Getting to the Bottom of the Nikki Haley Story
I keep hearing and reading that the “smart money/big donors” are going all in for Nikki Haley. Here’s just a brief (compared to what I COULD have written) summary of the many creepy, dishonest, horrible, no-good aspects of Nikki Haley.
In 2006, Nikki Haley’s finances were a mess.
The Republican gubernatorial candidate reported a family income of $40,269 on her 2006 tax returns, including her husband’s money-losing business. Half that income went to pay interest on the family’s $289,000 mortgage alone.
Then, the foundation arm of Lexington Medical Center, which State Rep. Haley had supported in its fight to open a heart surgery center, came to Haley’s financial rescue.
By 2009, Haley was pulling down more than $100,000 at a fundraising job for the Lexington Medical Center Foundation.
That job was created expressly for Haley, the hospital says, despite a resume that included only accounting positions with a Charlotte firm and with her parents’ clothing company.
Haley’s hiring was approved only by Lexington Medical’s chief executive, not the foundation’s board.
And she was paid 63 percent more than fundraisers at similarly sized charities, according to records obtained by The State and an industry group that studies nonprofit salaries.
While Haley was at the foundation, it raised thousands of dollars from a pair of payday lending firms that Haley once oversaw on a House business subcommittee.
More about the Lexington Medical Center job (because Nikki never does anything on the up and up.)
The mystery man who filled out Gov. Nikki Haley’s job application with the Lexington Medical Center — you know, the one where Haley listed her income as $125,000 instead of $22,000 as she claimed to the IRS — has been apprehended, according to a FITSNews report.
Now, according to the hospital’s latest FOIA response, we find out that the two-page section of the application (which Haley admits filling out and signing) and the five-page section (which she denies filling out) were actually part of the same online application.
“Based upon a review of LMC’s information systems, it appears that the application was completed electronically on August 5, 2008 beginning at 5:39 p.m.,” hospital attorney David B. Summer wrote to Rainey. “The ’2-page section’ and ’5-page section’ to which you refer are both part of a single electronic application.”
AND THEN, WITH THE HELP OF SARAH PALIN (sigh) SHE BECAME GOVERNOR IN 2011
“I believe she is the most corrupt person to occupy the governor’s mansion since Reconstruction,” declared John Rainey, a longtime Republican fundraiser and power broker who chaired the state’s Board of Economic Advisers for eight years. A 69-year-old attorney, Rainey is an aristocratic iconoclast who never bought the Haley myth. “I do not know of any person who ran for governor in my lifetime with as many charges against him or her as she has had that went unanswered,”
When Haley took office in January, her backbencher status gave her no support structure in state government. Since then she’s appointed a surprising number of cronies and loyalists to bureaucratic functions in order to construct such a network. Many state boards have staggered terms to prevent unilateral decimation of institutional knowledge, but because former Governor Mark Sanford left so many appointees in place when their terms expired, there was a glut of personnel for Haley to dispense with as she pleased. At an early stage in the bloodbath, the capital city daily newspaper, the State, pointed out that of the fifty-nine she had already replaced, twenty-six were donors to her campaign.
In March, without announcing it, Haley quietly excised the most generous benefactor of the University of South Carolina, billionaire financier and philanthropist Darla Moore, from the school’s board of trustees, replacing her with a campaign contributor and little-known lawyer from Haley’s district…
Haley’s choices for top political positions were outrageous. To chair the state’s revenue-projecting Board of Economic Advisors—one of the highest positions in state government that doesn’t require Senate confirmation—Haley appointed Chad Waldorf, co-founder of a barbecue chain called Sticky Fingers. Waldorf also happens to be co-founder of a group that paid for a $400,000 pro-Haley ad buy during her gubernatorial primary campaign; the ads were pulled off the air by a judge who said the group appeared to have improperly coordinated with her campaign.
Meanwhile, after Haley lifted a hiring freeze set by Sanford, the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism created a job for the wife of Haley’s chief of staff, Tim Pearson. Pearson, who is being paid $125,000—$27,000 more than the man who held the post in Sanford’s office—is a former Sanford aide who managed Haley’s campaign.
But Nikki gave herself an A+++ on her first 100 days in office, saying, ““There really are no mistakes we have made,” Haley said. “Now, I am my strongest critic. The very first thing I do at the end of the day is say, ‘What could I have done better?’ That’s me and that’s how I handle it. But every policy decision I’ve made, I stand by it.”
Later in 2012, as Nikki was set to give a speech at the GOP convention, Chris Haire provided more insight into the Nikki story with
21 Things You Should Know Before Tonight’s GOP Convention Speech
Including such details as:
4. Nikki Haley once called Post and Courier reporter Renee Dudley a “little girl” for an article that she wrote detailing an extravagant trip that the governor and her staff took to the Paris Air Show.
5. Nikki Haley said that she secured two business deals during her much-maligned Paris Air Show trip, when in fact she did not.
16. Nikki Haley once claimed that half of South Carolina’s workforce was high on drugs while the other half was stupid.
And the kicker:
21. Nikki Haley is a thin-skinned narcissist with a Borderline-Pollyanna disorder who will gladly abandon her principles and backstab her one-time allies if it means getting some face time on Fox News or a fashion spread in Vogue magazine.
(but tell us how you really feel, Chris)
By 2013…
Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) named Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina one of the worst governors in America. Gov. Haley has undermined transparency in state government by withholding details about her outside employment while she served in the state legislature and shielding her communication with her staff. She also appointed donors to powerful posts and accepted private flights from donors and people with business before the state. Her actions have earned her a spot in the latest edition of CREW’s Worst Governors in America report, an examination of shady and unethical conduct by the nation’s governors.
Additionally, Gov. Haley continued her predecessor’s legally dubious practice of only archiving emails between the governor and the public, not internal staff emails, which some attorneys have said destroys essential public records. In response, Gov. Haley has made implausible claims about her contact with her staff; for example, that she and her chief of staff did not communicate via email for an entire month in 2011. She has also faced accusations of avoiding use of her state-issued cellphone and conducting state business on a personal cellphone.
Further, a March 2011 report in The State found 26 of the 59 people Gov. Haley appointed to state boards and commissions were donors to her campaign — contributing at least $74,000 in total. Gov. Haley also took at least 17 flights on the private planes of people with potential business before the state between November 2010 and October 2011, including the chief executive officer of a pharmaceutical company that received $4.5 million in state funds.
CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan. “The failure of investigators to identify wrongdoing by Gov. Haley speaks more to South Carolina’s weak ethics laws than to Gov. Haley’s probity.”
Jaime Harrison, then Chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, described Nikki’s administration:
“Nikki Haley’s constant ethical problems are an ongoing issue in South Carolina. Why does this governor continue to have such huge problems with ethics? And why, whenever there is a problem, is their first instinct to cover it up?” said Chairman Harrison. “This secrecy permeates Nikki Haley’s administration as we’ve seen it applied not only to her ethics violations, but to the cover-up of a hacking that stole 3.5 million people’s Social Security numbers, and hid a TB outbreak at a public school from parents for two months.”
AND THEN CAME THE CHARLESTON MASSACRE AND THE FLAG STORY:
Just as a refresher.
Before June 2015, Haley supported flying the Confederate flag on the statehouse grounds. In the immediate aftermath of the Charleston church shooting, Haley did not take a position on removing the flag, saying, “I think the state will start talking about that again, and we’ll see where it goes.”
I won’t belabor Nikki’s disingenuously taking full credit for taking down the flag. If you want more detail on that imbroglio, see my page from 2015
TODAY, SOUTH CAROLINA—TOMORROW, THE WORLD
And then, Nikki abandoned her governorship to become UN Ambassador. Why did Trump pick her? It wasn’t because of her foreign policy chops (she had none.) It was because Henry McMaster, then the Lt. Gov., had been one of Trump’s earliest and most vociferous supporters. Henry wanted to run for governor as an incumbent, so Trump helped him get Nikki out of his way. Period. Paragraph.
Trump even kind of admitted it (if you realize that Henry was/is the person Trump loves in South Carolina)
“The greatest thing Nikki Haley did for our Country, and the Great State of South Carolina, was accepting the position of United Nations Ambassador so that the incredible then Lieutenant Governor, Henry McMaster, could be Governor of South Carolina, where he has done an absolutely fantastic job,” Mr Trump wrote.
“That was a big reason why I appointed Nikki to the position—It was a favor to the people I love in South Carolina!”
the-independent.com
AND, OF COURSE, NIKKI’S SHADY FINANCIAL SHENANIGANS FOLLOWED HER
In preparing for her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which took place on Jan. 18, 2017, Haley filed a federal financial disclosure form reporting 2016 income of $203,316 for her work as South Carolina’s chief executive. She also disclosed liabilities in the range of $525,000 to $1,065,000, representing what she owed on two credit cards, a line of credit and a mortgage on her personal residence.
In her 2018 disclosure, Haley lists no other new income sources or assets but says her debt climbed to a range of $1,525,000 to $2,065,000. The liabilities included borrowing on two credit cards and a line of credit as well as two mortgages. One mortgage, as was the case last year, is on a personal residence in South Carolina, while the other — for more than $1 million — is newly disclosed, apparently financing the purchase of a commercial property in Lexington, S.C.
The ambassador’s financial disclosure form lists the purchase for “over $1 million” in July 2017 of a commercial property in Lexington, S.C., owned by IKOR Systems LLC. Among the ambassador’s liabilities is listed a mortgage of “over $1,000,000” taken out in 2017 on an unidentified investment/rental property. Further, the assets listed for Michael Haley include “IKOR Systems, LLC (owns commercial property in Lexington, SC).” The form states that the asset is valued at $1,000,001 to $5,000,000, and provides him with annual rental income of $50,001 to $100,000.
The State newspaper, based in Columbia, S.C., reported in January 2018 the 2017 sale — for $1,262,500, of 5483 Sunset Boulevard 29072 to a corporate entity named 5843 [sic] Sunset LLC, a limited-liability company whose ownership is legally shielded. It is unclear whether the address 5483 was accidentally switched to 5843 in the buyer’s name by the newspaper or by the people preparing the paperwork on the sale, but it appears that the correct name for the purchasing entity is 5483 Sunset LLC rather than 5843 because of what is at that address: the seller is identified by the newspaper as Ikor Systems LLC, and 5483 Sunset Boulevard is the address of the now-defunct women’s clothing store, Exotica International Inc., founded by Ambassador Haley’s mother, Raj Randhawa.
The Better Business Bureau website, on the other hand, lists the name of the business at that address as National Barter Co., identifies its president as Michael Haley and its vice president as Ambassador Haley, and notes that the Better Business Bureau does not accredit it. “It appears that the company is no longer in business,” the website states. Exotica International has a Facebook page, but it stopped being updated in 2010. A post on the site in December 2017 says, “It was a very good run.” (Nikki Haley, a trained accountant, often cites her bookkeeping work for her family’s business at a young age.)
While Haley appears to have left South Carolina politics behind her for the moment, she remains close to some of the state’s top businesspeople, who helped her raise money for past state election campaigns, according to her disclosure form. While she can’t take gifts from individuals who could benefit from her federal job, she accepted private plane travel between New York and South Carolina from three former political supporters, as well as professional basketball tickets worth nearly $20,000 from a fourth.
One other random tidbit that I always found amusing: Although she never owned a business, Nikki was the president of the South Carolina Chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners.
There’s so much more, but I think you get the gist of it—Nikki Haley is every bit as terrible as Trump. In fact, she might be worse.