Nikki Haley Faces Misleading Attacks On Her Tax Record

The two South Carolinians running for the Republican presidential nomination, former Governor Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott, got into a heated exchange at the second Republican primary debate on September 27, which has since generated numerous headlines. Senator Tim Scott went at the candidate who has leapfrogged him in the polls, criticizing Haley for drapes purchased by the Obama administration and repeatedly accused her of proposing a gas tax increase during her time as governor.

A review of the historical record, however, shows Senator Scott’s accusations against Haley incomplete and misleading. Nikki Haley did not propose or champion a gas tax hike during any of her six years in the South Carolina governor’s mansion. It was Republican state lawmakers at the time, who were far less conservative than are the current leaders of the South Carolina Legislature, who proposed and were the ones pushing a gas tax hike.

In response to the multi-year, well-funded push to raise South Carolina’s gas tax, then Governor Haley countered by telling state legislators she would only consider a gas tax increase if it were tied to an income tax cut of greater size. Underscoring how misleading it is to brand Haley as a tax hiker is a 2015 letter sent from Americans For Tax Reform president Grover Norquist to South Carolina legislators, urging them to support then-Governor Haley’s proposed income tax cut, noting that its benefits would outweigh the costs of any gas tax hike tied to it.

“Some legislators are proposing to raise the gas tax and ignore the proposal to cut the income tax,” Norquist wrote in a 2015 letter to South Carolina lawmakers urging them to support Haley’s proposed income tax cut. In that letter to legislators in Columbia, Norquist stressed that “it’s important that a gas tax increase be contingent upon the passage of an income tax cut. Otherwise, lawmakers will simply be voting for higher taxes.”

Leading South Carolina legislators back then, however, were only interested in raising the gas tax and not in cutting the income tax rate, which is now the highest in the southeastern United States. Haley made this point during the debate in response to Scott’s barbs, but the format and time constraints did not permit a full explanation.

“I said the only way I will pass it,” Haley told Scott, “is if you will give me three times the deduction in income tax, then I will look at your gas tax – which is why it didn’t happen.”

This misleading attack on Haley has since been parroted by those backing other candidates. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) tweeted that Haley “tried to raise the gas tax as governor,” which is not true. A Republican consultant who used to write for National Review tweeted that “Nikki Haley raised the gas tax.” Nothing uttered on the debate stage was more false than that tweet. Anyone accusing Haley of raising the gas tax won’t be able to find any pictures from the bill signing event or language of the enacted legislation, because it never happened.

Nikki Haley did not raise the gas tax while governor, nor did she champion such a hike. In fact, the state legislators who were pushing for the gas tax increase were unable to enact it until she left South Carolina to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. The South Carolina legislators who proposed and lobbied for years for the gas tax increase ultimately enacted it by overriding Governor Henry McMaster’s veto.

Haley, who appointed Tim Scott to his Senate seat in 2012, informed him during the debate that he “got bad information.” Haley went on to add that she “fought the gas tax in South Carolina multiple times against the establishment,” an assertion backed up by historical record.

Nikki Haley made a written promise to oppose and veto all net tax hikes as governor, a commitment to South Carolinians that she upheld to the chagrin of state legislators who wanted to raise the gas tax without any associated income tax relief. Today 18 incumbent governors — including Glenn Youngkin (R-Va.), Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), Brian Kemp (R-Ga.), Doug Burgum (R-N.D.), and Greg Abbott (R-Texas) — have made the same commitment to their constituents that Haley made and kept as Palmetto State governor. Among the candidates on the debate stage at the Reagan Library who in the past have signed the pledge not to raise taxes, which includes Senator Scott, all of them kept it, no matter what some are now claiming.