Before Nikki Haley, there was another sharp and ambitious South Carolina Republican whose two-term record as a conservative governor fueled presidential speculation. It was her immediate predecessor, Mark Sanford.
Sanford, in fact, had encouraged Haley to run for governor when few others saw a path for her to make the leap from state legislator to chief executive. They had been political allies, both viewed as outsiders by a clubby legislature.
Sanford’s support was a valuable asset until it wasn’t — his career exploded spectacularly after the 2009 revelation of an extramarital affair with a woman in Argentina. Haley nevertheless managed a come-from-behind victory in a crowded GOP primary field, establishing herself as a formidable political character.
Sanford, whose relationship with Haley has since been strained, remains one of South Carolina’s shrewdest political observers. I called him up ahead of the Feb. 24 GOP primary to get his take on how the state’s politics have shifted in recent years — and why Haley is down in the polls in her home state.
Sanford also knows what it’s like to tangle with Donald Trump. After a self-described “hermitage phase,” he made an improbable comeback and won a 2013 special election to the U.S. House, marking his second stint in Congress. He later emerged as a frequent Trump critic, going so far as to call out the “cult of personality” surrounding the former president. Sanford’s refusal to bend the knee caught up to him in 2018, when he was defeated in a GOP primary by a pro-Trump challenger — his only loss at the ballot box in three decades of running for office.
At this point, Sanford doesn’t see much hope for Haley against Trump. It would take “a meteor strike” for her to win, he says. Other than that, Sanford figures, her best chance is if Trump self-destructs and defeats himself, “which he’s perfectly capable of.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Nikki Haley was first elected governor in 2010, prior to the onset of the Trump era. There’s been quite a bit of population growth in South Carolina since then, and I imagine the electorate looks a lot different now. Is that true? Does that work to her advantage or disadvantage in the 2024 campaign?
It’s a mixed bag. To her advantage is the fact that a lot of the folks moving to the coast of South Carolina, in particular — and to a lesser degree, the upstate of South Carolina — are formerly urban, more affluent retirees. You’ve got a major influx of people who, unlike the Bible Belt of our state, would fit the Rockefeller Republican profile of being less…
