NATIONAL POLITICS - Yesterday, former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley announced she will run for president in 2024. Haley is the first major challenger to Trump for the Republican nomination and has positioned herself as a moderate alternative to the former president and his MAGA extremist understudy, Ron DeSantis. Nothing is further from the truth. In her time as the Governor of South Carolina, Haley was vocal about her opposition to reproductive health care and gun safety measures, and her abysmal record on voting rights and protecting our democracy makes her particularly dangerous as the 2024 election approaches.
More information on Nikki Haley’s democracy lowlights:
- In 2011, Nikki Haley was one of the architects of a voter ID law making it harder for people to vote. The law was initially blocked by a court, but eventually took effect in 2013. At the time, over 178,000 of the state’s registered voters did not possess a valid form of ID, and since then confusion over the law has been reported to have discouraged even voters with qualifying IDs from voting. African-Americans accounted for about 30 percent of voters without valid ID according to the South Carolina chapter of the ACLU.
- Haley has been vocal in her opposition to the “For the People Act,” legislation that would have expanded voting rights, protected voters from state voter suppression laws, and ensured that every eligible American can participate in our country’s democracy.
- Haley was a vocal supporter of Georgia’s 2021 legislation that criminalizes distributing food and water to voters waiting in line, moves ballot drop boxes to more inconvenient locations, and requires a photo ID for mail-in votes. Haley also spoke out against corporations that condemned Georgia’s anti-voter laws and encouraged her followers to boycott those companies.
- Haley has publicly supported the Republican State Leadership Committee’s (RSLC) Commission on Election Integrity, a body formed in 2021 and used to oppose federal voting rights legislation. The Commission is co-chaired by Tre Hargett, the Secretary of State in Tennessee, who opposed efforts in 2020 to allow voters afraid of COVID-19to cast absentee ballots by mail.
- In the 2022 midterm election, Haley endorsed and campaigned on behalf of election deniers such as Hershel Walker, Mehmet Oz, and Marco Rubio. She also campaigned with Adam Laxalt of Nevada, who led the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn the results in that state, and endorsed Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who worked to keep Trump in office after the election, according to text messages obtained by the Jan. 6 committee.
- Since announcing, Haley’s first major campaign endorsement has come from Ralph Norman, a South Carolina congressman. Norman was one of the many election denier, MAGA Republicans to vote against certifying the 2020 election.
Despite yesterday’s announcement, Haley has always been a strong ally of Donald Trump and a January 6 apologist.
More information about Nikki Haley’s allegiance to Donald Trump:
- In 2016, Haley said she wouldn’t be backing Trump and saying he is “everything a governor doesn’t want in a president,” Less than a year later, she was serving in his Administration and defending him at every turn.
- While Haley initially criticized Trump for inciting the mob on January 6, she opposed impeachment, saying just weeks after the attack “they beat him up before he got into office. They’re beating him up after he leaves office. I mean at some point, I mean, give the man a break. I mean, move on.”
- In October 2021, Haley told the Wall Street Journal that “[Trump] has a strong legacy from his administration. He has the ability to get strong people elected, and he has the ability to move the ball, and I hope that he continues to do that. We need him in the Republican Party. I don’t want us to go back to the days before Trump.”
- In December 2022, Haley defended Trump from criticism, telling Politico’s Tim Alberta “I understand the president. I understand that genuinely, to his core, he believes he was wronged. This is not him making it up.” Throughout the interview, she refused to hold Trump accountable.
(Stand Up America was founded in 2016 as a digital-first grassroots community working to resist Donald Trump and his cronies’ corruption, racism, and his threats to our democracy. From 2017 to 2021, our members made 1.7 million calls to Congress to oppose the MAGA extremist agenda. In 2020, our volunteers contacted 25 million voters to help defeat Trump and elect Joe Biden to the presidency. In 2022, our team helped build a firewall for democracy ahead of 2024 by electing pro-democracy Secretaries of State in Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, and Nevada, passing key democracy ballot initiatives, and mobilizing our members to get out the vote for progressive candidates nationwide. In 2024, our community will continue mobilizing to elect candidates who will stand up for our freedoms and our democracy. This story was first published in StandUpAmerica.com.)
