- Nikki Haley is vowing to continue her presidential campaign after losing to Trump in New Hampshire.
- Her move is to force a potential final clash in her home state of South Carolina.
- The Palmetto State state has a reputation as the playground for dirty tricksters.
American politics can get nasty. Few places have shown a history of showcasing dirty tricks like South Carolina, the state that could once again have the final word in a presidential race.
Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley has made it clear that she will make her potential last stand there, in her home state. Haley said on Tuesday night that she would remain in the race after losing by double-digits to Trump but still hanging tough. She’s effectively already ceded Nevada to the former president, meaning that South Carolina’s February 24 primary will be the next contest to feature a clash between the top two candidates.
If history holds, this race could get even meaner.
Already, Haley and Trump have thrown barbs at each other, though the score sheet is hardly even. She has questioned Trump's basic competency, pointing to recent flubs, such as when he confused her with Nancy Pelosi. Trump has rehashed his racist lie about Barack Obama into questioning whether Haley is truly an American. (To be clear, just like Obama, she is.)
"We are going to destroy her in South Carolina," Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican and noted Trump ally, said as the results were being released in New Hampshire. "It's going to be a complete humiliation."
It was in South Carolina that then-Sen. John McCain in 2000 was confronted with a racist "push poll" that asked voters about a potential illegitimate Black child. In reality, he had adopted a child. Then-Texas Gov. George Bush, whose campaign advisors have long denied responsibility, went on to blow McCain out, effectively sealing the nomination. Almost eight years later, someone sent South Carolina Republicans fake Christmas cards purporting to be from then-former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and his family that featured controversial passages from the Book of Mormon. Romney, who was already struggling in the state, didn't come close to winning.
Haley herself has seen the Palmetto State's ugly side. In her 2010 gubernatorial campaign, she faced allegations of infidelity, which she strongly denied, that may have backfired as she won the primary and coasted through the general election. To be fair, Some have argued it's mostly an exaggeration to cast the state as the bare-knuckled brother of the early states.
It's not like Trump needs the calendar to tell him to go low either. This is after all the same man who bizarrely accused Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's father of being connected to JFK's assassination and called Cruz's wife, Heidi, ugly. Before the 2024 primary even started, Trump went so far as to suggest that DeSantis, just out of college, inappropriately partied with high schoolers when he was a teacher.
Not every last stand in South Carolina is successful.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush deployed most of his family in the state ahead of the 2016 primary, but not even former President George W. Bush could save his brother.
Unlike Bush, Haley is a former governor of the state. She'll still have to confront the reality that her successor, Gov. Henry McMaster, has endorsed Trump.
Most of the state's congressional delegation is also against her. Sen. Tim Scott, whose political career Haley helped, is even rumored as a possible Trump running mate.
And for every Tom Harkin, who blitzed through the 1992 Iowa caucuses, other homegrown candidates have been handed humbling lessons by their own voters, most recently Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2020 and Marco Rubio in 2016. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has long been a Trump ally, dropped out at the last minute in 2016 just before polls showed he would have lost in South Carolina.
Of the early states, South Carolina offers by far the largest delegate prize. If Haley is truly insistent on competing with Trump for the long haul, doing well in her home state will be vital in the long-term play for the delegates that will decide the nomination. South Carolina has a hybrid winner-take-all model for its 50 delegates based on performances in each of the state's seven congressional districts as well as the overall winner.
In short, it means that a second-place finish, even if it's kept pretty close, would still be disastrous.
