Not ready for higher office, focus on South Carolina first: Haley.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: In the wake of the Charleston Church shooting, during which a white supremacist ruthlessly killed 9 individuals at a prominently black house of worship, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, was swift in her denouncement of the Confederate flag flying atop the South Carolina state capitol.
“She saw an opportunity and saw a spotlight on South Carolina and saw that there were going to be real significant problems for the state and the Republicans if they couldn’t bring it down,” Katie Packer Gage, a Republican consultant, told CNN after the flag was removed last month. “She stepped up and it didn’t take her weeks or months, even though she could have punted. She is a smart politician.”
While other politicians faltered or stammered in circles, Haley’s conviction thrust her into the political spotlight and earned her the adulation of not only her home state, but the nation at large.
Inevitably, the Indian American’s meteoric rise in profile has led to one popular query: What would she do if offered the vice-presidential slot in 2016?
When confronted with the same, reverberating question at the RedState Gathering in Atlanta, Ga. on Saturday, the governor adroitly deflected any notion of focusing on a national campaign at first.
“I’m not ready to think about that. I’m not ready to look into that. Because I’ve got a state to heal,” she said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I’ve got to make sure I build South Carolina back up to where she needs to be.”
Haley subsequently went on to tell the assembled crowd about a time her father, who wore a turban, went to buy produce from a fruit stand whose owner called two police officers to swatch him until he finished up.
She used the parable to segue into remarks that underscored her status as a woman who confidently shattered the glass ceiling in getting elected to South Carolina’s highest office, while seemingly propping herself up for a potential vice-presidential run in the same breath.
“Sometimes, we should put ourselves in each others’ shoes,” she stated. “We brought our flag down. But that didn’t change my philosophical core. But it taught me to listen more. None of us are happy with what’s happening in D.C. now, because they’re getting nothing done … If we in South Carolina could do what we did with that flag, think about what we could do across the country.”