Nikki Haley has spent 20 years navigating Republican Party factions. Trump may make that impossible

When Nikki Haley was a South Carolina lawmaker, she supported budgets boosted by federal aid. She ran for governor and criticized a “bailout culture” and dependence on Washington.

She once called the Confederate battle flag a heritage symbol and sidestepped calls to remove it from the statehouse grounds. After a racist massacre in Charleston, Haley decided to destroy it.

When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, she opposed him before joining his administration as UN ambassador. Now Haley is running against Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination, saying he’s an agent of chaos.

For nearly two decades, Haley has worked to navigate Republicans’ rightward march, attempting to cultivate both the Republican establishment and the conservative base that gave rise to Trump. She is seen as a pragmatic unifier or a finger-in-the-wind politician, and as she seeks the Republican nomination, her political pivots have become her opponents’ most persistent line of attack.

“Maybe she can be a bit of a chameleon,” said former state Rep. Doug Brannon, a fellow Republican. “The governor and I didn’t get along,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean she isn’t a brilliant politician.”

Shapeshifting is a long-practiced political art. Bill Clinton was nicknamed ‘Slick Willie’ and won two terms in the White House. Trump went from emphatically supporting abortion rights to telling voters he was solely responsible for the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, thereby winning over white evangelicals.

In the 2024 campaign, Haley has reached out to her critics. Trump’s skipping of debates has prevented her and the former president from confronting each other in person, but she has vigorously defended herself against his suggestions that she is out of step with the current Republican Party.

“For those reporting that I’m a moderate, I’m going to ask you or anyone else, Trump or anyone on Fox (News) suits, to say that I’m not a conservative: Name one thing I wasn’t conservative about,” he said. she. Friday in New Hampshire.

She presented a litany of measures she signed as governor to cut taxes, tighten voter identification requirements and overhaul public employee pensions, among other things. “The difference is who decides who is conservative and who is moderate,” she said.

Rob Godfrey, who served in Haley’s administration, said she has “never been an angry candidate or angry in government” but enjoys “using the bully pulpit.”

“She prides herself on being willing to confront people who she believes are not serving their constituents well,” Godfrey said. He insisted that his old boss is less concerned about positioning and ideology than about achieving the most conservative, “good government” policy outcomes possible.

“That approach rubs some people the wrong way,” Godfrey said. “It has always been that way.”

Haley, 52, was first elected to the South Carolina Legislature from suburban Columbia 20 years ago. The daughter of Indian immigrants, she defeated a 30-year legislative veteran in the Republican primary. She once told The New York Times that Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ 2016 presidential candidate, had inspired her to run for office.

Haley quickly rose to a leadership position but clashed with colleagues over her push for more recorded votes instead of voice votes, sparing legislative scrutiny. So she quickly took aim at the executive branch. In 2010, she ran in a gubernatorial primary that included the lieutenant governor, the attorney general and a sitting congressman. Haley won the nomination almost outright, with 48.9% of the primary vote. Haley defeated U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett in a 65% to 35% runoff vote.

Whit Ayres, a national pollster who worked for Barrett, said the campaign was a preview of Haley’s ability to cast a wide net. “Those margins tell you something about her political skills,” he said.

During the legislative session, Haley voted to receive millions of dollars in federal aid during the 2008-2009 financial crisis to prevent the U.S. financial system from collapsing and plunging the country into a possible depression.

In 2010, however, anger grew over the impact the crisis was having on Americans who lost their homes or saw their retirement accounts dwindle as the titans of Wall Street were rarely held accountable. This gave birth to the tea party, which fueled the populist fire that Trump propelled six years later. Gubernatorial candidate Haley denounced the bailouts and trumpeted an endorsement from Sarah Palin, the 2008 vice presidential candidate and tea party favorite.

“When Sarah Palin showed up, it was a turning point,” Ayres said. “That’s when we knew she was real.”

Haley combined her endorsement of Palin with that of the more moderate Mitt Romney as he prepared for his second presidential bid. She later endorsed Romney during the 2012 Republican presidential primaries. In 2014, she expanded her first general election margin to win a second term with 56% of the vote.

“She has managed to be all things to all people,” said Democratic National Committee member Kay Koonce from South Carolina, who acknowledged that Haley’s success had frustrated her party.

As governor, Haley had disputes with fellow Republicans that often seemed personal. She vetoed spending measures and threatened to campaign against party members during their primaries. Conservative opponents seized on revelations that she worked during her time as a lawmaker for a hospital system in the Columbia region that had submitted regulatory requests to the state government. She faced ethics charges that were dismissed by a committee dominated by Republicans in the House of Representatives.

She successfully secured business investments in the state, including some from China. To recruit businesses, she supported subsidies that some tea party supporters detested. But she reminds Republican primary voters that the deals were always for non-union stores.

She has also made her mark on social issues by signing a measure in 2016 banning abortions after 20 weeks, with exceptions. That wouldn’t satisfy many in the Republican Party’s national base right now. But Haley has argued against a stricter national ban, saying it is a sound conservative position to leave the issue to state governments.

Haley has polished her conservative persona outside of policy debates. She told her Instagram followers in December 2013 that she got a gun for Christmas. “I must have been good, Santa gave me a Beretta PX4 Storm,” she posted.

Godfrey, her longtime ally, said the best example of her approach came after a white supremacist killed eight Black worshipers at a Charleston church in 2015. Haley had previously said that removing the Confederate battle flag from the Capitol grounds was not a priority. After the shooting, she quickly organized multiracial, bipartisan conversations that led to the Civil War banner’s eventual removal. “She gave cover” to white conservatives, Godfrey said, and “built consensus.”

Koonce countered, “She deserves some of the credit,” but that “shouldn’t erase what she said before all those people died doing the right thing.”

As Haley’s own ambitions expanded beyond South Carolina, she, like so many Republicans, had to figure out how to stand up to Trump.

In 2016, she delivered the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address. Haley weighed her party’s right-wing impulse and complimented Obama as a barrier breaker and communicator. She urged Republicans to accept shared responsibility for the country’s problems. And she warned conservatives: “In anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation.” She didn’t mention Trump but quickly endorsed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

After Trump’s victory in November, she spoke with the newly elected president about jobs at Trump Tower in New York.

Early in her 2024 campaign, Haley made light of Trump. But on the eve of the first elections, her criticism has become more direct, on issues such as Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

“I think what happened on January 6 was a terrible day, and I think President Trump will have to answer for that,” she said on a debate stage in Iowa on Wednesday. It might have been as far as she went in criticizing Trump.

Haley has separately confirmed that she will vote for the Republican candidate; she has not ruled out joining Trump as his running mate.

Ayres said Haley’s approach is pragmatic, like much of her career. About half of the party’s voters, Ayres said, have voted for Trump twice and would do so again — but are open to voting for someone else.

“Following Chris Christie’s lead would limit her to the small percentage of ‘Never Trumpers,’” Ayres added, referring to the former New Jersey governor who pressured Trump before dropping out of the race.

Christie was caught on a hot mic predicting that Haley would “get smoked by Trump.” Even a Democrat sided with Haley on that issue.

“Chris Christie is absolutely right about Trump,” Koonce said. “But I’m sitting there listening to him criticize her and I’m thinking, ‘Well, she’s the one still on stage.'”

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Associated Press writer Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed to this report.