Nikki Haley plays up femininity, plays down feminism in her 2024 pitch

IOWA CITY, Iowa — She campaigns in sweaters that declare, “She who dares wins.” She brushes off attacks from her opponents as pettiness from “the fellas.” Her heels, she says, were made for kicking.

But when Nikki Haley asks voters to help her make history, she says it’s not that history.

“Think of the fact that you might be making history in this moment,” the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nationstold Iowa voters in a weekend swing through Cedar Falls ahead of Monday’s first-in-the-nation GOP caucuses. “And I’m not talking about history of a female president. I’m talking about history saying we are going to finally right the ship in America. We’re finally going to get it right.”

It’s a tricky balancing act that may best be understood through the lens of a candidate who has built a cross-party coalition with a range of views on how, if at all, to prioritize her gender.

“I honestly had a conversation with a few of my players,” said Polk County resident Paul Samson, 48, who coaches a youth women’s volleyball team and switched from supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to backingHaley. “I have a chance on my side of the aisle to elect a woman for president.”

Both candidate and campaign are aware that her status as the lone woman in a field of male candidates is an asset with some voters — 43% of her supporters in Iowa say they would vote for President Joe Biden over Republican front-runner Donald Trump — and a liability with others. She is, after all, campaigning for the nomination of a Republican Party in which many voters abhor “identity politics” and reject the concept that they would pick a candidate based on her gender.

“I vote on issues,” Forrest Levielle, an Iowa caucusgoer who is likely to back Haley, told NBC