In Washington D.C. last week, Gov. Nikki Haley floated the idea of running for Vice President in the 2016 election.
“If there is a time where a presidential nominee wants to sit down and talk, of course I will sit down and talk,” she said in response to a question about her running on the Republican ticket.
This comes after she received national and international attention this summer while being at the forefront of events in Charleston and Columbia. First came her emotional response to the massacre at Emmanuel AME, then her call to remove the Confederate flag from the Statehouse grounds and finally her signing of the bill that ultimately achieved that reality.
Now she is being hailed as not only a rising star in the Republican Party, but as the face of the “New South” — one more tolerant toward minorities.
But a closer look at Haley’s record suggests she’s not the person the Republicans should run for vice president — at least not as an example of their party’s progress on race relations.
Haley may have won praise for her position on the flag this summer, but not even a year before, she was defending the flag at the capital during the 2014 election.
In the same event that she addressed her national ambitions, she offered a critique of the Republican Party.
“The problem for our party is that our approach often appears cold and unwelcoming to minorities. That's shameful, and it has to change,” she said.
I think Haley took her own advice, shifting her cold, unwelcoming flag position in the political headwinds.
I would prefer not to mix race into my analysis of her ambitions, but it is difficult when Haley touts herself and her leadership as being a model on that subject while attacking other locales.
“Black lives do matter, and they have been disgracefully jeopardized by the movement that has laid waste to Ferguson and Baltimore.” she said. “In South Carolina, we did things differently.”
In the same gubernatorial debate last year that she defended the confederate flag, she referenced South Carolina’s supposed image as a racist state.
“We really kind of fixed all that when you elected the first Indian-American female governor,” she said.
I believe fixing racism takes more than electing minorities to office, especially when they support racially questionable policies. In 2011, Haley signed a bill allowing police to investigate immigration status during unrelated incidents, and she has defended controversial voter ID laws in South Carolina.
Indeed, Haley’s career has shown that we are far from overcoming racial issues in America or in South Carolina. During her campaign, a Republican state senator used a racial slur against her. Soon after she won, she was criticized for previously registering as white on her drivers’ license, partially because Indian-American was not an option.
Haley has done some good things on race relations. Obviously she did end up supporting the removal of the confederate flag, and this year she signed a law pushing for body cameras across the state after the death of Walter Scott. Although those were the right decisions, they were reactive ones in very politically charged climates.
It seems to me Haley is trying to capitalize on a new popular belief that she is a Republican with a great record on minority issues in order to play a dangerous game with race and politics. Ask President Obama how tough it can be to balance those two issues.
She may have the political skill to thread the identity politics needle and get to the White House just as he did, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Republicans would be smart to just let her ambitions wither rather than rehash the difficult summer we all just witnessed here in South Carolina by putting her record front and center.