Cementing what has been in the works for months, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will formally announce she is running for president and will seek the Republican nomination for her party's 2024 ticket, The Post and Courier has learned.
According to an invitation soon going out to her backers, Haley's advertised "special announcement" will come Feb. 15 at the The Shed at the Charleston Visitor Center, a downtown gathering spot that could draw hundreds of supporters into the heart of the city's tourism district.
The confirmation she is entering the race came Jan. 31 from a member of Haley's inner circle.
Haley has teased at running for the White House for months, increasing her footprint on social media and in national interviews that she was leaning toward an official bid.
Long identified as harboring presidential intentions for the past decade, she becomes the second announced profile Republican looking to knock off Democratic President Joe Biden next year, just behind her former boss from when she was U.N. ambassador, previous White House occupant Donald Trump.
Haley famously said earlier she would not seek to challenge Trump if he ran again, but her message has since shifted to say the country needs to look toward a different path.
"It's time for a new generation," she telegraphed on Twitter in recent days. "It’s time for new leadership. And it’s time to take our country back. America is worth the fight — and we're just getting started.”
During an interview on Fox News with Bret Baier last week, Haley signaled her clearest indication yet that she was readying a White House bid.
"When you're looking at a run for president, you look at two things. You first look at does the current situation push for new leadership? The second question is, 'Am I that person that could be that new leader?'"
Answering those two questions, Haley said: "Yes, we need to go in a new direction. And can I be that leader? Yes. I think I can be that leader."
Haley, 51, does not have far to travel for her announcement. She has been a Charleston County resident and registered voter since leaving her United Nations ambassador post in 2018, living with her family on Kiawah Island.
She has also boasted in recent times that she has never lost a political race, including from her days in the S.C. House of Representatives or from her two runs for governor, an office she held from 2011-17.
It also appears she was alerting Trump in the past week of her leanings.
During his weekend campaign swing that included a stop at the S.C. Statehouse, Trump told national reporters he recently received a phone call from Haley. Trump said Haley told him "she'd like to consider" a 2024 run of her own.
“I talked to her for a little while. I said, 'Look, you know, go by your heart if you want to run,'" Trump told reporters, adding that he would welcome the competition.
“She called me and said she’d like to consider it, and I said you should do it.”
Trump then reportedly told Haley, "Go by your heart if you want to run."
Haley joins a potentially expansive field of Republicans said to be eager to challenge Biden. They most visibly include Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, and Mike Pompeo, the former CIA director who later served as secretary of state under Trump.
U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., may also be in the mix.
Haley follows two other South Carolinians who ran for the White House in recent cycles: U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and former Gov. Mark Sanford. Both attempts fizzled out early.
Haley's South Carolina bio begins with her growing up in Bamberg, a daughter of Indian immigrant parents. She graduated from Clemson University with an accounting degree and worked for a waste management company before joining her family’s dress shop, which eventually moved from Orangeburg to Lexington.
Haley has said her start in politics was inspired at an event that included Hillary Clinton and, in 2004, she ran for a state House seat held by the longest-serving lawmaker at the time and beat him — starting a string of undefeated runs for office. Haley did not agree with Clinton's policies but felt inspired that women should "dare to compete" in the political arena.
Her most remarkable act during her six-year tenure in the House was helping lead a push for on-the-record voting. She surprised political pundits in announcing a bid for governor in 2009, but she fashioned herself as an heir to then-Gov. Sanford with calls for fiscal conservatism and smaller government.
She also was aided by the tea party wave that won over many GOP voters during the 2010 election cycle. Haley was polling poorly in a Republican field dominated by men — U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett, Lt. Gov. Andrew Bauer and then-state Attorney General Henry McMaster. But her campaign turned around with an endorsement by Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice presidential hopeful who was one of the GOP’s most popular figures at the time.
Several highlights of her term as governor include helping win large economic deals, including several major tire makers, and appointing Scott as South Carolina’s first Black U.S. senator.
Haley became a national celebrity when she worked to get the Confederate battle flag removed from the Statehouse grounds in 2015 after an avowed racist murdered nine worshippers at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church.
Though she endorsed U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida in the 2016 presidential race and even criticized Trump for his behavior, Trump offered Haley a spot in his Cabinet, eventually taking the post as U.N. ambassador.
After leaving the administration, she started an advocacy group, Stand for America, that helped build her brand and had a brief stint on board of Boeing, which has a jet manufacturing plant in North Charleston.
She also has spent months campaigning for Republican candidates across the country, often hitting Iowa, typically the first presidential primary state.
She made headlines for criticizing Trump for not doing more to stop the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, suggesting in a "Politico" interview that he “lost any sort of political viability” and would not run again.
Andy Shain in Columbia and Caitlin Byrd in Charleston contributed.
