When Nikki Haley ran for governor of South Carolina in 2010, certainly one of her early marketing campaign stops was the Aiken, S.C., lounge of Claude and Sunny O’Donovan.
Mr. O’Donovan, the co-founder of a neighborhood Tea Occasion 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 with her,” Mr. O’Donovan, 85, mentioned. “She was a dynamite gal.”
A digital image body within the O’Donovans’ dwelling 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 think he has the values of the Tea Party,” Mrs. O’Donovan, 84, mentioned. “It was for the people, and I see Trump as being for the people.”
Recent 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 dwelling state.
A Trump win in South Carolina would additionally write the ultimate chapter of one of the vital 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 Occasion 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, profitable Republican majorities in Congress and statehouses and minting a brand new era of political stars, together with Ms. Haley.
4 years later, initially skeptical Tea Partiers embraced Mr. Trump, who, as candidate and president, provided a supercharged model of the motion’s antipathy towards immigrants, concern of a altering nation and anti-establishment fervor.
In Ms. Haley’s state, the place the Tea Occasion motion was unusually influential, Mr. Trump notched an early victory in his 2016 presidential bid.
“The kind of folks that were Tea Party in 2010 are part of the MAGA movement in 2024,” mentioned 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 Party.”
In the present day, few of the unique Tea Occasion 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. “Just like when she ran for governor, Nikki is the outsider, conservative candidate,” she mentioned in an announcement.
However even some once-dedicated supporters have moved on.
“Yes, he’s the crazy uncle at Thanksgiving,” Jane Web page Thompson, a co-founder of Mr. O’Donovan’s Tea Occasion group who additionally hosted a Haley fund-raiser in Aiken throughout her governor’s run, mentioned of Mr. Trump. “But right now America needs the crazy uncle at Thanksgiving — not the snowflake niece.”
From ‘Nikki, Who?’ to No. 1
Within the heyday of the Tea Occasion, South Carolina was dwelling 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 in the polls,” she advised a gathering of the Myrtle Seaside Tea Occasion not lengthy earlier than profitable 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 Occasion teams largely 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 Basic Meeting, an accountability measure championed by Tea Occasion activists who, like Ms. Haley, railed in opposition to the state’s clubby political tradition.
As soon as she was in workplace, nevertheless, some Tea Occasion activists grew suspicious of her. She cut up with them on a contentious tax provision after which didn’t block a federal grant associated to the Inexpensive Care Act. The Governor’s Tea Occasion Coalition, an advisory council Ms. Haley shaped, drew additional skepticism, and was quietly deserted after a single assembly.
“They just never called us back,” mentioned Allen Olson, then the chairman of the Columbia Tea Occasion and the chief of the coalition. He plans to vote for Mr. Trump this month.
Rob Godfrey, then Ms. Haley’s spokesman, attributed a few of the disillusionment to the Tea Occasion activists’ personal ambitions.
“The Tea Party in a lot of ways was a curious combination of a few true believers and a lot of people looking for the same government jobs held by bureaucrats they claimed to be suspicious of,” mentioned Mr. Godfrey, who just isn’t affiliated with Ms. Haley’s presidential marketing campaign.
Tea Occasion 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 Occasion.
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 taking pictures at a Black church in Charleston in June 2015. Ms. Haley was “completely managed by what that would mean for her future political aspirations,” mentioned Ms. Thompson. “It showed me that that would always be a priority for her.”
However Mr. Olson, who supported the flag’s removing, recalled it offending many Tea Partiers for much less high-minded causes.
“I’ll be honest, a lot of the Tea Party members were very much ‘states’ rights’ people,” he mentioned, referring to the longstanding declare that the Civil Warfare was not fought principally over slavery, “and did rally around the Confederate flag.”
Trump Sees a Constituency
By then, the Tea Occasion was diminished as a power — and its supporters had 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 Occasion and as soon as in workplace added extra to the deficit than both Mr. Obama or George W. Bush. As an alternative, he had received consideration from Tea Partiers by fanning the flames of conspiracy theories about Mr. Obama’s delivery certificates and the development of an Islamic cultural middle close to floor zero in Decrease Manhattan.
Some nationwide Tea Occasion 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 passion about a changing America,” mentioned Theda Skocpol, a Harvard College professor of presidency and sociology who has studied the Tea Occasion motion. “And that is something that Trump ended up picking up on.”
Mr. Trump noticed the motion as a pure constituency. At a January 2015 Tea Occasion convention in Myrtle Seaside, S.C., the place he teased his as-yet-undeclared candidacy, he advised reporters that he had at all times supported the Tea Occasion.
“I think we have values that are very similar,” he mentioned.
Not all Tea Occasion supporters had been fast to return the love. Mr. O’Donovan backed Trump rival and Tea Occasion favourite, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. “I was the most anti-Trump guy on the planet,” he mentioned.
The Monmouth College Polling Institute’s monitoring ballot, too, discovered initially damaging 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 percent. A 2019 Pew Research Center study discovered that by then, Tea Occasion supporters had been amongst his most unflagging backers.
The Angriest Voices
In South Carolina, the previous Tea Partiers who now assist Mr. Trump provided a wide range of causes. Mr. O’Donovan, who couldn’t convey himself to vote for Mr. Trump within the 2016 normal election, mentioned his opinion modified when Mr. Trump made good on his marketing campaign promise to nominate conservative Supreme Courtroom justices. “I began to come around,” he mentioned. “I became an all-Trumper.”
Others noticed his enchantment as extra elemental. “There’s just a group of people in this country, they’re very angry at the direction of this country,” mentioned Colen Lindell, the founding father of one other Tea Occasion group in Aiken, who co-chaired Mr. Trump’s marketing campaign within the county in 2016 and 2020. “They feel like the country they grew up in is going away.”
Mr. Trump provided a vessel for that anger — whereas Ms. Haley warned in opposition to it. In a 2016 speech, she urged voters to withstand “the siren call 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 Occasion motion who has endorsed Ms. Haley this 12 months, conceded that Mr. Trump had an edge with an offended Republican citizens.
“I believe Nikki Haley will one day be president of the United States,” he mentioned. “I just can’t tell you when that day will come.”
