With 30 percent of all votes counted, Haley stood at 48 percent while Rep. Gresham Barrett took second with 23 percent. State Attorney General Henry McMaster and Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer lagged behind.
Unless she breaks 50 percent of the vote, Haley and the second-leading vote-getter will tangle in a June 22 runoff although her current margin suggests she would be a considerable favorite in that contest.
The South Carolina seat, which is being vacated by scandal-plagued Gov. Mark Sanford (R), drew national attention in recent weeks as two men came forward to say they had conducted extramarital affairs with Haley. She denied the allegations, ran TV ads featuring her husband and children and watched as her poll numbers soared.
The South Carolina race was one of a slew of competitive contests across the country as 12 states headed to the polls today.
In Virginia's 1st, 2nd and 5th districts, Reps. Rob Wittman, auto dealer Scott Rigell and state Sen. Robert Hurt -- all of whom enjoyed establishment support -- cruised to victories over candidates with the support of the tea party nationally.
And, in Georgia former state Rep. Tom Graves won a special election runoff to serve the remaining months of the term of former Rep. Nathan Deal (R) who resigned the seat to run for governor.
The other major national race on the docket tonight is in Arkansas where Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) faces a battle for her political life in a runoff race against Lt. Gov. Bill Halter.
Lincoln hoped to avoid joining an ignominious list of incumbent Senators to lose intraparty fights this year. Utah Sen. Bob Bennett (R) and Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter (D) have already lost their renomination bids.
Lincoln's political fate is very much up in the air heading into tonight's vote as organized labor has spent millions against her -- seeking to punish her for opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act and the inclusion of the public option in the health care bill.
She has countered with former President Bill Clinton who has been all over the television airwaves in the final days of the runoff to cast Lincoln as the best choice for the state's voters. Clinton, both sides acknowledge, is extremely popular in the Razorback State -- dating back to his time as governor during the 1980s.
In Nevada, Gov. Jim Gibbons, who has been in an ethical cloud since winning the office in 2006, was expected to lose in a Republican primary to former U.S. District judge Brian Sandoval. Former state Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, a favorite of the tea party movement, was seen as the likely winner of a contest Republican primary for the right to face Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) this fall.
In California, free spending businesswomen Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay, and Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard executive, are the GOP favorites for governor and Senate, respectively.
Nikki Haley: 10 things you didn't know about the S.C. Republican
The past few days on the campaign trail, South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley liked to joke that she went from "Nikki Who?" to a near-permanent spot on the front pages of the Palmetto State's newspapers.
If the 38-year-old state representative becomes the Republican nominee for governor, she also instantly becomes one of the national GOP's most promising rising stars. She's smart and serious about policy, and a charismatic campaigner who dresses stylishly and can deliver barbed attacks with a smile.
So we interviewed Haley and her advisers and scoured local news archives to bring you 10 things you may not know about her:
1) She's a dragon slayer. This is not the first time Haley has upset her party's political establishment. In 2004, at age 32, she challenged state Rep. Larry Koon (R), a 30-year veteran and the state's longest-serving representative. Koon's family settled in the Lexington County district in the 1730s; Haley had lived there for five years. But she waved to commuters at subdivision entrances, passed out coffee and Krispy Kreme donuts in neighborhoods, and won a runoff over Koons by collecting 54 percent of the vote.
2) She is married to a National Guardsman. Haley's husband, Michael, is a full-time employee with the Army and as an officer in the South Carolina Army National Guard. When they met, his name was Bill, but Nikki made him start going by his middle name, Michael. As she told one of her campaign advisers, "He didn't look like a 'Bill.'"
3) She's an accountant. At age 13, Haley began keeping the books at her parents' business, a women's fine-clothing boutique called Exotica in Lexington, S.C. She went on to Clemson University, where she majored in accounting, and has held finance and accounting jobs and has served on the Lexington County Chamber of Commerce board.
4) She's the daughter of Sikh immigrants from India. Haley's parents, Dr. Ajit and Raj Randhawa immigrated from Amritsar to the tiny town of Bamberg, S.C. (population 3,733). Nikki was born there and grew up with a sister, Simran, and two brothers, Mitti and Charan. Mitti was an active-duty officer in the Army for 20 years and fought in Desert Storm. Haley could become only the second Indian American governor in the country, joining Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R).
5) She shortened her name. Haley's full name is Nimrata Randhawa Haley, but when she entered politics, she went by Nikki Haley. She dropped her maiden name because, as she once told the Charlotte Observer, "It wouldn't fit on a yard sign."
6) She converted to Christianity. Although Haley was raised a Sikh, she married a Methodist and is raising her two children, Rena and Nalin, as Methodists. Haley has said she attends services of both faiths, but has converted to Methodism and often speaks about her faith in God on the campaign trail. Nikki Haley became the first descendant of the Sikh religion elected to any state legislature in the United States.
7) She is being advised by Mark Sanford's political team. When Haley entered the state legislature, Gov. Mark Sanford (R) singled her out as a protegee. They both were conservative reformers, advocating fiscal restraint and smaller government. Sanford groomed her to be his hand-picked successor, and she began working with one of his longtime political consultants, Jon Lerner, who also advises the conservative Club for Growth. After Sanford became entangled in personal scandal last year, Haley kept her distance from the tainted governor, but Lerner continued to advise her campaign and Haley won the endorsement of the governor's popular ex-wife, Jenny Sanford.
8) She holds a concealed-weapons permit.
9) She is cheap. Haley ran her governor's campaign on such a tight budget, an adviser said, that she could not afford to pay for lawn signs. She still ordered thousands of signs, but her campaign sold them to supporters for $5 apiece. She ended up making a profit off the lawn signs.
10) She's celebrating more than an election. Tuesday was also the 12th birthday of her daughter Rena.
Few Show Up for Wacky Maine Race
| Tue Jun. 8, 2010 5:12 PM PDT
Tonight's Democratic and Republican gubernatorial primaries in Maine are about as wide open as these kinds of elections get. Here's what I reported yesterday on Maine's comically diffuse primaries:
South Carolina state Rep. Nikki Haley (R) weathered a series of personal attacks to narrowly miss winning the Republican gubernatorial nomination outright tonight. She will advance to a June 22 runoff as a clear favorite for the GOP nod.
Haley stood at 49 percent of the vote with more than 90 percent of precincts reporting, well ahead of Rep. Gresham Barrett who took 22 percent. The Associated Press called a runoff shortly before 10 pm eastern time, however, concluding that Haley would not break 50 percent of the vote. State Attorney General Henry McMaster and Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer lagged far behind.
On the Democratic side state Sen. Vincent Sheheen easily won the nomination and will await the GOP nominee.
The South Carolina GOP primary to replace scandal-plagued Gov. Mark Sanford (R) drew national attention in recent weeks as two men came forward to say they had conducted extramarital affairs with Haley. She denied the allegations, ran TV ads featuring her husband and children and watched as her poll numbers soared.
Elsewhere in South Carolina, Rep. Bob Inglis faces a runoff with Spartanburg solicitor Trey Gowdy in the 4th district -- creating the very real possibility that Inglis could be the third House incumbent to lose a primary fight this year.
South Carolina was one of 12 states -- from Maine to California -- to host races today.
The other marquee contest of the night is in Arkansas where Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) faces a battle for her political life in a runoff race against Lt. Gov. Bill Halter.
With 27 percent of precincts reporting, Lincoln held a 52 percent to 48 percent edge over Halter.
Lincoln took 44.5 percent to Halter's 42.5 percent in the May 18 primary but both sides were expecting a very close race tonight.
Lincoln hoped to avoid joining an ignominious list of incumbent Senators to lose intraparty fights this year. Utah Sen. Bob Bennett (R) and Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter (D) have already lost their renomination bids.
Lincoln's political fate is very much up in the air heading into tonight's vote as organized labor has spent millions against her -- seeking to punish her for opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act and the inclusion of the public option in the health care bill.
She has countered with former President Bill Clinton who has been all over the television airwaves in the final days of the runoff to cast Lincoln as the best choice for the state's voters. Clinton, both sides acknowledge, is extremely popular in the Razorback State -- dating back to his time as governor during the 1980s.
In Nevada, Gov. Jim Gibbons, who has been in an ethical cloud since winning the office in 2006, was expected to lose in a Republican primary to former U.S. District judge Brian Sandoval. Former state Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, a favorite of the tea party movement, was seen as the likely winner of a contest Republican primary for the right to face Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) this fall.
In California, free spending businesswomen Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay, and Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard executive, are the GOP favorites for governor and Senate, respectively.
Earlier in the night in Virginia's 1st, 2nd and 5th districts, Reps. Rob Wittman, auto dealer Scott Rigell and state Sen. Robert Hurt -- all of whom enjoyed establishment support -- cruised to victories over candidates with the support of the tea party nationally. In the northern Virginia 11th district, which Republicans believe is a potential pickup opportunity this fall, 2008 nominee Keith Fimian bested Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity.
And, in Georgia former state Rep. Tom Graves won a special election runoff to serve the remaining months of the term of former Rep. Nathan Deal (R) who resigned the seat to run for governor.
On the blue side, the frontrunner by the slimmest of margins is state Sen. Libby Mitchell with 13 percentage points, followed by former state attorney general Steve Rowe (12 points), businesswoman Rosa Scarcelli (7 points), and Maine conservation department commissioner Patrick McGowan (6 points).Now, with the polls closed, the latest news in Maine's primaries is that voter turnout is expected to—not surprisingly—be quite low. Maine's secretary of state told the Associated Press he's expecting a turnout of just 20 percent. That throws the results of today's Maine primaries further into flux, with so few votes spread across an array of challengers, each separated by a few percentage points in the polls. When the votes are all counted later tonight, whoever does come out on top will likely do so by squeaking out the narrowest of victories.
In the Republican primary, the field is even more fragmented. Businessman (and former Boston Red Sox vice president) Les Otten leads the way with 17 points—a 7-point gap over his nearest competitor, Paul LePage, mayor of Waterville. Rounding out the rest of the Republican slate, all with single-digit support, are state Sen. Peter Mills, education executive Bill Beardsley, businessman Bruce Poliquin, and Matt Jacobson, who heads a Maine job creation organization. Whew.
Perhaps the most telling statistic is this: The undecided comprise 62 percent of Democratic primary voters and 47 percent of GOPers. When Maine voters show up tomorrow, there's no telling who'll take the nominations.
Nikki Haley, Gresham Barrett advance to SC-Gov runoff
Haley stood at 49 percent of the vote with more than 90 percent of precincts reporting, well ahead of Rep. Gresham Barrett who took 22 percent. The Associated Press called a runoff shortly before 10 pm eastern time, however, concluding that Haley would not break 50 percent of the vote. State Attorney General Henry McMaster and Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer lagged far behind.
On the Democratic side state Sen. Vincent Sheheen easily won the nomination and will await the GOP nominee.
The South Carolina GOP primary to replace scandal-plagued Gov. Mark Sanford (R) drew national attention in recent weeks as two men came forward to say they had conducted extramarital affairs with Haley. She denied the allegations, ran TV ads featuring her husband and children and watched as her poll numbers soared.
Elsewhere in South Carolina, Rep. Bob Inglis faces a runoff with Spartanburg solicitor Trey Gowdy in the 4th district -- creating the very real possibility that Inglis could be the third House incumbent to lose a primary fight this year.
South Carolina was one of 12 states -- from Maine to California -- to host races today.
The other marquee contest of the night is in Arkansas where Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) faces a battle for her political life in a runoff race against Lt. Gov. Bill Halter.
With 27 percent of precincts reporting, Lincoln held a 52 percent to 48 percent edge over Halter.
Lincoln took 44.5 percent to Halter's 42.5 percent in the May 18 primary but both sides were expecting a very close race tonight.
Lincoln hoped to avoid joining an ignominious list of incumbent Senators to lose intraparty fights this year. Utah Sen. Bob Bennett (R) and Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter (D) have already lost their renomination bids.
Lincoln's political fate is very much up in the air heading into tonight's vote as organized labor has spent millions against her -- seeking to punish her for opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act and the inclusion of the public option in the health care bill.
She has countered with former President Bill Clinton who has been all over the television airwaves in the final days of the runoff to cast Lincoln as the best choice for the state's voters. Clinton, both sides acknowledge, is extremely popular in the Razorback State -- dating back to his time as governor during the 1980s.
In Nevada, Gov. Jim Gibbons, who has been in an ethical cloud since winning the office in 2006, was expected to lose in a Republican primary to former U.S. District judge Brian Sandoval. Former state Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, a favorite of the tea party movement, was seen as the likely winner of a contest Republican primary for the right to face Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) this fall.
In California, free spending businesswomen Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay, and Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard executive, are the GOP favorites for governor and Senate, respectively.
Earlier in the night in Virginia's 1st, 2nd and 5th districts, Reps. Rob Wittman, auto dealer Scott Rigell and state Sen. Robert Hurt -- all of whom enjoyed establishment support -- cruised to victories over candidates with the support of the tea party nationally. In the northern Virginia 11th district, which Republicans believe is a potential pickup opportunity this fall, 2008 nominee Keith Fimian bested Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity.
And, in Georgia former state Rep. Tom Graves won a special election runoff to serve the remaining months of the term of former Rep. Nathan Deal (R) who resigned the seat to run for governor.
Dominant, SC's Haley Heads To Runoff
The scandal-plagued gubernatorial candidate almost secures guaranteed victory.
| Tue Jun. 8, 2010 7:32 PM PDT
Suspiciously timed allegations of extramarital affairs in the weeks before tonight's primary couldn't stop Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley. Endorsed by Tea Party favorite Sarah Palin, Haley all but swept aside the salacious claims of infidelity made by a conservative blogger and South Carolina political consultant, and scored a dominant victory [1] tonight. Forty-nine percent of Republican voters chose her, while the next highest vote-getter, Rep. Grisham Barrett, received less than half that, with 22 percent support.
But would Haley have reached or surpassed the 50 percent mark without the affair allegations? If she'd cleared this hurdle, she would've surpassed the threshold requiring a run-off vote against the number two candidate in the primary. Instead, Barrett will challenge Haley, a Barrett aide tells [2] Politico, in a June 22 run-off to decide who gets the South Carolina GOP's nomination for the fall election.
Obviously, Haley would've rather won outright in today's primary and avoided a few weeks of intraparty battling. Worse yet, the 14 days between now and the Haley-Barrett face-off will give the second-place candidate more time to harp on the allegations that dogged Haley in the past two weeks. Then again, if Haley had surpassed 50 percent, she'd likely face similar questions from Democratic gubernatorial candidate Vincent Sheheen, who won today's primary with 59 percent of the votes.
On one hand, Haley's victory is a high-profile win for female candidates on a night in which we'll likely see victories from California's Meg Whitman, a GOP gubernatorial candidate, and Carly Fiorina, a GOP US Senate candidate. Both powerful executives turned Republican politicians, Whitman and Fiorina entered today's primaries leading in the polls, and have a good shot at claiming their respective GOP candidacies.
On the other, as National Governors Association director Nathan Daschle has said (via Real Clear Politics [3]), Haley's victory is just as much a win for Democrats: "Democrats are the clear winner in both tonight's primaries. The divisive, ugly GOP primary has done nothing but turn off voters who are tired with politics-as-usual. The next two weeks promise a race to the bottom as Nikki Haley and Gresham Barrett battle it out for the nomination."
But would Haley have reached or surpassed the 50 percent mark without the affair allegations? If she'd cleared this hurdle, she would've surpassed the threshold requiring a run-off vote against the number two candidate in the primary. Instead, Barrett will challenge Haley, a Barrett aide tells [2] Politico, in a June 22 run-off to decide who gets the South Carolina GOP's nomination for the fall election.
Obviously, Haley would've rather won outright in today's primary and avoided a few weeks of intraparty battling. Worse yet, the 14 days between now and the Haley-Barrett face-off will give the second-place candidate more time to harp on the allegations that dogged Haley in the past two weeks. Then again, if Haley had surpassed 50 percent, she'd likely face similar questions from Democratic gubernatorial candidate Vincent Sheheen, who won today's primary with 59 percent of the votes.
On one hand, Haley's victory is a high-profile win for female candidates on a night in which we'll likely see victories from California's Meg Whitman, a GOP gubernatorial candidate, and Carly Fiorina, a GOP US Senate candidate. Both powerful executives turned Republican politicians, Whitman and Fiorina entered today's primaries leading in the polls, and have a good shot at claiming their respective GOP candidacies.
On the other, as National Governors Association director Nathan Daschle has said (via Real Clear Politics [3]), Haley's victory is just as much a win for Democrats: "Democrats are the clear winner in both tonight's primaries. The divisive, ugly GOP primary has done nothing but turn off voters who are tired with politics-as-usual. The next two weeks promise a race to the bottom as Nikki Haley and Gresham Barrett battle it out for the nomination."
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