A Conversation with Gavin J. Smith about the United States Ambassador to South Carolina, Nikki Haley, and the Democratic Electoral Candidate
A political strategist and public relations professional named Gavin J. Smith has an Editor’s Note. He is CEO of Gavin James Public Affairs, a public relations and marketing consulting firm in Lexington, South Carolina. During the Trump administration, he was press secretary for the Department of Labor and deputy communications director for the Department of Health and Human Services. Gavin also previously served as an intern and interim executive assistant in the Executive Office of South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. The views expressed here are his own. CNN has a lot of opinion on it. This piece has been updated to reflect the latest news.
Haley, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina governor, made her announcement in a video on Tuesday.
I am a Republican who has worked for both Trump and Haley and I believe that they are the best candidates for the Republican Party at the moment.
When she won the GOP nomination in South Carolina, she surprised the political establishment. In November 2010, Haley trounced her Democratic challenger in the general election – earning her the distinction of becoming both the first female governor of South Carolina and the second governor in the country of Indian descent.
Palin, who also appeared in a campaign ad calling Haley a “strong, pro-family, pro-life, pro-second amendment, pro-development, conservative reformer” helped boost Haley’s campaign, which went from being on life-support to frontrunner-status in a field of all White male opponents.
South Carolina thrived under Haley’s leadership. Unemployment rates fell and South Carolina’s Department of Commerce announced tens of thousands of jobs had been created under her tenure and billions in capital investment flowed into the state. She also spearheaded efforts to pass a law that added transparency to the legislative process and required South Carolina lawmakers to vote on the record more frequently.
Stokes says she appreciated Haley’s work to remove the Confederate battle flag from the state capitol after a white supremacist shot and killed nine people at a historically Black church in Charleston in 2015. But she was disappointed to see Haley – after first criticizing Trump – align herself with him just a few years later.
She was composed and calm when Hurricane Matthew wreaked havoc on residents of our state.
But Haley’s relationship with Trump has grown more complicated since she left the administration. She spoke out against him after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol before changing her tune in October 2021, telling the Wall Street Journal, “We need him in the Republican Party. I don’t want us to go back to the days before Trump.”
She was selected as the US ambassador to the United Nations and immediately became a leader in the GOP because of her no-nonsense approach to diplomacy. From cutting more than $285 million from the UN budget to leading the charge to pull out of the disgraced UN Human Rights Council, Haley quickly built a name for herself as a successful US diplomat who got things done.
When she resigned in 2018, she was one of the few Trump administration officials to stay in the good graces of the former president, with the New York Times editorial page praising Haley as “that rarest of Trump appointees: one who can exit the administration with her dignity largely intact.”
The next day, during a speech in Charleston kicking off her bid for the 2024 Republican nomination, the former South Carolina governor and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations under President Trump said her parents taught Haley and her siblings that “even on our worst day, we are blessed to live in America.”
As the only Indian family, “our little town came to love us, but it wasn’t always easy,” she said. “Nobody knew who we were, what we were, or why we were there.”
Haley was born in 1972, just a few years after her parents moved the family to Bamberg, a town with a current population around 3,000. A father and mother worked at a local college and opened a successful clothing store as their children followed in their footsteps.
Coker had been a member of the family since before the baby was born. She had Nikki in her seventh-grade social studies class and remembers her as quiet, but smart.
There were challenges. When Haley’s parents first moved to the area, they couldn’t find anybody to rent to them. Haley used her modest childhood home in her campaign video.
“Take it from me, the first minority female governor in history, America is not a racist country,” Haley said, drawing robust applause from the mostly white crowd.
I think that all of us are aware of what the country was built on. “racism is still a thing,” he said. “It exists. We have to deal with these things, as people here in America.
Lisa B. Stokes grew up in Bamberg and spent her career as a teacher. She was in an all- Black class in her first year of grade school, when she started elementary school. On the one hand, he felt like Haley’s comments were cruel.
Haley told the New York Times Magazine in an interview that when she was just 5 years old, she was asked to bow out of the Little Miss Bamberg beauty contest because they had no category for her. The town incorporated many social activities after that.
That would make her say that it’s clear. “I don’t fit in and I’m different,” said Sharon Carter, the Bamberg County Republican Party chairwoman.
Carter grew up in Bamberg around the same time as Haley. She says Haley’s race was never a significant issue, and the family was well-regarded: “You know, by the time you’re in school as elementary-age kids, everybody just all gets along.”
In 2010, when Haley was running for governor of South Carolina, a Republican state senator who was an ally of one her primary opponents used a racist slur to refer to Haley, alluding to her parents’ Sikh faith.
“I don’t write many letters to the editors and I had to respond to that one, and I said, ‘Well you obviously do not know them,’” she said of her response to the hate incident. “She ended up winning, and she hasn’t slowed down.”
Haley’s hometown, and the people she helped bring to town, says she cried tears tears “It wasn’t okay, but it was nice”
Haley’s hometown, like many other rural small towns has declined as she has risen up in the public eye. The interstate bypassed the community, and a textile factory left town. Older residents can remember when the town’s main street was bustling and lined with traffic; today, most of the old brick storefronts are empty or covered in plywood.
Stokes, who lives a few blocks from the much larger home that Haley’s parents eventually moved into, says when she moved into the overwhelmingly white neighborhood around 1990, many of the neighbors actively avoided her.
“It was obvious some were not really pleased we’d moved here,” Stokes said. We’re the only African-American couple on the street.
Stokes says she is proud of the recognition that Haley has brought to their hometown. But she hopes that Haley will remember the people back home – on both sides of town.