Haley at a recent Kiawah Island rally. | Charleston City Paper.
(Editor’s note: Andy Brack is editor and publisher of the Charleston City Paper, South Carolina’s largest independent weekly newspaper.—eeb)
By Andy Brack
CHARLESTON, S.C. | For former S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley to win Saturday’s Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, she’s going to have to count on two groups that never really counted on her — Democrats and independents.
Brack
But with former President Donald Trump constantly yammering about a $355 million fraud judgment, continuing to glorify Russian President Vladimir Putin and hawking $400 gold tennis shoes, maybe the level of frustration has grown so much that Haley will defy the polls.
Thanks to South Carolina’s open primary system, there’s a real path for our former S.C. governor, who served as Trump’s United Nations ambassador, to win.
It’s clear something is going on here that’s a little different than what’s in the horse race of the daily news headlines. People at restaurants, coffee shops and festivals — anywhere that anyone will listen — are urging Democrats and independents to vote in the Republican primary. And more Republicans seem to be jumping on Haley’s bandwagon. One Seabrook Island lawyer, for example, on Saturday related how he voted twice for Trump but no longer can: “He’s lost his mind.”
The formula for Haley to win in her home state starts with separating the pool of 3.2 million registered voters. Of those, only about 130,000 cast ballots in the Feb. 3 Democratic primary, leaving more than 3 million people in South Carolina who haven’t voted yet. But they can, thanks to the state’s open primary law. All of those folks – including Democrats and independents – are eligible to vote Saturday — a quirk in state law that committed Republicans hate with a passion.
Eight years ago when both parties had competitive primaries here, just under 750,000 voters cast ballots in the six-way GOP presidential primary. Consider this number to be the Republican base of likely voters now since there weren’t a lot of crossover votes in 2016 when Democrats had a competitive primary, too.
Polls currently show Trump having support of 65 percent of likely voters (meaning Republican ) voters. That means he can expect to get 500,000 the GOP base vote to Haley’s 250,000.
But remember: There are about 2.3 million other registered voters in the Palmetto State. If just 15 percent of that non-base group of frustrated Democrats, disillusioned independents and weaker Republicans who didn’t bother to vote in 2016 actually cast their lot with Haley, (that’s 345,000 more voters), she could win.
Likely? Probably not. But lots of South Carolinians are praying for Trump to stumble. All the while, they’re muttering the state’s Latin motto, “Dum spiro spero.” Translated, that means, “While I breathe, I hope.”
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