Nikki Haley formally launched her campaign for president on Wednesday, a day after announcing it via video. The former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador (who earned strong bipartisan marks for her performance in that role) is now the second major declared candidate for 2024, joining Donald Trump in the race.
In 2015, Haley put herself on the national political map with her response to a racist mass killing at a historically Black church in Charleston, in which she called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the State House grounds. The state soon did so, with legislators voting in favor of the move by overwhelming margins, despite previous polls that showed strong public support for the flag remaining there.
Haley earned widespread praise, including from President Barack Obama, who cited her “eloquence on the subject” in his eulogy for the victims.
But it’s also been a delicate issue for her, as it is for much of the Republican Party. South Carolina was among the last Southern states to distance itself from the flag, and Haley had for years demurred on the issue and suggested it wasn’t a big deal. She was clearly a vital early backer when the flag did come down, though her call came after that of a handful of key GOP figures. And in the years since taking that stand, she has lamented that the Charleston killings sullied a flag that for many represents heritage rather than racism.
Below is a timeline of Haley and the Confederate flag.
2000: South Carolina becomes the last state to remove the Confederate flag from its seat of government. But as part of a compromise crafted by Gov. Jim Hodges (D), the flag would continue to fly on a 30-foot pole in front of the Capitol.
2004: After upsetting a longtime GOP incumbent in a primary, Haley is elected state representative.
2009: Haley runs for governor. She and other GOP gubernatorial candidates are asked about the flag at a debate and express no interest in trying to remove it from the State House grounds. “There were a lot of hurt feelings” on both sides of the Confederate flag issue, she says, adding: “I would not want to revisit that issue.”
2010: In an interview with the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Haley indicates the Confederate flag issue is settled, because it takes two-thirds of the legislature to make any further changes: “So it’s not something I see as a priority right now.” She adds that she will work to talk with groups critical of the flag “about the heritage and how this is not something that is racist.” (She also pauses when asked about celebrating a Confederate History Month before saying she would support it. “The same as you have Black History Month, and you have Confederate History Month and all of those, as long as it’s done in a positive way and not a negative way.”)
May 2010: Haley reiterates her position while suggesting she, as an Indian American woman, might be able to smooth things over amid an NAACP boycott of the state.
2011: Haley’s chief of staff reiterates there is no real appetite in the state legislature to revisit the issue.
July 2011: NAACP President Ben Jealous calls out Haley by name. “Perhaps one of the most perplexing examples of the contradictions of this moment in history is that Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s first governor of color continues, to fly the Confederate flag in front of her state’s capitol.” A Haley spokesman responds that “revisiting that issue is not part of the governor’s agenda.”
October 2014: Haley’s Democratic opponent in her reelection campaign, state Sen. Vincent Sheheen, calls for the removal of the flag. Haley’s office seems to open the door a crack, saying, “If the General Assembly wants to revisit the issue that’s fine. But any such effort should be done in a thoughtful bipartisan way and not in the heat of the political campaign season.” At a later debate, though, Haley downplays the significance of the issue. “I can honestly say I have not had one conversation with a single CEO about the Confederate flag,” she says.
November 2014: A Winthrop University poll shows South Carolinians support allowing the flag to remain by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.
June 17, 2015: White supremacist Dylann Roof kills nine Black people, including a state senator, at a historically Black church in Charleston. The same day, Haley opens the door a bit wider to revisiting the flag issue, saying, “I think the state will start talking about that again, and we’ll see where it goes.” While other flags at the State House are lowered to half-staff, the Confederate flag remains at full-staff, because the 2000 compromise required any changes to be approved by two-thirds of the state legislature.
June 18, 2015: Photos emerge of Roof wearing the flags of racist, White-minority regimes in southern Africa, and it is reported that he drove a car with a Confederate flag license plate.
June 19, 2015: With Democrats focusing intently on the issue and more photos emerging of Roof embracing the Confederate flag, Haley demurs when asked about it. “Right now to start having policy conversations with the people of South Carolina, I understand that’s what you all want,” she says. “My job is to heal the people of this state.” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) says, “It’s him … not the flag,” and adds of the 2000 compromise: “It works here, that’s what the statehouse agreed to do.”
June 20, 2015: More than a thousand people protest the flag at the state capitol. Mitt Romney, a Haley ally who provided a major early endorsement of her 2010 campaign, and GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush call for removing the flag. (In 2001, Bush, then governor of Florida, put it in a museum.) Other GOP presidential candidates punt and say South Carolina should decide. A small number of GOP state legislators call for removing the flag, with one admitting he previously “just didn’t have the balls for five years to do it.”
June 22, 2015: Haley calls for the removal of the flag, appearing with lawmakers including the state’s two GOP senators, Graham and Tim Scott, who is Black. “Some divisions are bigger than a flag,” she says. “We are not going to allow this symbol to divide us any longer. The fact that people are choosing to use it as a sign of hate is something we cannot stand.” Mississippi lawmakers begin talking about removing the emblem from their state flag (something that would ultimately happen in 2020).
June 27, 2015: An activist scales the flagpole and briefly removes the flag.
July 9, 2015: Haley signs the bill officially removing the flag, after it passes in the state Senate 37-3 and the state House 94-20.
November 2019: Haley writes a book that includes a chapter on the decision. She writes of Roof, “The evil act he had committed had robbed the good-intentioned South Carolinians who supported the flag of this symbol of heritage and service. He had encouraged everyone’s worst stereotype for our state. Clearly, something had to be done. But at the same time, I worried that allowing the killer to define what the flag represented for everyone was a surrender. Why should he, of all people, be given that power?” She says that when pictures of Roof with the Confederate flag were discovered, she told her husband, “I don’t see any way that flag can continue to fly at the statehouse.”
Dec. 6, 2019: During her book tour, Haley tells conservative radio host Glenn Beck that Roof “hijacked” the meaning of the flag. “And here is this guy that comes out with this manifesto, holding the Confederate flag, and had just hijacked everything that people thought of. … People saw it as service and sacrifice and heritage, but once he did that there was no way to overcome it, and the national media came in droves.”
Dec. 11, 2019: Haley later expands in a Washington Post op-ed, saying she was “proud” of what she and the legislature did. “Everyone knows the flag has always been a symbol of slavery, discrimination and hate for many people,” she writes. “But not everyone sees the flag that way. That’s hard for non-Southerners to understand, but it’s a fact.”