Prominent Democratic donors, anxious in regards to the more and more authoritarian language of Donald J. Trump, have been calling on Democratic voters and independents to thwart the previous president’s comeback by voting for Nikki Haley in open Republican main elections.
But Ms. Haley’s political gaffe on Wednesday evening, when the presidential hopeful and former governor of South Carolina stumbled via the causes of the Civil War with no point out of slavery, might make that attraction significantly tougher simply as she is edging nearer to putting distance of Mr. Trump in New Hampshire.
Ms. Haley on Thursday walked again her reply in regards to the causes of the Civil War, telling a New Hampshire interviewer, “Of course the Civil War was about slavery.”
Her retreat happened 12 hours after a town-hall assembly in Berlin, N.H., a state that’s central to her presidential ambitions, the place she was requested in regards to the Civil War’s origins. Her reply targeted on authorities overreach and “the freedoms of what people could and couldn’t do,” after she jokingly informed the questioner he had posed a troublesome one. He then famous that she had not uttered the phrase “slavery.”
“What do you want me to say about slavery?” Ms. Haley replied. “Next question.”
Democrats savaged her reply. The Democratic National Committee known as her feedback “vile” and her cleanup efforts “pathetic.” Late Wednesday evening, even President Biden rebuked her: “It was about slavery,” he wrote on social media.
All of that got here a month after Jamie Dimon, the chief government of JPMorgan Chase and a distinguished Democratic donor, threw his assist behind Ms. Haley, and implored different donors at The New York Times’s DealBook Summit, “Even if you’re a very liberal Democrat, I urge you, help Nikki Haley, too.”
Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn and a significant Democratic donor, gave $250,000 to an excellent PAC supporting Ms. Haley.
With current polls exhibiting Ms. Haley surging into second place in New Hampshire, her crossover attraction is turning into extra related, for independents and for Democrats who may need registered as independents to vote within the Republican main on Jan. 23, the primary within the nation. To win the Granite State contest, she’s going to most probably want these voters, simply as Senator John McCain of Arizona did when he upset George W. Bush within the state’s 2000 main.
“If Democrats believe Republicans should hold their noses and vote for Joe Biden for the sake of democracy, they can model that in New Hampshire by crossing over and holding their noses to vote for Haley in the G.O.P. primary,” stated Ian Bassin, a democracy advocate who not too long ago gained a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant for his work. “Not because she’s a good candidate — she’s not — but because Donald Trump is an existential threat to America and any vote to stop him is a service to the country.”
Ms. Haley didn’t assist that trigger this week. Speaking on the radio present “The Pulse of New Hampshire” on Thursday morning, Ms. Haley, who famously eliminated the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina Capitol in Columbia, tried to make amends: “Yes, I know it was about slavery. I am from the South.”
But she additionally insinuated that the query had come not from a Republican voter however from a political detractor, accusing Mr. Biden and Democrats of “sending plants” to her town-hall occasions.
“Why are they hitting me? See this for what it is,” she stated, including, “They want to run against Trump.”
Her Civil War feedback didn’t go away. By Thursday afternoon, the campaigns of all of her rivals for the Republican nomination, together with Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, had slammed her gaffe. Mr. DeSantis, who clashed with rivals over the summer time about Florida’s academic requirements for the instructing of slavery, accused her of getting “some problems with some basic American history.”
He stated, “It’s not that difficult to identify and acknowledge the role slavery played in the Civil War.”
The marketing campaign of former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, the sector’s most outspoken critic of Mr. Trump, promised to maintain her Civil War reply entrance and middle.
Ms. Haley’s allies rushed to her protection. Tom Davis, a Haley surrogate and Republican state senator in South Carolina, stated he understood “sharp elbows and rough questions” have been a part of any presidential marketing campaign however argued that her critics had no place education Ms. Haley, an Indian American lady raised within the rural South, on racial division, racism and slavery.
“This space right here is where Nikki Haley needs no defending,” he stated, pointing to her historic victory as the primary lady of coloration to guide the state.
Ms. Haley’s remarks echoed a 150-year-old argument from segregationists that the Civil War was essentially about states’ rights and economics, not about ending slavery. “I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run,” she stated on Wednesday evening, “the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”
She tried to stroll again that interpretation on Thursday, asking: “What’s the lesson in all this? That freedom matters. And individual rights and liberties matter for all people. That’s the blessing of America. That was a stain on America when we had slavery. But what we want is never relive it. Never let anyone take those freedoms away again.”
Pro-democracy activists implored potential crossover voters to stick with Ms. Haley as essentially the most believable various to Mr. Trump. On Thursday, the Trump marketing campaign launched a brand new tv commercial with the type of fear-mongering and violent imagery that such activists have denounced, warning of “the possibility of a Hamas attack” on the United States.
“The 2024 election is about Donald Trump, whose promised governing strategy is political violence and retribution,” stated Dmitri Mehlhorn, a distinguished Democratic donor and finance government with shut ties to Mr. Hoffman. “If we really want to stop him and his MAGA allies who instigated and still defend Jan. 6, we have to swallow hard and team up with anyone who can beat them.”
Ms. Haley’s attraction as a candidate of moderation is combined. As governor of South Carolina, she signed a number of the harshest immigration and anti-abortion legal guidelines within the nation on the time, in addition to a stringent voter identification legislation that required photograph ID on the poll field.
But she additionally blocked a invoice to cease transgender youths from utilizing loos that corresponded to their gender identification and drew nationwide approval for her push to decrease the Confederate battle flag after a white supremacist opened fireplace and killed 9 Black worshipers at a Charleston church, together with a beloved state senator, in 2015.
Now, on the marketing campaign path, she has sought to strike a softer tone on her file and a number of the thorniest points dealing with her get together, attempting to string the needle on abortion and casting herself as a mom and daughter of immigrants who is ready to assist flip the web page on the nation’s period of divisive politics.
“Haley’s refusal to talk honestly about slavery or race in America is a sad betrayal of her own story,” stated Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California.
Still, a number of Democratic state lawmakers who labored together with her on the hassle to take away the flag, stated they noticed parallels between her remarks this week and people she made in a 2010 interview with Confederate heritage group leaders, by which she argued that the Confederate flag was “not something racist” however about custom and heritage. In that trade, she additionally stated she might leverage her identification as a minority lady to fend off calls to boycott the flag.
After the church taking pictures shook South Carolina, Ms. Haley seized on the newfound political will amongst state lawmakers on each side of the aisle, spurring accusations from some that the heavy lifting to take away the flag had taken place within the State Legislature.
“If she hadn’t supported the flag coming down, yeah, it would have been much harder to get it down — I think that’s true,” stated Vincent Sheheen, a former Democratic state senator in South Carolina who unsuccessfully ran towards Ms. Haley in 2010 and 2014. “But the key was kind of putting her in a box where she had to support a club.”
Nicholas Nehamas contributed reporting.
