What Black South Carolina voters really think of Nikki Haley

As a state representative in South Carolina, Samuel Rivers Jr. worked with then-Gov. Nikki Haley. He appreciates his time with her, admires her commitment and respects her accomplishments. Still, when the Republican primary takes place in the state on Saturday, Rivers will likely vote for Donald Trump. 

Nothing against Haley, said Rivers, a fellow Republican. “I’m extremely proud that we have someone from South Carolina who is on a national stage, who came from the small town of Bamberg,” he said. “It’s telling the average person who has brown skin or Black skin that you can do it, that it’s possible.”

But Rivers, who served in the state House  from 2012 to 2018, stopped short of going all in on Haley’s bid for the presidency. “There are mixed emotions about her in the Black community,” he said. 

And that does not bode well for Haley, who was governor from 2011 to 2017 and did not garner much Black voter support in her 2014 re-election bid, when she received 6% of the Black vote, while her Democratic opponent, then state Sen. Vincent Sheheen, got 92% of the Black vote. 

Haley engendered a connection to Black South Carolinians with her empathy after a white supremacist shooter killed nine Black people in 2015 at the historic Mother Emanuel church in Charleston. Soon after, she signed legislation to have the Confederate flag taken down at the state Capitol — pleasing Black activists. But it appears she has been unable to garner a coalition of Black voters as she seeks the Republican nomination to run for the nation’s highest office, according to people who spoke with NBC News.

Haley, who resigned as governor to become Trump’s ambassador to the U.N., has been fighting to continue her campaign for the Republican nomination as the only alternative candidate to Trump left in the race. To do so, Haley has been working to garner support from moderate Republicans, people of color, women and Democrats, who can vote in South Carolina’s open primary. 

Yet some Black voters and politicos in the state, Republicans and Democrats alike, say they are not so sure their former governor can or should beat Trump. 

For Latrecia Pond, a former board member of the Charleston County Republican Party who lost in a race for a state House seat in 2022, the connections are not confusing. 

“I like Nikki Haley,” she said. “She did good as governor. I think she was a wonderful governor. For president, she needs to leave that to Donald J. Trump.”

A Suffolk University/USA Today poll published Tuesday shows Haley with 35% of likely voters supporting her, trailing Trump, at 63% of likely primary voters. For Black voters in the state, experts said, her position on race has diminished any support she had hoped to get from them.  

Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants and first female governor of South Carolina, was a tea party darling. Republican voters supported her positions on lowering taxes, cutting job-eliminating regulations and her pro-life stance. 

“She does enjoy some goodwill,” said Maurice Washington, former chairman of the Charleston County Republican Party, referring to her handling of the racist 2015 shooting and its aftermath. Haley also supported South Carolina State University, a public historically Black college in Orangeburg, when it endured financial hardships. 

But Haley’s assertion during this campaign that America “has never been a racist country,” and doubling down on that statement last month, will only count against her, Washington and Rivers said. 

“Obviously, that’s a hard sell to the majority of the Black community — and many white Americans would push back against that notion as well,” Washington said. “No one can argue that America is not a racist country. And that could have an adverse impact on the percentage of Black votes that she receives” in the primary.

In another misstep, Haley said, during a New Hampshire town hall in December that “the role of government,” not slavery, was a cause of the Civil War. Weeks later, Haley appeared on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” with a mea culpa that she “probably should’ve said” slavery was a driver of the war. 

Haley’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment from NBC News for this article.  

Rivers, the former state house member, said: “The mere fact that my last name is Rivers and not Akindele tells you the history of our nation. Haley knows the history of the nation. Are there elements of racism in our nation? Yes. Was there long history of over 400 years of oppression of Black people? Yes.”

As a lawmaker, however, Rivers said that Haley, as governor, had actively pushed for equity in tangible ways. 

“When I was in the General Assembly with her, she would have her staff call me for certain committee appointments,” he said. “She’d say, ‘Can you find seven minorities for committee openings?’ She wanted every voice represented. And that happened on several occasions.”

James Johnson, a church elder who is founder of the Racial Justice Network in South Carolina, said he knows, has worked with and likes Haley. But her refusal to admit racism in America was crushing. 

“Her relationship with Black people really died when she said there’s no racism in South Carolina,” Johnson said. “It baffled me. … Her daddy couldn’t even work at a white college. But she said there’s no racism? When she said that, she just took everything out of me that I thought about her.”

Black voters make up the bulk of Democratic voters in South Carolina. While the turnout in the Feb. 10 Democratic primary to nominate President Joe Biden was lower than  in 2020 (4% of 3.3 million registered voters went to the polls this year compared to 16% in 2020), Washington attributes that dip not to the lack of a formidable challenge on the Democratic side, but that Black voters may have stayed home because they planned to switch to the GOP, specifically to support Trump 

 “I anticipate a higher turnout than normal” on Saturday, he said. “You have two candidates that are actually being looked over quite carefully, but for different reasons, by Black Americans here in South Carolina, and both have connected in the Black community in their own ways.”

Rivers said he has seen a shift in voting devotions among family members, most of whom were Democrats.

“I have some Black women who are for Haley, and the Black men are for Trump,” he said. “We do have some rock-solid Democrats that I’ve heard say they’re going to support either Haley or Trump. They’re just not for the Biden administration. Two of my nieces say they’re going to vote for Trump.”

Pond, the former board member of the Charleston County Republican Party, said her reasons to support Trump have less to do with Haley and more about her affection for the former president. But, she cited Haley’s explicable resignation as U.N. ambassador after just one year as one reason she does not support her. 

“President Trump gave her a job, a great job, and she quit,” Pond said. “Here’s a woman getting a great opportunity, and she just quits. I see a problem with that.”

Clay Middleton concurred. A Democrat and business executive who ran for mayor of Charleston, Middleton said that what little cache Haley had with Black voters to begin with evaporated after she denied America was a racist country. 

“There’s not a groundswell of Black people or people of color that are anxiously waiting to vote for her,” Middleton said. “Voting for her never entered my mind. She did a good job of being present after the tragedy at Mother Emanuel. But she was absent in dealing with the issues.”

 “In her own state against Trump, she won’t win,” he added. “But that’s the Republican circus and their chaos. That’s for them to figure out in their own civil war. But it says a lot about how we look at Nikki Haley.”

For more from NBC BLK, sign up for our weekly newsletter.