Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley will launch her presidential campaign on Feb. 15, the Post and Courier reported last night.
Citing people close to the former South Carolina governor, the Charleston daily reported that staffers are inviting supporters to attend a “special announcement” in Charleston in two weeks, when she will announce her plans to become the 2024 Republican presidential nominee.
Sam Markstein, national political director at the Republican Jewish Coalition, told JNS that Haley is a longtime friend of the Jewish community and the RJC.
She has “a tremendous record of accomplishment on the issues we care about: being an outspoken defender of Israel at the United Nations, a stalwart opponent of Iran and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Jewish community in the fight against antisemitism,” he said.
As U.N. ambassador, Haley took part in the General Assembly’s first-ever vote condemning Hamas for a terror attack against Israel. Prior to the vote, she admonished colleagues, telling them it could be either a “historic” day or simply “another” day.
More recently, she has expressed publicly the need to fight antisemitism and support Israel in the wake of antisemitic attacks worldwide and terror attacks in Israel.
Haley has teased big news on Twitter for weeks. “It’s time for a new generation. It’s time for new leadership,” she wrote in a Jan. 20 tweet pinned to the top of her feed. “It’s time to take our country back. America is worth the fight—and we’re just getting started.”
That tweet includes a clip from a recent interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, filmed before a live audience. Asked about her presidential aspirations, Haley said: “As fun as it would be to announce right now ... we are leaning in. I mean look, it is time for a new generation. It is time for more leadership.”
“It is time for the fact that we really start to take our country back. We cannot have another term of Joe Biden,” she added. “We have to remember, too, that we have lost the last seven out of eight popular votes for president. It is time we get a Republican in there that can lead and that can win a general election.”
Haley has addressed several Jewish groups in recent months, including two in Canada.
At a speech in Montreal in December—which the Federation CJA, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and the Margaret and Sylvan Adams Family Foundation sponsored—she said that Washington must stand strongly and steadfastly with Israel for there to be Middle Eastern peace.
“A strong America prevents war. At the end of the day, it’s about leadership and America has to demonstrate that leadership, including absolute support for its allies like Israel,” she said.
She addressed antisemitism in an October address at the Canadian Friends of Jerusalem College of Technology’s 50th anniversary.
“We have to call out antisemitism every time we see it,” she told the audience of 500. “We have to speak up every time we see it. We have to humiliate those that do it every time they do it. And we have to remind leaders to speak up.”
