“President Trump is my friend,” his former UN ambassador Nikki Haley declared on Fox News after announcing her candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Trump, who says he spoke with Haley before she announced, seemed unthreatened by her, avoiding the invective he has reserved for his strongest potential challenger, Florida governor Ron DeSantis. And although he later posted comments linking Haley to Hillary Clinton and Paul Ryan, he also said he is “glad” she is running.
Trump has little to worry about from Haley. In all the national polls, she is languishing in the single digits. Some 41 percent of Republicans either have no opinion of her or don’t know who she is.
Trump is well aware that his chances of winning the nomination paradoxically increase with each new candidate who enters the contest. Each one will take some share of the GOP’s anti-Trump vote away from DeSantis, if he runs, or any other close contender, should one emerge. “The more the merrier,” the former president has said, in what was anything but a celebration of pluralism.
Moreover, even without a divided opposition, Trump leads the Republican field in most polls, with reduced but still significant leads over DeSantis both one-on-one and in a multicandidate contest. A Harvard CAPS-Harris poll released on February 17 found Trump winning 46 percent of the Republican vote compared to 6 percent for Haley. The same poll showed Trump defeating President Biden by five points in a hypothetical 2024 rematch, and prevailing by ten points over Vice President Kamala Harris.
As a two-term governor of South Carolina who also has cabinet-level experience, Haley at least on paper has solid credentials. Relatively young at fifty-one, she can credibly declare that “we’re ready to move past the stale ideas and faded names of the past and we are more than ready for a new generation to lead us into the future.” Her proposals of congressional term limits and mental competency tests for candidates over the age of seventy-five — a demographic that includes both Trump and Biden — suggest a touch of fresh air circulating in a sclerotic Washington. As a woman of color, she checks two more boxes important to a certain type of Republican, though that type might be waiting for Liz Cheney to announce her candidacy.
Pronouncing that “nobody embodies that failure more than Joe Biden” and lamenting that “the Washington establishment has failed us over and over and over again,” Haley has staked out a position far enough to the right to spare attacks from the party’s conservative base. Some of her rhetoric even tries to outflank DeSantis, some of whose recent state-level initiatives in her opinion “don’t go far enough.” She also claims to be tough. “I don’t put up with bullies,” she announced in a campaign video. “And when you kick back,” she concluded with a girlboss flourish, “it hurts more if you’re wearing heels.”
Much of the Republican commentariat has been sympathetic to Haley, but despite her undoubtedly sharp heels, her chances are slim. Party establishment types groaning to get out from under Trump like the idea of alternative candidates but don’t see eye-to-eye with much of Haley’s professed philosophy. Her criticism of her “friend” Trump has been mild, and she’s previously oscillated between “principled” opposition to praising Trump as “the greatest president of my lifetime.”
To many, including Republicans in her home state, where a Neighborhood Research and Media poll shows Haley in third place behind Trump and DeSantis, she gives off an air of opportunism. Even if her political persona were more coherent, Trump’s recovery in recent weeks has frustrated his intraparty opponents and stymied attempts to form a united opposition to his renomination. And if Trump could be sidelined or removed from the contest, Haley would still lose to DeSantis or Pence.
While Haley must act like she’s motivated for the top job, her chances of getting to the White House are close to zero, and she probably knows that. What, then, is the point of her candidacy? As recent elections have shown, entering the presidential primary arena is far from a zero-sum game. In the chutes and ladders of states, delegates, and demographic constituencies, an ambitious politician often has far more to gain from losing a primary race than sitting on the sidelines.
Ask Harris, who campaigned for the 2020 Democratic nomination as California’s freshman junior senator, languished in the single digits, and then bitterly withdrew, citing dismal fundraising results. Her timely endorsement of Biden, whose own flagging campaign badly needed a primary win, netted her the vice presidential spot on the ticket. As unpopular as she is, she went from barely alive politically to one heartbeat away from the presidency.
Pete Buttigieg, who finished fourth in that decisive primary, dropped out, prudently endorsed Biden, and landed as secretary of transportation. Failed Democratic candidates Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar were also considered for Biden cabinet posts and settled for enhanced senatorial careers. And even for also-rans who do not get that far, there is a pipeline from the campaign trail to prestigious ambassadorships, lucrative book deals, cushy public policy professorships, and well-paid media commentator gigs.
Haley has already had a taste of cabinet-level authority, and she is savvy enough to know that her 6 percent showing could win her a better seat at the table in a Trumpian future. If Harris’s trajectory serves as an example, and it should, Haley may actually be running for vice president. And if Trump stumbles, look for her on MSNBC with a copy of her scintillating memoirs in the background.
