Governor Nikki Haley emerged with Lieutenant Governor Henry McMaster in tow on Nov. 5, 2014, at 10 p.m. on the dot to the tune of supporters chanting “four more years.”
It was “a great day in South Carolina,” she said. Not only had she been elected to a second term, her son had also made his school’s basketball team.
“You took a chance on me the first time when it really didn’t make sense. All I had was words. All I had was a vision,” Haley said. “If you look at what we’ve done, it really is something to celebrate.”
A few hours earlier and a few blocks away, Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” played over the loudspeaker in the Marriott ballroom. But the Democrats were in a pretty low valley.
It was 7:29 p.m., and The Associated Press had called the race in favor of Vincent Sheheen’s opponent nearly half an hour earlier, just one minute after the polls closed.
“I mean, I don’t want to say it was expected,” said College Democrats President Mathieu Erramuzpe, “but it was expected.”
Erramuzpe and his fellow College Democrats were camped out in front of the TV in the hotel lobby, waiting for results from other national races to pour in.
The College Democrats weren’t solely focusing on the gubernatorial election, he said. They traveled to Raleigh to support Kay Hagan and Charleston to campaign for Mary Tinkler. The battle for governor wasn’t the only one they were fighting.
But it was the battle that Haley won
Read the full version of this article from 2014.