Haley snags South Carolina endorsement from mayor-elect who flipped historically blue district

Former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley received a unique endorsement Tuesday from the mayor-elect of Charleston, South Carolina, as she continues to build on her momentum in the Republican presidential primary race.

William Cogswell, who recently became the first Republican to win Charleston’s mayoral office since 1877, during the Reconstruction era, offered his endorsement to Haley, saying, “I’ve got to go with her.”

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“She’s been an incredible governor,” Cogswell told Fox News.

Haley was elected governor of the Palmetto State in 2010, defeating Democrat Vincent Sheheen. She was elected to a second term in 2014 and served until 2017, when she departed to serve as ambassador to the U.N. in former President Donald Trump’s administration.

Cogswell served as a state representative in 2016, overlapping for one year with Haley’s governorship. He pointed to her “pragmatic solutions” and “good disposition” as reasons for his endorsement.

The mayor-elect won his Nov. 19 runoff election by 569 votes, thanks to his appeal to independents and Democratic voters, alongside the expected support from Republican voters.

“I think people just wanted to see pragmatic solutions to their problems, and we ran on a ticket of putting residents first and it worked,” Cogswell said of his successful campaign.

Cogswell said he was “able to garner a wide berth of support,” which included Democratic voters, by “putting local issues at the forefront and coming up with very pragmatic solutions.”

Haley’s endorsement from the successful Charleston Republican could foreshadow how she is looking to win over voters in 2024 if nominated by Republicans — and how she is planning to prove to primary voters she is their best bet before then.

The former U.N. ambassador has been shown to defeat President Joe Biden by wider margins than her Republican counterparts in several 2024 polls. She also has drawn better numbers among independents, who are expected to play a deciding role in the 2024 election, than either Biden or her GOP competitors.

“Independent New Hampshire voters prefer Biden against Trump, 47% to 36%, DeSantis, 46% to 31%, however, they are more split with Haley on the ballot, breaking for Haley over Biden, 40% to 38%,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said of its survey from earlier this month.

While Haley’s ability to perform across the political spectrum likely would be helpful in a general election, it has served as fodder for her opponents, particularly Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), to attack her as a moderate who is only boosting Trump’s campaign.

After Haley scored a significant endorsement from Americans for Prosperity, which was founded by the well-known non-Trump supporting billionaire Koch brothers, DeSantis’s campaign was quick to hit her for it. The Florida governor’s team likened the Koch-linked support to the “pro-open borders, pro-jail break bill establishment,” which it said is “lining up behind a moderate who has no mathematical pathway of defeating the former president.”

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Despite some of these attacks, Haley has been able to maintain her upward momentum, beating DeSantis in several measures and tying him in others. DeSantis remains the second-place contender to Trump in national polling, however, according to Morning Consult.

It remains to be seen whether the prospect of her general election success will be enough to garner widespread GOP support in the New Hampshire primary and Iowa caucuses starting in January.