Lessons from South Carolina’s last GOP primary upset

Feb 01, 2024

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Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley speaks at a rally.

Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley speaks at a rally on Jan. 28, 2024 in Conway, South Carolina. | Allison Joyce/Getty Images

‘NOT NEWT’ — It sounds like a Nikki Haley wishcasting scenario: On the heels of consecutive, double-digit losses in Iowa and New Hampshire and amid serious doubts about the prospect of knocking off the frontrunner, a Southern-based candidate barnstorms South Carolina and pulls off an upset that resets the Republican presidential primary.

But it’s no fantasy. It’s the story of Newt Gingrich’s 2012 campaign, where the former House Speaker shook up the GOP nomination fight that year with a decisive win in the first primary in the South.

That outcome offers a reed of hope for the Haley campaign in the run-up to the Feb. 24 primary. The trouble is, veterans of the Gingrich effort are convinced she can’t replicate the feat.

“Nikki Haley is not Newt, and Donald Trump is not [2012 GOP nominee] Mitt Romney,” said Adam Waldeck, who served as South Carolina director for Gingrich in 2012 but isn’t affiliated with a candidate this year.

“There is a connective tissue between Newt’s candidacy in 2012 and Trump’s in 2016. I would be willing to bet you that of the people who were working for our campaign, I would be shocked if anything less than 85 percent are Trump people,” he noted.

The two keys to Gingrich’s come-from-behind victory — strong debate performances against more moderate rivals and an activist-driven ground game — aren’t in the cards for Haley, say the former campaign officials. Trump is refusing to go on the debate stage; the legions of tea party activists who supported Gingrich have turned their back on Haley. Instead, that energy is now firmly in Trump’s corner.

“I think Nikki is a great candidate, but Trump just has such a strong hold in South Carolina,” said Leslie Craven, a deputy state director for Gingrich in 2012. “She’s a great debater, but she won’t be able to debate with Trump.”

At the moment, Haley faces a far greater polling deficit than Gingrich did, with the latest Washington Post/Monmouth University poll showing her trailing Trump by 26 points.

She’s also got an uphill battle to win support from the tea party activists who helped power her 2010 election as governor and fueled Gingrich’s victory two years later. Gerri McDaniel, who helped organize the Myrtle Beach Tea Party in 2009 and backed Haley in 2010, said grassroots activists have lined up behind Trump this year.

McDaniel points to Haley’s endorsement of Romney over Gingrich as the source of a rift between her and the tea party activists who had supported her initial run for governor.

“We got her elected, and she walked away from the grassroots,” said McDaniel, who served as Trump’s South Carolina director in 2016 and remains a Trump supporter. “That was a slap in the face.”

Haley’s support for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio over Trump in the 2016 primary is also a sticking point for some activists.

“I was one of the first to jump on her bandwagon,” said Allen Olson, a former tea party leader in Columbia who supports Trump. “She has completely abandoned us. If you live down here in South Carolina, the polls alone will show where the tea party energy is.”

“Nikki Haley said we need to ignore the loudest voices,” he added, referring to a dig she made at Trump’s expense in 2016, “and that rubbed me the wrong way.”

At a board of directors meeting for the South Carolina Federation of Republican Women last weekend — a good proxy for Republican activists across the state — a straw poll showed overwhelming support for Trump.

Of 83 votes cast, 79 were for Trump, while only three for Haley and one for former candidate Ron DeSantis, according to Debbie Spaugh, the group’s president. Spaugh said that Republican women leaders from across the state attended.

“Haley’s problem is that they’ve painted her as the establishment candidate,” said Chip Felkel, a South Carolina political consultant who is unaffiliated in the primary. “Gingrich was always an insurgent, and those people have filed up behind Trump.”

Felkel and others agree that without any debates — which have boosted Haley’s fortunes so far and had a catalytic effect for Gingrich in 2012 — it will be difficult for Haley to change the dynamics of the race. The only advice Waldeck could offer the Haley campaign was tongue-in-cheek.

“I will say that perhaps she ought to see if Mitt Romney will return her last minute endorsement of him and see how well that plays for her in South Carolina.”

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What'd I Miss?

— Schumer promises vote on the border security-Ukraine aid deal next week: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate will vote next week on the national security supplemental bill, which includes a bipartisan deal on border and immigration restrictions. Schumer said the text of the agreement will be made public as soon as Friday or as late as Sunday. He plans to set up a vote on the legislation next week that will occur no later than Wednesday. Negotiations over those border policy changes delayed bill text for months — and recently, key negotiators on the deal said they were waiting on the Senate Appropriations Committee’s assessment of what the policy changes would cost. Many members have stressed they want adequate time to review and socialize the bill text once it is released.

— Oregon high court says 10 GOP state senators who staged long walkout can’t run for reelection: The Oregon Supreme Court said today that 10 Republican state senators who staged a record-long walkout last year to stall bills on abortion, transgender health care and gun rights cannot run for reelection. The decision upholds the secretary of state’s decision to disqualify the senators from the ballot under a voter-approved measure aimed at stopping such boycotts. Measure 113, passed by voters in 2022, amended the state constitution to bar lawmakers from reelection if they have more than 10 unexcused absences.

— U.S. intelligence officials estimate Tehran does not have full control of its proxy groups: Intelligence officials have calculated that Tehran does not have full control over its proxy groups in the Middle East, including those responsible for attacking and killing U.S. troops in recent weeks, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter. The Quds Force — an elite branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps — is responsible for sending weapons and military advisers as well as intelligence to support militias in Iraq and Syria as well as the Houthis in Yemen. The groups have varying ambitions and agendas, which sometimes overlap, but Tehran does not appear to have complete authority over their operational decision-making, the officials said.

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Nightly Road to 2024

I KNEW YOU WERE TROUBLE — Taylor Swift has many titles: cultural juggernaut; international pop star; billionaire businesswoman. She can now add MAGA conspiracy theory target to the list. Far-right internet personalities and even a former Republican presidential candidate are spreading the notion that something is not quite right with Swift’s relationship with Kansas City Chiefs star player Travis Kelce — and that somehow the Super Bowl is rigged and it’s all leading up to a Swift presidential endorsement of Joe Biden. To explore how Swift’s influence has grown and how the attacks could backfire on the GOP, POLITICO Magazine’s Catherine Kim talked to Brian Donovan, a University of Kansas professor who teaches a popular college course called “The Sociology of Taylor Swift.”

“The Swiftie fan is arguably the most immersive and intense fandom in the U.S. right now,” Donovan said. “And to anger them is just political folly. They are a political force that I don’t think anyone really should mess with.”

LOSS LEADER — The failed campaign and expansive political operation aiming to make Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis the Republican nominee for the White House cost $168 million, according to filings reported to the Federal Election Commission. The Associated Press writes the pro-DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down reported payments of more than $130.6 million in 2023 while a newer super PAC Fight Right reported $9.6 million between mid November and December. His own campaign spent $28.3 million from May to December.

DeSantis relied on support from outside groups more than any other major candidate since a U.S. Supreme Court 2010 ruling paved the way for super PACs. These political action committees can raise unlimited amounts of money without having to disclose their donors, but federal law prohibits candidates and their formal campaigns from coordinating directly with super PACs.

THIRST TRAP — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. denied accusations today that he left a comment on a TikTok video of an OnlyFans model in 2022, saying the account at the time belonged to a campaign staffer. “The TikTok comment in question was made in 2022 long before I ever had a TikTok account,” the long-shot presidential candidate wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “This comment now appears on my account because the account was previously owned by one of the campaign’s young social media managers.”

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AROUND THE WORLD

A woman consoles the mother (right) of Muhammad Ayman Ghazawi and Basel Ayman Ghazawi, two of three Palestinian men who were killed when undercover Israeli agents raided the Ibn Sina hospital in the West Bank city of Jenin.

SANCTIONS INCOMING — President Joe Biden issued an executive order today that aims to punish Israeli settlers who have been attacking Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, reports POLITICO.

As part of the roll-out, the Biden administration announced it is imposing sanctions on four individuals who have engaged in such violence, which has killed or displaced many Palestinians from their lands, two senior administration officials told reporters.

“One individual initiated and led a riot which involved setting vehicles and buildings on fire, assaulting civilians, causing damage to property, which resulted, actually, in that incident and the death of a Palestinian civilian,” said one of the senior officials. Other people assaulted farmers and Israeli activists with stones and clubs that led to injuries. Some of the individuals have been prosecuted in the Israeli system, the official added.

The designated individuals’ property held in American financial institutions will be frozen and blocked, the officials stated, while foreign nationals will be prohibited from making payments or providing services to the designated individuals.

The order comes as Biden is under growing pressure, including from Democrats, to be tougher on Israel as critics say its military campaign against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is a disproportionate reaction to the Hamas attack of Oct. 7.

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Nightly Number

$210 million

The amount that former President Donald Trump’s political action committees spent in 2023, while raising just shy of $200 million. In the second half of 2023, his PACs spent $29 million in legal consulting and legal fees.

RADAR SWEEP

#HISTORY TRENDING — On TikTok, “history” is a hot topic — videos hashtagged #history have racked up over 135 billion views. But what are they actually teaching on the social media platform? You can get all kinds of pithy content — and much of it is true — but it also has very little context, and it’s often made by people who might not have as much familiarity with the subject matter they’re teaching as you’d want. A quick tour of Anne Frank’s house? It’s there for the taking. Explanation into how she got there? It’s a little harder to find. Colin Horgan reports for The Walrus.

Parting Image

On this date in 1968: South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of the National Police, fires his pistol into the head of suspected Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem (also known as Bay Lop) on a Saigon street early in the Tet Offensive. This photograph, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography, helped to galvanize the anti-war movement in the United States.

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