Speculation is that Mike Pence will make an Iowa appearance, perhaps followed by a campaign launch speech, this week. That may have been hampered by the fact he’s been served a subpoena to search his private residences, past and present, for more possible classified documents that do not belong there. Out West, we call that having a hitch in your get along, and probably will not derail entirely a Pence presidential run, but might stall his rollout a bit. We’ll see.

But the other likely announcement is expected from former South Carolina Governor and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. This column continues in a series that looks at the strengths and weaknesses of each possible GOP contender without prejudice one way or another, and provides a program guide for you when the primary debates begin and up on the stage is a dozen people and you’re wondering who they all are and why they’re there.

The case for Nikki Haley.

1. She was a successful governor of a state. She has a track record of executive experience. That cannot be discounted, regardless of the size of the state or what the person has done since. Larry Hogan, Glenn Youngkin, Chris Christie, Chris Sununu, Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, all possible/probable candidates for president, can point to a track record of successes of running a bureaucracy at a state level, and why it’s important to have that experience when tackling the problems facing the nation in Washington going forward. We’ve seen Joe Biden, who hasn’t been able to run anything efficiently, including his mouth, for the last two-plus years, and the appeal of executive competence is very enticing to Republican primary voters. Expect Haley to play up her governor experience, at least early on, more than her experience at Turtle Bay.
2. Foreign policy is a blind spot or at least a skill set that hasn’t fully developed in the governor ranks, unlike that of a former Secretary of State running (Mike Pompeo), or Congressional members that sit on international relations committees. Haley as United Nations Ambassador certainly would give her an edge on how to articulate what to do about challenges the country faces abroad with credibility more than some of the other governors that would run.
3. Legislative experience – Before serving as governor, Haley was the majority whip for the Republicans in the South Carolina state Assembly, their version of the House of Representatives. She not only is able to understand how the legislative process works, but how to work with other legislators to get to some degree of consensus to get things passed.
4. She is very solid within the Ronald Reagan three-legged stool of conservatism standard. She’s got a strong record as a tax cutter and other fiscal issues. She is staunchly pro-life and takes positions you would expect a conservative to on other social issues. And on national security and Defense issues, she’s a military spouse, having had her husband go on a deployment to Afghanistan in 2013. She’s a fierce defender of the military.
5. Optics matter, and being a woman of Indian descent certainly puts a face at the top of the ticket that isn’t an old white male, which takes away an argument from the left and their allies in the media about the stereotypical Republican candidate.

The case against Nikki Haley

1. She’s ruthlessly over-ambitious. You’re already seeing this charge made from Donald Trump. You’ll hear it from others as well, though perhaps a little more subtly. Kamala Harris is ruthlessly over-ambitious, too. But Nikki Haley brings a lot more intellectual firepower than the Vice President does. Nevertheless, she’s going to have to demonstrate resolve and a vision for the future without feeding the narrative that she’s just power hungry.
2. Trust factor – Few people had a negative word to say about her during her time in South Carolina. When she was appointed and confirmed to be UN ambassador, she was a strong advocate for the United States to the Tatooine cantina that is the United Nations Security Council. But her relationship with Donald Trump soured during the President’s term, and she resigned and left government halfway through the four-year commitment. She’s tried with varying degrees of success to walk the line between supporting Trump and criticizing him when he crosses the line. By trying to hold that position, she’s in essence lost the trust of Trump loyalists while simultaneously unable to reassure the anti-Trump wing who won’t forgive her for getting involved with Trump in the first place. She’s on record multiple times saying if Trump runs again for president, she’d never run. Now, she’s reversed herself. She’s going to have to offer up a reason why she’s changed her position.
3. Is she really running for president or vice president? In Mike Pompeo’s book, Never Give An Inch, he recounts an episode where Haley repeatedly asked Trump to replace Mike Pence on the 2020 ticket with her as vice president, a gambit that obviously didn’t work out. She has strongly denied that happened, going so far as to call Pompeo a liar. When asked directly about the exchange happening, however, the former President wouldn’t deny Pompeo’s account. He only responded by saying he didn’t want to embarrass Haley. So the question conservatives will ask if she’s the second person to get into the race is if she will go after Donald Trump directly in debates and fight for the big job, or will she be the attack dog for other candidates to get in, trying to reestablish loyalty to Trump, so that when he eventually wins the nomination in 2024, he’ll pick her as the veep?
4. She may not even be the most popular presidential candidate from South Carolina in 2024. Tim Scott, the very charismatic junior senator from the Palmetto State, has hired some pretty big guns in the last week in former Colorado Senator Cory Gardner and former National Republican Senatorial Committee executive director Rob Collins. Both of them are widely rumored to be adds to Scott’s future presidential campaign advisory staff. South Carolina is indeed one of the early primary states, the first in the South, as the saying goes. If Haley were the only native of South Carolina in the race, she’d have the edge in South Carolina, and could use that to leverage her way deep into the Republican nominating contest in 2024. But she could likely face the ‘what have you done for me lately’ problem in that her governorship was a decade ago, and Tim Scott just got reelected in 2022 by a 63-37 margin. That’ll be tough to overcome.
5. Money – It’ll be interesting to see who her donors are and where her campaign funding will come from. She’ll get some small donor support, but again, she’ll run into the problem that few people in the party on other side of the Trump divide trust her. The question will be whether her funding comes largely, though indiscreetly, from Trump backers seeing her in the primaries as a leading blocker rather than true competition to the former President.

Haley is expected to make an announcement on or around the 15th. We’ll see if that does develop, and what kind of splash she makes once she takes the plunge. Once Tim Scott moves closer to a run, there will be a column on him, as well as any other contenders who jump in over the next few months. Stay tuned.