When Nikki Haley entered a crowded primary field for the Republican nomination for S.C. governor in 2010, I wrote the editorial for Columbia’s State newspaper endorsing Henry McMaster.
Nikki Haley’s likability among voters is one of her main assets, but speaking on background, multiple state Republican operatives told a story of Haley’s rise to power as a tale of her stepping on toes, upsetting the party establishment, and in many cases never making amends.
INDIAN LAND, S.C. — Nikki Haley was polling in the low digits, fighting for oxygen among better-known and better-funded rivals in a contest clouded by scandal and involving the man whose job they all sought. This was 2009, and Haley was the underdog candidate for governor of South Carolina. At the state Republican Party’s convention that year, she was the last contender to speak. Before she took the podium, Katon Dawson, then the state party chair, handed her a rust-coated nail from a jar collec