Her 45-minute speech was meant to mark a distinction with Trump-era politics without explicitly attacking the former president. Before a crowd of hundreds packed into the Charleston Visitors Center, she promised she can energize younger voters disgusted with the status quo.
With the start of the campaign, the former U.N. ambassador becomes the first major Republican candidate to contest the former president’s comeback bid — earning clucks of disapproval from Trump loyalists who note her appointment to his Cabinet fueled her political rise.
The campaign plans to lean on extensive connections with grassroots activists and elected officials in Georgia, where Hailey has worked to cultivate a durable political network.
First elected governor in 2010, her defining act was to sign legislation to remove the Confederate flag from the state Capitol in 2015 after a mass shooting at a Black church by a white supremacist who posted photos embracing the Rebel emblem.
But her topsy-turvy relationship with Trump has made her an imperfect messenger for Republicans racing to find an alternative. Once an outspoken critic, she later served as his U.N. ambassador and lauded his policies.
She faces the bleak possibility that she might not even be the strongest rival to Trump in her own state, let alone the nation. U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, who was appointed to his seat by Haley in 2012, is maneuvering to run for president.
And beyond South Carolina, others are jockeying for position as well. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence are seen as two of the leading contenders.
Gov. Brian Kemp is making moves to influence the 2024 debate, although he hasn’t shown any of the telltale signs that he’s planning to run, such as hiring a staff-in-waiting for a national campaign or traveling to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina or other crucial early states in the GOP nomination process.
Opinions vary about how Trump would fare in a multicandidate field of Republicans. Some polls show he could be vulnerable. But Haley faces an arduous path. The latest Morning Consult poll shows Trump and DeSantis combining to capture 80% of GOP primary voters. Haley sits at 3%.
Still, she benefits from her high name recognition in South Carolina, which is poised to hold the first-in-the-South primary next year, a vote that has traditionally culled the GOP field. The supporters who celebrated her launch invariably hit the same theme: Don’t count Haley out.
Katon Dawson, a former South Carolina GOP chair, initially scoffed at Haley’s bid to topple the longest-serving lawmaker in the South Carolina Legislature. Her 2004 runoff victory jump-started her political career.
“When she tells you something, you might want to believe it,” Dawson said, pivoting to a reminder of South Carolina’s role in the American Revolution: “A small group of patriots can turn into a big group very quickly if you have the right leader.”
‘Take it from me …’
Haley leaned into her foreign policy experience at the U.N. at a time when tensions with China and Russia are on the rise, as well as her background growing up in rural Bamberg as a child of Indian immigrants.
“Take it from me,” she said, “America is not a racist country.”
Her platform includes more stringent policies targeting illegal immigration, term limits for members of Congress, new crackdowns on violent crime and a national voter ID mandate. But her remarks on cultural issues seemed to resonate the most with her supporters.
Declaring that “self-loathing is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic,” she promised a new era of accountability if she’s elected.
“When it comes to our politicians, we’ll light a fire under them,” she said to a burst of applause. “Their job is not to say things on TV, their job is to do things in D.C., like to solve problems instead of ignoring or creating them.”
Her entrance serves as a reminder that Trump hasn’t scared any of his would-be rivals after a disappointing midterm for national Republicans in which many of his favorite candidates — including most of his slate in Georgia — went down in defeat.
“She provides an off ramp for the many Republicans who supported President Trump’s policies but would prefer a different messenger,” said Nicole Rodden, a Georgia Republican activist and former U.S. House candidate who is still undecided.
Trump has a complicated relationship with Haley, whom he tapped as his U.N. ambassador during her second term as South Carolina’s governor. She was one of the rare members of Trump’s Cabinet to leave the post while earning praise — and not insults — from the then-president.
She had pledged in 2021 that she wouldn’t run if Trump waged a comeback bid. But Trump has welcomed her reversal, as a multicandidate field could splinter the vote and give him a leg up in the primary process. He told Haley that she “should do it” when she recently called.
His calculus is clear. Recent polling shows he still retains a solid core of support among Republicans in Georgia and beyond, and nominating rules in many states favor a winner-take-all system that benefits candidates who garner a plurality of support.
“He’s clearly pleased to see her enter the race,” said Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist. “The more divided the field is, the better Trump’s chance because he still has a grip on a pretty large share of the Republican base.”
But Haley’s balancing act will only get trickier, particularly if she starts to rise in the polls and poses a clearer threat to the former president.
“She’ll try and straddle the line at the outset, but I think we all know that Trump will make that impossible,” said John Porter, a veteran Republican strategist.
“Trump is going to swing like a drunken brawler against any of the GOP candidates,” Porter said. “They’ll soon learn there is no use trying to reason with him or straddle the middle ground.”
Haley is leaving those calculations for another day. Her message took on an urgent tone as she recounted how Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections. Upending the dynamic will require putting “trust in a new generation.”
“Realizing this vision won’t be easy,” she said. “It will take an unparalleled level of commitment. It requires faith and a willingness to move past the status quo. And it will require doing something we’ve never done, like sending a tough-as-nails woman to the White House.”
