When Nikki Haley ran for governor of South Carolina in 2010, one among her early marketing campaign stops was the Aiken, S.C., front room of Claude and Sunny O’Donovan.
Mr. O’Donovan, the co-founder of an area Tea Get together group, had invited Ms. Haley and different candidates to make their case to the conservative activists of Aiken County, a closely Republican enclave of golf programs and retirement communities. The group that gathered across the O’Donovans’ espresso desk numbered solely a few dozen. However the retired couple was smitten.
“We fell in love together with her,” Mr. O’Donovan, 85, stated. “She was a dynamite gal.”
A digital image body within the O’Donovans’ residence nonetheless shows {a photograph} of Ms. Haley on the assembly. However on Feb. 24, when Ms. Haley faces Donald J. Trump in South Carolina’s Republican presidential major, each of the O’Donovans plan to vote for Mr. Trump.
“I feel he has the values of the Tea Get together,” Mrs. O’Donovan, 84, stated. “It was for the folks, and I see Trump as being for the folks.”
Current polls present Mr. Trump main Ms. Haley by 36 factors in South Carolina. A decisive loss would transfer the Republican nomination additional out of attain and supply a painful coda to her political profession in her residence state.
A Trump win in South Carolina would additionally write the ultimate chapter of probably the most vital political tales of the final decade: the story of how Mr. Trump entered politics amid a transformative grass-roots motion after which absorbed that motion into his personal.
Within the early years of Barack Obama’s presidency, the Tea Get together motion channeled outrage over financial institution bailouts and right-wing animosity towards the brand new president and his insurance policies right into a wave of midterm triumphs, successful Republican majorities in Congress and statehouses and minting a brand new technology of political stars, together with Ms. Haley.
4 years later, initially skeptical Tea Partiers embraced Mr. Trump, who, as candidate and president, supplied a supercharged model of the motion’s antipathy towards immigrants, worry of a altering nation and anti-establishment fervor.
In Ms. Haley’s state, the place the Tea Get together motion was unusually influential, Mr. Trump notched an early victory in his 2016 presidential bid.
“The type of people that have been Tea Get together in 2010 are a part of the MAGA motion in 2024,” stated Scott Huffmon, a political science professor at Winthrop College in Rock Hill, S.C., and director of the Winthrop Ballot. “We owe all this to the Tea Get together.”
Right now, few of the unique Tea Get together organizations stay. However their former dominance, after which dissolution into Mr. Trump’s camp, goes a good distance towards explaining how South Carolina deserted its once-favorite daughter for a former Democrat from New York.
Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokeswoman for Ms. Haley’s marketing campaign, defended the previous governor’s motion credentials. “Identical to when she ran for governor, Nikki is the outsider, conservative candidate,” she stated in an announcement.
However even some once-dedicated supporters have moved on.
“Sure, he’s the loopy uncle at Thanksgiving,” stated Jane Web page Thompson, a co-founder of Mr. O’Donovan’s Tea Get together group who additionally hosted a Haley fund-raiser in Aiken throughout her governor’s run, stated of Mr. Trump. “However proper now America wants the loopy uncle at Thanksgiving — not the snowflake niece.”
From ‘Nikki, Who?’ to No. 1
Within the heyday of the Tea Get together, South Carolina was residence to dozens of native teams related to the motion.
Ms. Haley credited their endorsement for her ascent in 2010. “You took me from ‘Nikki, who?’ to first within the polls,” she informed a gathering of the Myrtle Seaside Tea Get together not lengthy earlier than successful the Republican nomination.
It had taken the state’s conservatives time to heat to Ms. Haley, the kid of immigrants from India who was then in her third time period as a state legislator. Early within the governor’s race, Tea Get together teams principally favored Larry Grooms, a socially conservative state senator. They coalesced round Ms. Haley after Mr. Grooms dropped out, and after Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska endorsed Ms. Haley.
However Ms. Haley endeared herself by pushing for on-the-record voting within the Normal Meeting, an accountability measure championed by Tea Get together activists who, like Ms. Haley, railed towards the state’s clubby political tradition.
As soon as she was in workplace, nevertheless, some Tea Get together activists grew suspicious of her. She break up with them on a contentious tax provision after which didn’t block a federal grant associated to the Reasonably priced Care Act. The Governor’s Tea Get together Coalition, an advisory council Ms. Haley shaped, drew additional skepticism, and was quietly deserted after a single assembly.
“They only by no means referred to as us again,” stated Allen Olson, then the chairman of the Columbia Tea Get together and the chief of the coalition. He plans to vote for Mr. Trump this month.
Rob Godfrey, then Ms. Haley’s spokesman, attributed a number of the disillusionment to the Tea Get together activists’ personal ambitions.
“The Tea Get together in quite a lot of methods was a curious mixture of some true believers and lots of people in search of the identical authorities jobs held by bureaucrats they claimed to be suspicious of,” stated Mr. Godfrey, who just isn’t affiliated with Ms. Haley’s presidential marketing campaign.
Tea Get together veterans interviewed lately argued that it was Ms. Haley herself who had modified, refashioning herself as a rising star in a extra inclusive, forward-looking Republican Get together.
As proof they pointed to her name to take away the Accomplice battle flag from the grounds of the State Home in Columbia following a racist mass capturing at a Black church in Charleston in June 2015. Ms. Haley was “fully managed by what that may imply for her future political aspirations,” stated Ms. Thompson. “It confirmed me that that may all the time be a precedence for her.”
However Mr. Olson, who supported the flag’s elimination, recalled it offending many Tea Partiers for much less high-minded causes.
“I’ll be trustworthy, quite a lot of the Tea Get together members have been very a lot ‘states’ rights’ folks,” he stated, referring to the longstanding declare that the Civil Warfare was not fought principally over slavery, “and did rally across the Accomplice flag.”
Trump Sees a Constituency
By then, the Tea Get together was diminished as a power — and its supporters have been already gravitating towards a brand new champion.
Mr. Trump, who declared his candidacy shortly earlier than the flag debate, made few gestures towards the libertarian economics championed by the Tea Get together and as soon as in workplace added extra to the deficit than both Mr. Obama or George W. Bush. As a substitute, he had gained consideration from Tea Partiers by fanning the flames of conspiracy theories about Mr. Obama’s start certificates and the development of an Islamic cultural middle close to floor zero in Decrease Manhattan.
Some nationwide Tea Get together organizers had labored to maintain such preoccupations on the fringes of the motion, however they remained persistent amongst its rank-and-file supporters and native activists.
“It was an ethnonationalist ardour a few altering America,” stated Theda Skocpol, a Harvard College professor of presidency and sociology who has studied the Tea Get together motion. “And that’s one thing that Trump ended up choosing up on.”
Mr. Trump noticed the motion as a pure constituency. At a January 2015 Tea Get together convention in Myrtle Seaside, S.C., the place he teased his as-yet-undeclared candidacy, he informed reporters that he had all the time supported the Tea Get together.
“I feel we have now values which can be very related,” he stated.
Not all Tea Get together supporters have been fast to return the love. Mr. O’Donovan backed Trump rival and Tea Get together favourite, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. “I used to be essentially the most anti-Trump man on the planet,” he stated.
The Monmouth College Polling Institute’s monitoring ballot, too, discovered initially unfavourable attitudes towards Mr. Trump amongst Tea Partiers. However the month that after Mr. Trump declared his candidacy with a speech denouncing unlawful immigration and calling Mexican immigrants “rapists,” his favorability score amongst Tea Partiers jumped 65 %. A 2019 Pew Analysis Middle research discovered that by then, Tea Get together supporters have been amongst his most unflagging backers.
The Angriest Voices
In South Carolina, the previous Tea Partiers who now assist Mr. Trump supplied a wide range of causes. Mr. O’Donovan, who couldn’t carry himself to vote for Mr. Trump within the 2016 normal election, stated his opinion modified when Mr. Trump made good on his marketing campaign promise to nominate conservative Supreme Court docket justices. “I started to come back round,” he stated. “I grew to become an all-Trumper.”
Others noticed his enchantment as extra elemental. “There’s only a group of individuals on this nation, they’re very offended on the course of this nation,” stated Colen Lindell, the founding father of one other Tea Get together group in Aiken, who co-chaired Mr. Trump’s marketing campaign within the county in 2016 and 2020. “They really feel just like the nation they grew up in goes away.”
Mr. Trump supplied a vessel for that anger — whereas Ms. Haley warned towards it. In a 2016 speech, she urged voters to withstand “the siren name of the angriest voices. It was a reference, she later acknowledged, to Mr. Trump and his marketing campaign.
Mr. Grooms, one of many few South Carolina politicians related to the Tea Get together motion who has endorsed Ms. Haley this 12 months, conceded that Mr. Trump had an edge with an offended Republican citizens.
“I imagine Nikki Haley will someday be president of america,” he stated. “I simply can’t inform you when that day will come.”
