Republican presidential candidates Tim Scott and Nikki Haley challenge a lot of our preconceptions about modern politics, but they definitely carry the flame of the South Carolina spirit.
Republican presidential candidates Tim Scott and Nikki Haley challenge a lot of our preconceptions about modern politics, but they definitely carry the flame of the South Carolina spirit.
Let me tell you a story about a couple of American kids who make their dreams come true, and you tell me what's not to like about it.
A professor in India gets a job offer to go to the University of British Columbia, Canada. Then he gets an offer to teach at Voorhees College, a historically black college founded there in the 1800s by a student of Booker T. Washington. He takes the job; he moves his family. His family grows. He has a daughter.
This daughter grows up; she goes to a state college; gets a degree in accounting. She comes back home and becomes the bookkeeper for her mother's successful clothing shop.
Engaged in the family business, she joins the local Chamber of Commerce. She is named to their board.
From there, she becomes the treasurer of the National Association of Women Business Owners, and president of the state chapter. She serves on the local medical foundation and the sheriffs foundation.
By now she’s married. She has kids.
She hears Hillary Clinton say all the reasons people give on why you shouldn’t run for office are the reasons women should run for office.
At 33 years old, she runs for the state Legislature. She takes on the longest-serving member of the state House of Representatives.
She wins. She does well in the position and wins twice after that.
She reaches higher.
She runs for governor and becomes the first woman in the office.
One of her state’s U.S. Senators resigns. She needs to name a replacement to fill out the term, and she picks someone with a life story just as remarkable as her own.
Her choice is a man raised by a single mother, a working-class Black woman. He went to college and became an insurance agent. He got involved in local politics.
At the age of 30, he was elected to the County Council, becoming the first Black man of his party to hold that office in a century.
At the age of 43, like the governor, he ran for the State House of Representatives and won.
Just two years later, he ran for a seat in Congress. And he became the first Black member of his party elected to Congress from his state in 114 years.
Now, our first-female governor, the child of immigrants, has elevated a groundbreaking Black man, the son of a hard-working nursing assistant, to the United States Senate, the highest federal office under the president.
Our governor is a success. She's elected to a second term.
Now the president takes notice. He asks her to join his administration. She takes the job. By all accounts she is a force to be reckoned with at the international level.
The same year, our senator is elected to a full, six-year-term. With Black senators from both parties, he introduces legislation to make lynching a federal crime – finally.
And now, in the year 2023, both ground-breaking, successful politicians are running to be president of the United States!
Sounds like a Hollywood script, doesn't it?
If it were, there would be a bittersweet moment backstage before a big debate. They’d smile at each other, talk about coming up so far. Then they go out in front of glare of the lights and the television cameras, American flags waving in the audience, and engage in a fiesty debate about the future of the country.
Especially for Democrats and progressives, this duo seems like the kind of barrier-busting and change they’ve been looking for! A woman for president. A Black man for president.
Fresh air after the gruesome Battle of Baby Boomers that was the 2020 presidential campaign.
What's not to like?
What's not to like is that our protagonists are Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, both of South Carolina.
Republicans!
Southerners!
Complete losers! (Boo!)
That's the Compass of Power, people.
What South Carolina history tells us about Haley and Scott
This whole show is dedicated to a single proposition – that place is politics.
If American politics were about the things we think they are about, then the presidential runs of Nikki Haley and Tim Scott would get a different reception.
We used to say that political differences were philosophical, that each of us considers whether government intervention in the economy is good or bad, we consider to what degree states should differ with one another in law, whether the judiciary should interpret the Constitution or read it literally. Based on our philosophy of law, we vote.
That’s out.
Lately the pundit class has taken to the idea that politics – and all of culture – are inseparable from race. That the United States was permanently structured to privilege one race at the expense of all others. And that structure leads us to the current political system in which White people vote against not-White people in a contest for raw power.
Related to this is the concept of political polarization – that we sort ourselves into like-minded groups of conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, and then blame the other side for all that is wrong in the world. Those camps line up neatly along race, education, religion and other demographics – brining us back to a White vs. non-White, sexual-minorities-versus-straights, America by identity paradigm.
Nikki Haley and Tim Scott pose interesting challenges to those theories. That they have made it as far as they have in a Republican-dominated state is problematic for theories based in race and gender.
Polarization, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to explain why neither one is known for scorched-earth politics in a party that elected the most scorchy of all politicians, Donald Trump.
If the path to victory was clearly running as hard right as you could, wouldn’t they do that?
Place gives us a better frame – both for why Scott and Haley think they have a shot, and why their personal politics are what they are.
Their home state, South Carolina, is the originator of Southern culture.
Completely separate from the Pilgrims and Puritans of New England, South Carolina was founded by would-be English aristocrats. Like the Yankees, the Carolinian plantation owners spread west. The “Deep South” as we know it today is an extension of their planter culture.
One reason I came to believe place is the same as politics is that, a few years ago, I read my way through American history. After a few books, I noticed one small state kept coming up: South Carolina.
You don’t usually hear a lot about South Carolina on national news. Like Iowa, it seems to have a chance in the spotlight every four years during the presidential primary.
It’s not Texas or New York … California or Florida. It’s not a major population center, a major economic center, or even particularly big, geographically.
But in the history books, South Carolina looms large. Again and again, it appears as the antagonist.
Andrew Jackson faced down the state over nullification. It’s the home of Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of War and Senator John C. Calhoun, who used his brilliant political mind to argue for states’ rights and to perpetuate slavery.
The Civil War started in South Carolina, when the locals fired on federal troops at Fort Sumpter.
South Carolinian Strom Thurmond was among the first of the Southern elite to leave the Democratic Party over the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He served another 38 years, until he was 100.
And now, two of the state’s leading politicians are running for president.
But – you ask -- isn’t the Palmetto State always on the losing side?
South Carolina has a long history of being shut down.
It could not nullify federal laws it didn’t like.
It could not treat people like property.
It could not beat the North in a war.
It could not deny voting rights to people based on their skin color.
Over and over again, the North has stepped in to put a halt to South Carolina’s policies, and by extension the South’s policies.
As late as 1974, South Carolina’s seats in the General Assembly – the legislature in which Haley and Scott would eventually serve – were assigned as if it were the U.S. Congress. Counties took the place of states. Seats were apportioned by county, with each county receiving a certain number of representatives based on population, but never less than one. Every county was assigned one state senator, just as each state, whether California or Kentucky, is represented by two federal senators.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the South Carolina system violated the one-person-one-vote principle, and once more it had to give up its own ways in favor the national version of democracy.
So why would anyone from that state think they would win a national election?
Look to the Compass of Power.
The center of power in any democracy is that place where you find the most votes. In the United States, that geographic point has been drifting south and west for decades, as the population has moved south and west.
Part of the great American migration to the South can be credited to the North. By outlawing slavery, going after Jim Crow, ensuring voting rights and – as South Carolina’s Tim Scott helped do – make lynching a federal crime, the North has made the South more socially acceptable to Americans living in the North.
You can listen to a previous episode about the wave of Black Americans moving to the modern South, where their ancestors had lived for generations before. Today, young Black professionals can move to Georgia or Tennesee knowing they will be able to find good jobs, vote and hold office.
So, point one – any politician who can credibly win in the South has a major building block in winning the presidency. Winning over that culture is truly more important now than it has been in 150 years.
Point two –
The Republican Party is the party of the South.
The South and the North each always have a major political party under their sway.
For a long time, the Republicans were the party of the North. All the Black men elected to office in the South after the Civil War were Republicans. “Scallywag,” by the way, is not pirate talk. It is a term meaning a White person who voted for Republicans in the post-war South.
The Southern elites were Democrats for more than a century, back to the time of Andrew Jackson.
But the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a big deal. And after that, the elite of the South moved to the Republican Party.
Thus the big switcheroo in party control.
Today, the Southern elite controls and moves in the Republican party. Their opponents mostly live in the South’s growing cities, and who belong to the opposite party, just like they did during Reconstruction.
Haley and Scott are members of the Southern elite. Thanks to some of that racial progress forced on the South over the years, their skin color is not a barrier to joining that elite. (Worth noting, too, that South Carolina’s current Republican Governor, Henry McMaster, recently appointed Brian Gaines comptroller general, making Gaines the first Black constitutional officer since Reconstruction.)
Although Haley and Scott have said their experiences as minorities have shaped their views, those views are otherwise exactly like what you would expect from Southern leaders.
You’ve heard me extoll Joe Biden’s union-friendly policies before. I think they are good for the middle class.
Nikki Haley does not share Joe’s views.
As governor of South Carolina, she said of unions, “They’re trying to sneak in any way they can. My job is to make sure I keep kicking them out.”
As a senator, Tim Scott has worked on policing issues, including proposing the “Justice Act.” But he also voted against forming an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol.
All of which is to say, Tim Scott and Nikki Haley’s politics may not be as strident as Donald Trump, or even Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' politics, but they are absolutely conservatives.
The fact that they embody the North’s ancient enemy – the planter elite of the South – and they are not White is really a double insult to the sensibilities of the North. Which is why their biographies are no shield against partisan attacks.
Nevertheless, Scott and Haley have at least some chance of winning a primary in a political party to which they belong, and which is based in the South.
Now, for a reality check.
Neither Haley nor Scott are doing well in national polling for the presidential primary. Trump is No. 1 among Republicans right now, and DeSantis is a distant No. 2, making the South Carolinians extra-distant also-rans.
Of course, there are innumerable reasons for this line up, and it can and probably will change as the race takes shape.
But we on the Compass of Power are going to stick with place.
The geography of the Republican primary
First of all, South Carolina may be the mother of Deep Southern culture, but her children have grown much bigger than she is.
The Palmetto State’s population is just over 5 million.
Next door, Georgia’s population is 10. 7 million.
Texas and Florida are the second and third most populous states in the union.
So right off the bat, a governor of Florida like Ron DeSantis has a power base several times the size of a South Carolina governor like Nikki Haley.
More importantly, there is more than one culture in the South. While the Carolina’s planter culture spread all the way to East Texas, it stopped there.
The No. 1 most populous cultural group in the United States are the Appalachians, who inhabit the whole mountain chain, and land running west all the way to Northern Texas.
Who is the politician with a lock on that culture? Donald Trump.
He may be from New York, but he’s adapted his bellicose, free-speaking New York style to appeal to Appalachians, who prize courage and aggression in politics.
According to the Nationhood Lab, the population of this cultural zone is 62 million. And Trump won the vote there by 21 points in 2020.
The Deep South’s population is 45 million. (And Trump won it in 2020 by 7 points).
So, coming from South Carolina is a good start for a Republican presidential candidate, but it is only a start. You have to expand your base.
And that raises the question – can the heirs to the planter class build cross-cultural bridges?
Can politicians from the state that kicked off the Civil War win a national popularity contest?
Let’s look very specifically at the three cultural regions that form the Southern coalition, which is the Republican coalition.
Haley and Scott in Appalachia
As we've already mentioned, Donald Trump goes hard after this group by going hard after perceived enemies. It's a culture that values standing up to outsiders.
I think a bad example of attempting to court this cultural group would be the photo Nikki Haley circulated showing her with an AR-15 style rifle. Clearly the goal here was to show that she is friendly to gun rights, which are very popular throughout the South.
Unfortunately for her, she isn't actually someone who enjoys hunting or shooting at targets. She's not a veteran.
I became aware of this when a Democrat who is a veteran took the opportunity to point out the many ways in which she was handling the gun improperly. I'm not a gun expert, but one thing I do know is that you shouldn't have your finger on the trigger until it's time to pull the trigger.
She had her finger on the trigger while she was just sighting down the barrel. Unforced error.
I also haven't seen Tim Scott do a lot of outreach in this direction. He certainly must be a supporter of gun rights and he has attempted to write police reform legislation that would be palatable to law enforcement. His brother is a career military man.
But by personality Tim Scott seems to be a fairly jovial person, a businessman who likes to make friends. He does not approach topics with a lot of aggression.
The one area in which I have seen the South Carolinians offer a bone to Appalachians was Nikki Haley's launch. She pointed to Republican presidential campaigns' record of losing elections and noted she’s never lost. Telling folks that she's going to win outright and win big is, if I may repeat myself, a real winner with this crowd.
Second, we have the Deep South, from which both of these candidates spring and to which both can speak. My impression at this point is that the so-called “anti-woke” campaigning is most popular in the Deep South. Standing up to New England ideology and declaring it unamerican has always been popular in the Deep South.
This is a crowded lane however, because Ron DeSantis has been running on that platform and scoring points.
Haley and Scott in the Dry West.
The Dry West is that big section of the country settled just before and after the Civil War. It's special because you need irrigation and huge amounts of capital to extract crops or resources here. The Dry West, places like Wyoming and Colorado, has always been treated as a colony by the East Coast. And people there resent it.
This area is growing rapidly in population. But it's not clear to me yet what Haley or Scott offer this region, in particular. You could argue that their generally more moderate stance on social issues appeals to the West. Because the West is less concerned with forcing its own brand of living on folks than it is on economic development and freedom from regulation.
In that way, Nikki Haley's call for ‘humanizing” our approach to the abortion question might be a winner, for example.
Scot and Haley in the Midlands
The Midlands, as a cultural region, started with the Quakers of Pennsylvania. Just like the Planters and the Puritans, they moved West. Folks in this territory have always been what today we would call “swing voters.”
For example, it was Quakers who started the anti-slavery movement. But when Yankees took up the banner and headed for Civil War, people in the Midlands were split on the issue of shedding blood to end a moral wrong. The region was torn on the justification for the war, sometimes congregation by congregation.
You've heard me say in other episodes that Joe Biden’s secret power is that he's from Delaware. Although a small state, Delaware includes areas of the Midlands and Tidewater in the South. I think that's given Biden the ability to speak to both audiences.
He's shown he can win the underclass in the South, especially black voters. That is how he won the primary in South Carolina and the general election in Georgia. But he's also familiar enough with northern expectations to win places like Wisconsin.
Can Scott or Haley talk with the Midlands? Funny enough, that's one of the first questions that will be answered, because Iowa is the only state dominated by Midlands culture. And it’s first up in the primary season.
Maybe Tim Scott’s sunny optimism and “We'll take it as it comes” attitude will help him with Midland voters. He said at a recent event, “If we are going to achieve another American century, it will require us those who agree and those who disagree, to have the civil public forum to debate the serious issues of our time.”
Will that sell in the heart land?
I don't want to stretch too far out into the future.
We've got plenty of time before we even get to the first primary election.
We'll have lots of opportunities to analyze all the candidates.
Let me end with this: the key to winning in the Republican primary is winning.
More so than for the Democrats in the North. Joe Biden didn’t have to start out winning, day one.
But because the Appalachians are such a huge part of the Republican coalition, and they value winning so much, it will be essential for anyone who is not Donald Trump to beat Donald Trump.
That may seem obvious, but I don't mean it in a, “gaining enough support to cinch a nomination” sense.
I mean that in the, “In order to become the king, you need to kill the king,” sense.
It's possible that our mainstreamed South Carolinian contestants will politically wound Trump in a place like Iowa.
Because in that environment they can beat him simply by showing more nuance and moderation to a crowd that puts less emphasis on all-out political warfare.
We shall see – it’s going to be fun!