Haley enters the fray, a female candidate against a man known for mocking them

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Donald Trump now faces his first declared opponent in the 2024 Republican presidential primary. It just so happens to be a woman.

Stepping out ahead of a field of men who spent the better part of two years mulling and flirting with a 2024 run, Nikki Haley marked her entrance into the Republican presidential primary with an announcement video and a formal event on Wednesday.

It is a direct bet by the former South Carolina governor that a party that has never nominated a woman as its standard bearer, let alone seen a woman candidate win a single primary state, is ready to do just that. It's also a gamble that she can merge various threads of Republicanism that at times seem at odds. Chief among them: a desire to move on from Trump without offending his base, veering too far from the political approach he espoused, or incurring too much of his wrath.

Like others expected to enter the field, Haley has waffled in her support for Trump. She condemned him during the 2016 presidential primary, then served as his ambassador to the United Nations. She rebuked him after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, before announcing she would not run for president if he did so in 2024. Ultimately, she decided to become his first challenger.

Trump, for his part, has already sought to minimize her candidacy, referring to Haley as “overly ambitious.” It is a sign, other female politicians said, of the subtle and not-so-subtle jabs that are to come.

“She’ll probably be hit harder with it simply because she is a woman,” said former Republican New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, referring to Haley seemingly changing her mind on Trump, like most of the other GOP candidates expected to run. “But she's been through those kinds of fires before, and she's been a governor. She had to overcome odds there, and she's proven that she can.”

Haley has not shied away from presenting herself as a trailblazer. She launched her political career with a 2004 state legislative run, ousting the state’s longest-serving state House member in a Republican primary before picking fights with the House speaker and leadership once she was there. She captured Tea Party support in another long-shot bid in 2010, for governor, when she rose from the bottom of the polls to surpass a sitting congressman, lieutenant governor and attorney general and win the Republican nomination. She went on to become South Carolina’s first female governor.

“When you talk about Michele Bachmann and Carly Fiorina, every time a woman puts themselves in a position of running for office and says, ‘I'm willing to take this step,’ it’s really a woman standing for every other woman who's considered it or will do it in the future,” said Tudor Dixon, who ran for governor in Michigan this fall as the Republican nominee. “There is a glass ceiling that we're breaking every time a woman runs, and you do face different challenges than a man. You see comments about women's appearance — and that's certainly something that we faced here in Michigan.”

While Haley has had a string of successes running for office before, the presidential campaign presents unique challenges, primarily because of who is currently in it. Trump has built a brand by attacking his perceived foes. But his swipes against women in and surrounding the 2016 presidential election were widely viewed as his most inflammatory insults, a cut deeper than belittling Jeb Bush as “low energy” or Marco Rubio as short.

He repeatedly called Hillary Clinton “nasty,” said Carly Fiorina had a “horseface,” declared that debate moderator Megyn Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever,” and went after the appearance of Ted Cruz’s wife.

Dixon, who was endorsed by Trump, noted that female candidates already face hurdles that their male counterparts do not. She said both she and Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer faced sexist comments throughout the race about their looks and fitness. Dixon recalled being approached by a woman who said she supported her policies but couldn’t vote for her out of a belief that she should remain home with her four children. Another time, a woman asked who would take care of Dixon’s kids if she was elected governor.

Dixon is not yet endorsing a candidate in the 2024 presidential field, but said she was pleased to see Haley getting in the race. While conceding Trump is a “wildcard,” Dixon said she's hopeful this cycle’s primary will be “a different kind of race” than 2016.

“It's really not going to impress people if one of the men in the race comes out and tries to attack her on something that is a trivial issue, when she really is someone who has a phenomenal record in government,” Dixon said.

In her campaign launch video Tuesday, which came a day before Haley’s previously scheduled “big announcement” Wednesday in Charleston — Haley framed her candidacy as a product of the post-Trump era. She touched on cultural fights surrounding education and racism. But she focused more broadly on American greatness, stopping the “socialist left,” and her accomplishments as governor and ambassador. She also encouraged voters — and potential donors — to consider that a “new generation of leadership” in the Republican Party can go further than nominating a younger man.

Haley gave nods to her biography and gender, describing growing up as a “different” kid, the daughter of Indian immigrants in rural South Carolina. Having joked for years about her stilettos being effective weapons, she is now leaning into her femininity in her bid for president.

“You should know this about me, I don’t put up with bullies,” Haley said in the video. “And if you kick back, it hurts them more when you’re wearing heels.”

Beth Miller, a Republican strategist and past senior adviser to Fiorina, said Haley is not only going to need “thick skin,” but, like women in all spheres, be “over-prepared.”

“It is interesting, when we look back at Carly in 2016, she comes out of a male-dominated industry in tech and she can strike a blow, she’s a very, very good communicator, but there is that, ‘How do you lob a hit without coming off as bitchy?’” said Miller, who advised Fiorina’s Senate run in California before she ran for president. “Unfortunately it shouldn’t be that way, but it inevitably is.”

Haley is bracing for Trump to hurl insults at her. That’s most likely to happen if her poll numbers tick up in the coming weeks as she enjoys time in the national spotlight without other declared candidates.

On Sunday, Haley’s campaign team uploaded to her YouTube account a seven-minute video of Trump sitting side by side with her in 2018, speaking to reporters and complimenting Haley’s work as U.N. ambassador after she announced her resignation. Haley’s staff titled the video “Trump Praises Haley’s Service as Ambassador” and featured it prominently on her new campaign website.

Her allies, many of whom watched Haley’s unlikely political rise in South Carolina, acknowledge that her style has been off-putting to the GOP insiders she has taken on, but appealed to the state’s conservative voters that put her in office.

Katon Dawson, the former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party who is one of Haley’s campaign surrogates in the state, said Haley was “very popular — not so much with the good ol’ boys, but… with the working-class voters of South Carolina.”

South Carolina state Rep. Nathan Ballentine, a friend of Haley’s since they were part of the same freshman class at the statehouse, recalled her primary election night in 2010, when she advanced to a runoff after having spent much of the campaign as the underdog.

“Nobody gave her a frickin’ shot in hell, and I can remember being in the war room, and she was pissed that she didn’t win outright,” Ballentine said. “I'm like, ‘This is good. This is huge!” And she’s like, ‘I wanted to win it outright.’”

Her drive has carried Haley further than any other woman in South Carolina politics — and further than most women in today’s GOP.

“You know, she talks about her high heels or whatever, like she kicks with a smile, or something like that,” Ballentine said. “I mean, she can stand toe to toe, she's gone against [legislative] chairmen before, she's gone against the speaker. That's what got her in trouble, by the way, but that's also what made her governor.”