South Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley is poised to become both the first female and the first non-white governor of the Palmetto state. She has soared to popularity as a champion of taxpayer-friendly policies.
Ms. Haley has a 14-point lead over her Democratic opponent Vincent Sheheen, according to a recent Rasmussen poll. If successful, this would mark only the second election of an Indian American to the governorship of any state, the first having been Louisiana Republican Bobby Jindal in 2007. Mrs. Haley does not justify her candidacy on the grounds that her election would bring to pass such “historic firsts” as these. In her own words, as published in a recent June 12 Newsweek magazine article, Mrs. Haley hopes that her likely election would serve to encourage a state of political affairs in which “we no longer live by labels, but…by philosophies.”
Indeed, Mrs. Haley need not emphasize such incidental aspects of herself as her sex or her ethnic background, as she possesses substantial qualifications for the office to which she seeks election. Staunch commitments to smaller, more efficient government and lower taxes have so characterized her record representing South Carolina’s 87th district in the state legislature that last year, she was officially proclaimed a “Friend of the Taxpayer” by the South Carolina Taxpayers’ Association.
Mrs. Haley’s story is truly an all-American one. Born in the town of Bamberg, South Carolina, she began balancing the books of her immigrant parents’ small clothing business—and by “small” we should understand “based in the living room”—at the age of 13. After taking her degree in accounting from Clemson University, Mrs. Haley worked as the accounting supervisor for the Charlotte, North Carolina-based recycling and waste management corporation FCR, Inc. She then returned to the family business and presided over its growth into a multi-million dollar enterprise.
Accordingly, Mrs. Haley likes to describe herself as “an accountant and…small-business person” whose experiences have taught her “how hard it was to make a dollar and how easy it was for government to take it.” This statement suggests the basis of the philosophy by which Mrs. Haley practices politics: on the one hand, she intends to prevent an individual’s making of a dollar from being any harder than it has to be; on the other hand, she intends to prevent government from taking any more of an individual’s hard-made dollars than is strictly necessary and justified in a free economy like ours.
In accordance with her philosophy (as well as with her fitting campaign slogan—“less talk, more jobs”), Mrs. Haley has proposed a series of bold measures to increase job opportunities in her state. In light of her accounting and small business background, it should come as no surprise that these measures pass the test of common sense. According to the outline of said measures posted on her campaign Web site, three of the 32 taxes administered by the South Carolina Department of Revenue generate over 90 percent of the state’s revenue. “The remaining taxes,” the outline explains, “add layers of bureaucracy, while garnering little revenue for the state.”
Moreover, “complex taxes with dozens of exemptions based on hundreds of rules do not benefit workers and small businesses—they do not have the time or resources to sift through them.” To say that such taxes “do not benefit” workers and small business owners may not go far enough; insofar as workers and small business owners find themselves penalized for inadvertent noncompliance with byzantine rules and regulations, such taxes harm both them and, consequently, South Carolina’s economy. Therefore, Mrs. Haley wants to simplify the tax structure and shrink the tax bureaucracy.
Accountants and small business persons like Mrs. Haley know that eliminating wasteful inefficiencies helps keep the books balanced. Bureaucracies tend by their very nature toward waste and inefficiency. Hence, the elimination or, at least, the streamlining of bureaucracies will help curb spending and reduce public debt. This is common sense to most of us, perhaps, but evidently not so to members of the current Congress and to President Barack Obama, who in the midst of unprecedented debt and deficits, conspire to create whole new bureaucracies.
Mrs. Haley shares with most of us the view that bureaucratic agencies “need to operate from the premise that they exist to serve…people and businesses.” To this end, she advocates a “one-stop” agency charged with the issuing of small business permits. As things now stand, “an independent plumber or electrician with a 50-mile work radius may spend up to a week each year just working on permitting, often forced to travel in person to reapply at offices in county after county.” In other words, bureaucratic red tape hinders business.
Another important aspect of Mrs. Haley’s job-promoting agenda consists in controlling health-care costs by means of reforming tort law, particularly tort law pertaining to workers’ compensation and medical malpractice cases. There is in South Carolina a Workers’ Compensation Commission that was established to streamline claims. In recent years, the commission has failed to fulfill this mission, in no small part because more than half of the commission’s current members are lawyers. They sue employers and demand exorbitant punitive damages. Mrs. Haley suggests we cap these sums. The costs of health-care premiums would fall; employers would save money; finally, obstetricians, neurosurgeons, and other doctors of high-risk specialties would choose to practice in South Carolina, which would lead to greater access. All these things have happened in Texas since such caps have been put in place there.
In sum, Mrs. Haley bases her politics upon practical, common-sense principles—what works, what saves money, what is good for business. Her popularity attests to the fact that the people of South Carolina, like the American people at large, want to be represented by those who help alleviate the burden of taxes, red tape and high health-care costs. Mrs. Haley is about to make history in South Carolina by promoting the essential capitalist principles that have long been the bedrock of the freest, most prosperous nation on earth.
-Clint is a researcher at The Edmund Burke Institute for American Renewal. This article was written in collaboration with the EBI editorial staff.
