National Review: She Means Business

South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley is a chamber-of-commerce conservative

ROBERT COSTA

[H]aley says she often felt that her family’s business, along with other companies in town, was not getting a fair shake. “Small businesses are the absolute heart of what turns this economy,” she says. “Unfortunately, every time something went wrong with the economy, we were the ones hit. I wanted to find a way to help strengthen them.”

At age 26, Haley did. “I joined the Orangeburg County Chamber of Commerce in 1998, and then did the same later in Lexington, after we moved there,” she says. By 2003, she was a board member of the  National Association of Women Business Owners and the president of its Columbia chapter. “I had a business mentality,” she notes, “and was focused entirely on that.” …

The itch to enter politics finally came in 2004…“I had no interest in that path — I wanted to change state government. My motivation came from my frustration about how hard it was getting to make a dollar in South Carolina and how easy it was for the government to take it. My parents always taught us to not complain, so I decided to do something about it. I did not realize what a challenge it would be.”

During her rough-and-tumble run, Haley had pledged to rattle the establishment once she got to the legislature in Columbia, and to become a leader, which she quickly did…Estranged from the GOP  establishment, Haley nonetheless won plaudits from good-government types and reform-minded conservatives. …

Haley is often described as a tea-party conservative. She happily accepts that mantle, but her views and her story, she says, are all her own. While Haley respects others’ ideologically driven policy work, that approach is not for her…Her political principles, as she explains them, are rooted in her own balance-sheet conservatism.

If Haley wins this fall against Democrat Vincent Sheheen, she’ll become the first governor in South Carolina history who is not a white male. While Haley says she “understands the excitement,” she pays little attention to the glass ceiling, as has been the case throughout her business career. It’s those lessons from the living room, and the legislative chamber, that she most hopes to take to the governor’s mansion.