Republican Nikki Haley is meticulously laying the foundation for a presidential bid in 2024, forming a nonprofit organization to sustain her political-rock-star profile while she builds a financial nest egg so her family can afford her political ambitions.
Party insiders keeping tabs on Haley say the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations wouldn’t challenge her old boss, President Trump, in the 2020 primary. But the dynamic ex-South Carolina governor, just 47, is expected to mount a campaign four years later. With a coterie of advisers, Haley is choosing each step to maximize her notoriety and chart a course to the White House.
Amid quiet maneuvering, Haley’s immediate priority is making money. Neither Haley nor her husband are wealthy. With two children now of college age, Republicans familiar with Haley’s planning say her desire to put family first is a practical necessity, not a cliche.
“She is tending to family and personal savings and staying engaged politically. She said all those things and meant them,” said Tucker Eskew, a veteran South Carolina political hand viewed in GOP circles as an informal Haley adviser, although he resists the label. “If the opportunity presented itself to take it the next level, no one is better positioned or prepared on political scene, today, that I know.”
Haley in February launched Stand For America, a political nonprofit group, ostensibly to provide her a platform to influence national policy. This week, Haley via Twitter promoted a Stand For America missive advocating for congressional term limits, a proposal popular with the conservative grassroots. A few days earlier, Haley retweeted a Stand For America post urging the U.S. to pressure China to help denuclearize North Korea.
Stand For America provides Haley a mechanism to interact with the lawmakers, conservative thought leaders, grassroots activists, and major Republican donors she’ll need in her corner if she runs for president. Even if Trump gets re-elected, aggressive jockeying to succeed him atop the GOP would begin in just three years.
Haley spokeswoman Chaney Denton said Haley "has always loved policy" and founded Stand For America to "make sure she always has a voice" on domestic and foreign policy. But GOP operative Terry Sullivan, a veteran of South Carolina politics who in 2016 advised Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. — whom Haley endorsed — said the new organization is essentially a stalking horse for Haley 2024. “Absolutely, 100 percent, no doubt about it,” he said.
Haley made her first splash on the national stage while governor with her deft handling of the removal of the Confederate flag from the state house grounds. The move, politically delicate for Republicans in South Carolina, came after the shooting massacre of nine African-Americans by a white supremacist as they worshiped in a church. Haley’s rise accelerated after Trump was elected.
The daughter of immigrants from India, she had her misgivings about Trump, speaking forcefully against him throughout 2016, if she mentioned him at all. That didn’t stop her from joining his Cabinet as U.N. ambassador, where the foreign policy novice learned on the job and distinguished herself. Even Trump critics were impressed.
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“I think she did a great job. She had a fantastic moral compass, which I think was a star within the administration’s foreign policy universe,” said Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee.
Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor in Arizona who supports Trump, conceded Haley has become so formidable that she — and probably she alone — could cause the president fits if she decided to challenge him for the GOP nomination, even if that's not in the cards.
“A challenge from Nikki Haley would be something that President Trump and his campaign would have to take seriously,” Eberhart said. “She has never been part of the ever-dwindling ‘Never Trump’ club and remains very popular with Republicans.”
Haley managed a feat few prominent Republicans have pulled off — getting along with Trump and his wing of the party without rubber-stamping controversial policies and rhetoric, which she openly criticized. And as a woman who is an ethnic minority, Haley could be an attractive choice for Republicans looking to hold the line in a country whose demographics and cultural norms are changing.
Still, some Republicans wonder if her time has passed. Despite rising to power in South Carolina as a Tea Party outsider, Haley is a hit with the party’s establishment.
“She’s trying to navigate between populist Trump politics and her own beliefs. That’s a perilous place in this day and age,” a Republican operative in the Palmetto State said.
Will Republican primary voters, firmly with Trump, warm to her? Straddling the divide between establishment respect and love from the base will be Haley's challenge.
