South Carolina’s Queen of Transparency, GOP gubernatorial hopeful Nikki Haley, hasn’t been in the local media much lately.

For South Carolina Democrats, that’s because she’s caught in a media bubble by her campaign handlers in an attempt to bypass serious scrutiny for as long as possible. They cite only two local media interviews over the past month, although one reporter we know said he’s encountered her at least four times and had little trouble with access.

Perhaps after rough-and-tumble primary and runoff campaigns, Haley and company just wanted to lower their profile so they could do what needs to be done at this point in a campaign — raise money for the fall.

Still, that doesn’t mean they’ve been pouring out affection to the local media, compared with the courting of national media such as Newsweek and The New York Times.  When we called the Haley campaign to ask some questions, Haley campaign spokesman Rob Godfrey sputtered semi-hostile inquiries about what we were writing — which wasn’t clear yet, because we hadn’t been able to ask anything other than whether Haley had taken a vacation recently. He said he’d call back then hung up the phone — without taking a number to call.

So while Haley might not be in a bubble as Democrats allege, her campaign is certainly playing it close to the vest with a kind of four-corners offensive strategy to try to stall the coming political war long enough to try to cruise to a November victory.

Veteran political operative Phil Noble of Charleston, who runs the South Carolina New Democrats initiative, said it isn’t that unusual for candidates to put off the media. Just look at how the GOP kept the national press at bay for weeks after former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Haley’s role model, became the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate.

Noble said Haley’s campaign is trying to do three things by selectively interacting with state media:

Avoid mistakes. The fewer times Haley talks or takes questions, the less of a chance for a bonehead mistake that can stir up reporters.

Control the message. By relying on staff and surrogates, Haley can stay somewhat in the news without actually having to say anything. Controlling the message helps to keep a perceived front-runner advantage in her corner.

Keep the business community on her side. Ultimately, the third reason might be the most important. Why? Because word on the street in the Upstate, Midlands and Lowcountry is that the monied, GOP business community has serious concerns with Haley because she’s a political unknown to them and because she started out as a big supporter of Gov. Mark Sanford, who many see as a failure.

In the last couple of weeks, Haley has been having closed-door meetings with business people in the Upstate to explain why she’s different from Sanford and why she will be a good governor. In at least one meeting, it didn’t help that two former Sanford aides, a fund-raiser and a deputy chief of staff, were in the room. In another, the candidate was 45 minutes late, according to a media report.

Brad Warthen, former editor of The State newspaper and a well-known South Carolina political blogger, has criticized Haley for meeting business folks in private because he says it allows her to bypass public scrutiny of what she’s saying and promising to different audiences.

“For her to say things that would be persuasive to sensible, pragmatic business people (who are fed up with that ideological firebrand Gov. Sangfroid [Sanford]), it seems to me that she would have to say things that are pretty different from what she says in front of her Tea Party fans,” Warthen wrote earlier this month.  “With them, she definitely doesn’t say, ‘No way I’ll be like Mark Sanford.’ But doing it in private allows her to get away with that.”

Message to Nikki Haley: Come out into the sunshine. Your advisers might think it’s smart to limit your public visibility. But for a candidate who has campaigned on transparency and accountability, such shenanigans ring hollow. 


Andy Brack, publisher of Statehouse Report, can be reached at brack@statehousereport.com. Let us know what you think: Email editor@free-times.com or leave us a comment below.