Haley: Work far from finished – SCNow: Politics

Though she has laid the ground work for her 2014 re-election bid, Haley stopped short of committing to a run to keep the governor’s mansion next year.

With a husband currently deployed in Afghanistan and two small children, she said if it’s bad for the Haley family, she won’t seek re-election.

“If we look and it’s too much on the family, I could absolutely see (not running again),” she said.

Even if she does not seek four more years as the state’s top executive, Haley’s place in history is solidified; however, while history may say the election of a woman minority was a major change in the taste of South Carolina voters, does Haley owe her success directly to the color of her skin and her gender rather than her policies?

The year 2010 was the year of the tea party, the outsider conservative meant to shake up the establishment. After having 115 white men as governor, a female minority was about as outside as one could get.

But Haley does not see it like that. For her, the fact that all her opponents represented the establishment and she was widely regarded as a rouge had more to do with her success. Frustrations with Congress and a scandal plaguing state government made the task of beating a lieutenant governor, congressman, state attorney general and state senator more doable.

“I think I was an outsider for what I fought for and what I wanted and what I still fight for today,” she said. “We’re trying to pass an ethics reform bill and we’re trying to do restructuring. That’s very much what it was at the time. That’s what I felt from people on the ground, they just wanted to feel like elected officials were working for them. They wanted to see results, and they were tired of the talk.”

Haley does not dismiss her race or gender as helping her win in 2010. Her experiences growing up, which she documents in her autobiography “Can’t Is Not An Option,” highlights examples of racism and sexism she experienced growing up in Bamberg.

via Haley: Work far from finished – SCNow: Politics.