Prominent Democratic donors, concerned about Donald J. Trump’s increasingly authoritarian language, have called on Democratic voters and independents to thwart the former president’s comeback by voting for Nikki Haley in the open Republican primary election.
But Ms. Haley’s political gaffe Wednesday night, when the presidential candidate and former South Carolina governor stumbled over the causes of the Civil War without any mention of slavery, could make that call considerably more difficult, at the moment even where it approaches striking distance. Mr. Trump in New Hampshire.
Ms. Haley walked back her answer on the causes of the Civil War on Thursday, telling a New Hampshire interviewer: “Of course the Civil War was about slavery. »
Her retreat came about 12 hours after a public meeting in Berlin, New Hampshire, a state central to her presidential ambitions, where she was asked about the origins of the Civil War. His response focused on government excesses and “the freedoms of what people can and cannot do,” after jokingly telling the caller that he had asked a difficult question. He then noted that she did not say the word “slavery.”
“What do you want me to say about slavery?” Ms. Haley replied. The person who asked the question thanked her for the answer and Ms. Haley moved on: “Next question.”
Democrats responded savagely. The Democratic National Committee called his comments “vile” and his cleanup efforts “pathetic.” Late Wednesday night, even President Biden chastised her: “It was about slavery.” he wrote on social networks.
All this came a month after Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase and a major Democratic donor, threw his support behind Ms. Haley and implored other donors at the New York Times DealBook Summit: “Even if you’re a very Liberal Democrat, I urge you to help Nikki Haley too.
Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn and top Democratic donor, gave $250,000 to a super PAC supporting Ms. Haley.
With recent polls showing Ms. Haley in second place in New Hampshire, her crossover appeal becomes more relevant, to independents and to Democrats who might have registered as independents to vote in the Jan. 23 Republican primary, the first in the country. . To win the Granite State contest, she will most likely need those voters, just as Sen. John McCain of Arizona did when he upset George W. Bush in the state’s 2000 primary.
“If Democrats think 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 Democratic primary. GOP,” said Ian Bassin, a Democrat. advocate who recently won 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 help that cause this week. Speaking Thursday morning on “The Pulse of New Hampshire” radio show, Ms. Haley, who removed the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina Capitol in Columbia, tried to make amends: “Yes , I know it was. on slavery. I come from the south. »
But she also insinuated that the question came not from a Republican voter but from a political critic, accusing Mr. Biden and Democrats of “sending plants” at his public events.
“Why are they hitting me? See it for what it is,” she said, adding, “They want to run against Trump. »
His comments on the Civil War have not disappeared. By Thursday afternoon, the campaigns of all of his rivals for the Republican nomination, including Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, had criticized his gaffe. Mr. DeSantis, who clashed with his rivals over the summer over Florida’s educational standards for teaching about slavery, accused it of having “some problems with some of the basics of the American history.
He said: “It is not that difficult to identify and recognize the role slavery played in the Civil War. »
The campaign of former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, Mr. Trump’s most vocal critic, has vowed to keep his response to the Civil War front and center. “She didn’t say what she said last night and today about this because she’s stupid,” Mr. Christie said Thursday evening at a campaign event in Epping, New York. Hampshire. “She’s not, she’s smart and she knows better.” He added: “The reason she did it is just as bad, if not worse, and she made everyone worry about her candidacy. She did it because she doesn’t want to offend anyone by telling the truth.
Ms. Haley’s allies rushed to her defense. Tom Davis, Haley’s surrogate and a Republican state senator from South Carolina, said he understands that “sharp elbows and tough questions” are part of any presidential campaign, but argued that his critics do not had no place in the upbringing of Ms. Haley, a Native American woman raised in the United States. the rural South, on racial division, racism and slavery.
“This space here is where Nikki Haley does not need to be defended,” he said, noting her historic victory as the first woman of color to lead the state.
Ms. Haley’s remarks echoed a 150-year-old argument by segregationists that the Civil War was fundamentally about states’ rights and economics, not the end of slavery. “I think the cause of the Civil War was basically the way the government was going to operate,” she said Wednesday evening“freedoms and what people can and cannot do”.
She tried to walk away from that interpretation Thursday, asking, “What is the lesson of all this?” This freedom matters. And individual rights and freedoms matter to everyone. This is America’s blessing. It was a stain on America during the era of slavery. But what we want is to never experience it again. Don’t let anyone take away these freedoms from us again.
Some Democrats implored potential crossover voters to stick with Ms. Haley as the most plausible alternative to Mr. Trump. Thursday, the The Trump campaign released a new TV ad with the kind of fear-mongering and violent imagery that Democrats promoting Ms. Haley 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 retaliation,” said Dmitri Mehlhorn, a prominent Democratic donor and financial official with close ties to Mr. Hoffman. “If we are serious about stopping him and his MAGA allies who incited and still defend January 6, we have to swallow hard and team up with anyone who can beat them.”
Ms. Haley’s appeal as a candidate for moderation is mixed. As governor of South Carolina, she signed some of the nation’s toughest anti-abortion and immigration laws at the time, as well as a strict voter ID law that required a valid ID law. photo ID in the ballot box.
But she also blocked a bill to prevent transgender youth from using bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity and won national acclaim for her push to lower the Confederate battle flag after a white supremacist opened fire and killed nine black worshipers in a Charleston church, including one. beloved state senator, in 2015.
Now, on the campaign trail, she has sought to take a softer tone on her record and on some of the thorniest issues facing her party, trying to thread the needle on abortion and presenting as a mother and daughter of immigrants ready to help. turn the page on the nation’s era of political division.
“Haley’s refusal to speak honestly about slavery or race in America is a sad betrayal of her own history,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, Democrat of California.
Yet several Democratic state lawmakers who worked with her on efforts to remove the flag said they saw parallels between her remarks this week and those she made in a 2010 interview with leaders of Confederate heritage groups, in which she argued that the Confederate flag was “not something racist” but about tradition and heritage. In that exchange, she also said she could leverage her identity as a minority woman to push back against calls to boycott the flag.
After the church shooting rocked South Carolina, Ms. Haley took advantage of the new political will among state lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, sparking accusations from some that the bulk of the Work to remove the flag had taken place in the state Legislature.
“If she hadn’t supported bringing down the flag, yes, it would have been a lot harder to bring it down — I think that’s true,” said Vincent Sheheen, a former Democratic senator from South Carolina who is brought unsuccessfully against Ms. Haley. in 2010 and 2014. “But the key was kind of putting her in a box where she had to support a club.”
Mr. Davis, the Haley ally who was elected in 2008 and served in the state Legislature at the time, argued that it was Ms. Haley who helped frame the debate as a question of “reciprocal grace,” telling him and others that the forgiveness the victims’ families had shown toward the killer was an act that needed to be reciprocated.
“To say that this would have happened without her, to minimize her role, it’s not fair,” he said, recalling the political setback she faced following this decision. “It was not a safe political position for her, especially within the Republican Party. »
Nicolas Nehamas And Christopher Cameron reports contributed.