Nikki Haley Finds Early Campaign Lane: Defending Women against Gender Ideology

As the only woman in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, Nikki Haley is uniquely positioned to speak to one of the major issues currently dominating conservative politics: the threat posed to women and girls by ideologues who reject the gender binary.

On a swing through New Hampshire this week, she leaned hard into the unique credibility she brings to one of the culture war’s hottest fronts, blasting Sheryl Crow’s “Woman in the White House” and wearing a sweater emblazoned with the phrase: “She who dares wins.”

“We don’t need boys playing in girls sports. That’s the women’s issue of our time, and no one is talking about it. My daughter ran track. I wouldn’t even know how to have that conversation with her,” she said on Tuesday at a town hall in Salem, N.H.

“And if you really want to change this country, what you need to do is send a bad-a** Republican woman to the White House,” she told the crowd.

As president, Haley would be prepared to sign a law banning hormone blockers and gender-transition surgery for minors, she told me during a sit-down interview ahead of her town hall. But as a former governor, she’d prefer to see those protections codified at the state level.

“I’m always going to say states, as a governor. The thing is parents take care of their kids legally up until the time of 18 and so I just think that at that point, that’s something that a child can make that decision when they’re an adult at 18 years old. That’s the kind of transformation you can’t undo and so I think that they should be an adult when they make those decisions.”

She took a similar approach when asked if she would support federal legislation modeled on the signature accomplishment of Florida governor and 2024 heavyweight Ron DeSantis: the Parental Rights in Education law. Haley doesn’t believe that the bill, which prohibits teaching kindergartners through third-graders about sexual orientation and gender identity, goes far enough. She doesn’t want school bureaucrats talking with students about gender at all — regardless of their age. If schools insist on discussing sex and gender with students, Haley believes there should be a parental permission slip required so that parents would have to opt in before their child is exposed to the public education system’s perspective on divisive issues.

With questions swirling about where she fits into the race and what she brings to the table in what is likely to be a crowded primary field, Haley told me she believes a “Nikki Haley voter is someone who wants a new generation and who is tired of the drama and the chaos and the status quo of the past.”

“They want to love our country again, and they want to be proud of our country again, and they want to leave this defeatist rhetoric, and they want to leave the socialism,” she said.

Tuesday’s event was standing-room only and attracted an enthusiastic crowd that awarded Haley with a standing ovation at the conclusion of her remarks. One day earlier, Haley made a similar youth-and-vigor pitch to a quieter but engaged crowd of voters at Restoration Church in Dover, N.H.

Republican and independent voters who turned up at Haley’s events this week told me they are impressed by the former South Carolina governor’s vision for a new generation of leadership — but not yet sold.

“[Former president] Trump has lost his shine, so anybody who will represent the Republican Party in the way they should be represented, that’s who I’ll be voting for, and I’m looking forward to hearing more about Nikki Haley and DeSantis in the near future,” Alex Cursio, a 55-year-old Republican from Nashua told me at Haley’s town hall in Salem, N.H., on Tuesday. Cursio acknowledged ahead of the event that he did not know much about Haley, aside from the fact that she served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under Trump.

Thomas Caswell said he and his partner, Michelle Cowles, both independents from Hampton, N.H., are “big fans” of Haley “based on her ability to get things done and having some very similar political views to our own.” Being independent, he said, “we’re looking to see what she has to offer.”

Cowles said, “She’s got some balls and I think the current administration, in my eyes, [is] weak. We need somebody that’s going to be able to lead this country. I don’t believe Biden is leading the country in the right direction.”

Diane Weir, a libertarian, said Monday that the Republican field “looks good” and that it has been nice to watch “somebody confident” like Haley.

“She didn’t dodge questions. I appreciated that,” she said.

Weir cited the economy and the “amount of drugs coming over the border” as her top concerns but said she has reservations about Haley’s “neocon side” and her hawkish positions on Ukraine.

Ukraine has emerged as an early wedge issue in the 2024 race. DeSantis came under fire from Democrats and Republicans alike recently for suggesting the conflict there amounts to a “territorial dispute.” Despite that comment having come in a written statement, DeSantis later claimed his position had been “mischaracterized” but restated his belief that there is no vital U.S. interest at stake that requires further American involvement.

Haley, for her part, penned an op-ed earlier this month saying it gets things “backward” to suggest the conflict is a mere “territorial dispute” or that the U.S. should “ignore Ukraine so we can focus on China.”

“I think people can see it for itself. I don’t have to say it’s flip-flopping,” Haley told me this week of DeSantis’s shifting position on the conflict. “I personally do not think this is anywhere near a territorial dispute. This is an invasion of a free country.”

Haley has been vocal on foreign-affairs-related issues but has been harder to pin down on other topics, including what exact limits she would support on abortion.

“I am very conscious about how personal this issue is,” Haley told me. “I don’t judge anyone that’s pro-choice any more than I want them to judge me being pro-life. I don’t think unelected justices needed to decide this. I want it decided where the people have a say in it.”

She said the U.S. must “find consensus” on the issue. “And if that consensus is at ten weeks, if it’s at twelve weeks, if it’s at 15 weeks, I want to save as many babies as possible. But I also want to be respectful of this is personal for everyone. And we need to find that place.”

Asked how the U.S. should go about finding that “place,” Haley said only that “some states are doing it at the state level” and “I think you’re having a conversation with it at the congressional level.”

“As long as people can weigh in with their elected officials, I think that’s fine,” she said.

Haley would not name a specific number that she would be tied to, however. She noted some states have limited abortions to six weeks and others have chosen 20-week bans. “If there’s no consensus on all the states or if the states don’t come up with their own and Congress decides to do it, I just think there needs to be some sort of coming to the middle to say, ‘OK, what can we say we can tolerate?’ We don’t want abortion up until the time of birth.”

Haley’s events came days after Trump held a campaign rally in Waco, Texas, that drew 15,000 people, according to local reports, though Trump himself estimated the crowd at 25,000. During the Trump rally on Saturday the campaign played “Justice for All,” a version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” sung by people who were incarcerated for their participation in the January 6 Capitol riot, while Trump held his hand over his heart and footage of the Capitol riot played on a screen in the background.

Asked by a New Hampshire voter how she planned to best Trump, Haley said she plans to differentiate herself from her former boss by forgoing large rallies in favor of a retail politics approach heavy on intimate events.

Trump, facing a likely indictment over his alleged involvement with a hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, has faced criticisms for his calls to protest if he is arrested and for his suggestion that his arrest on a “false charge” would carry the “potential for death [and] destruction.”

Asked if she believes Trump’s recent rhetoric is irresponsible, Haley said only: “I think protests are an American tradition. I have no problem with protests. I think violence can never be tolerated. And I think that we need to make sure that we follow that very carefully.”

Pressed to say whether there is a danger in Trump speaking this way in the wake of the Capitol riot, Haley said: “Anytime you’re in a position of authority or position of influence, we have to always be responsible with our words. I have always said that. I condemned him after January 6. I stand by that.”

“Having a protest is, like I said, an American tradition. But when you call in to place violence, that’s a very different thing. And we need to bring law and order into the process, and you have to handle that properly.”

Haley’s bid comes after she once said, “I would never run against my president — he [Trump] was a great president.”

Asked if she’s worried that her association with Trump will hurt her in the race, Haley said: “Interestingly the media wants me to either be a hundred percent with Trump or a hundred percent against Trump. I’m not a hundred percent with my husband.”

“When he does something right, I’m going to say he did it right, and support it, and fight for it,” she said. “If he does something wrong, I’m going to call it out. That’s the way I’ve always been on everything. And so I’ll continue being me and continue calling things out as I see them.”

Haley, however, has been accused of flip-flopping in her condemnation of Trump. She said shortly after the Capitol riot that the former president “will be judged harshly by history.” But weeks later, she said: “They beat him up before he got into office,” she said. “They’re beating him up after he leaves office. I mean, at some point — I mean, give the man a break.”

Haley is currently a distant third behind Trump and DeSantis in most polling. Fifty-four percent of New Hampshire voters said they have a favorable view of Haley, while 23 percent said they have an unfavorable view, according to a recent Public Opinion Strategies poll. She trails behind DeSantis, whose favorability rating was 77 percent to 15 percent, and Trump, whose rating was 69 percent to 29 percent.

But the forecast hasn’t dampened her confidence. The polls won’t look the same in a few months, she insisted.

“If you need examples, do I need to remind you about Jeb Bush? He had tons of money. Do I need to remind you about my friend Scott Walker? He was ‘Teflon Scott.’ He’d gotten through two recalls. They said he was the golden boy. He was going to be president. He never made it to Iowa.”

Around NR

• Dan McLaughlin warns of the “unpleasant reality of Republican politics and conservative policy right now,” which is that it is “impossible to meaningfully analyze anything without reference to the question of whether Republican primary voters are going to choose conservatism or Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential primary.”

The immediate problem for Republicans is that all of the problems of Trump’s influence in the party in 2022 could be exacerbated with his running for the presidency again in 2024. Time will tell how this shapes the choices of who runs and who sits out.

• Trump’s rally in Waco, Texas, over the weekend shows the former president has made his rhetorical embrace of political violence explicit, Noah Rothman argues.

Until very recently, Trump’s defenders could still mount a facially true defense of his actions by noting that he had mouthed in passing and just under his breath calls for his supporters to remain peaceful. Now, even that fig leaf is gone.

• A former Trump 2020 staffer has joined a super PAC supporting DeSantis, according to CBS. The move by Erin Perrine, who served as the press communications director for Trump’s 2020 campaign, is “another sign of Cruz-world getting behind DeSantis,” John McCormack writes. Perrine, who now joins Ken Cuccinelli’s “Never Back Down” PAC, served as communications director for Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) after the 2020 campaign cycle.

• “The Conventional Wisdom had been turning against DeSantis for a little while now,” and a new report from NBC that DeSantis donors and allies are questioning whether he’s ready for 2024 will “congeal it,” Rich Lowry writes.

But some perspective is in order: Yes, the Ukraine statement was a botch, but DeSantis isn’t yet in the race and still has very high favorable-unfavorable ratings. It’s going to be a frustrating grind until he formally announces, probably in June, but he needs to get through his legislative session and build out his operations in the early states. All that said, obviously Trump isn’t fading away, and he isn’t going to be easy to beat.

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