Haley\u2019s rhetoric on gender reflects the tension of appealing to voters who want to be part of making history and those who don\u2019t think that\u2019s a good reason to pick her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
IOWA CITY, Iowa \u2014 She campaigns in sweaters that declare, \u201cShe who dares wins.\u201d She brushes off attacks from her opponents as pettiness from \u201cthe fellas.\u201d Her heels, she says, were made for kicking<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But when Nikki Haley asks voters to help her make history, she says it\u2019s not that history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThink of the fact that you might be making history in this moment,\u201d the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations <\/strong>told Iowa voters in a weekend swing through Cedar Falls ahead of Monday\u2019s first-in-the-nation GOP caucuses. \u201cAnd I\u2019m not talking about history of a female president. I\u2019m talking about history saying we are going to finally right the ship in America. We\u2019re finally going to get it right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a tricky balancing act that may best be understood through the lens of a candidate who has built a cross-party coalition with a range of views on how, if at all, to prioritize her gender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI honestly had a conversation with a few of my players,\u201d said Polk County resident Paul Samson, 48, who coaches a youth women\u2019s volleyball team and switched from supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to backing <\/strong>Haley. \u201cI have a chance on my side of the aisle to elect a woman for president.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both candidate and campaign are aware that her status as the lone woman in a field of male candidates is an asset with some voters \u2014 43<\/a>%<\/a>\u2002of her supporters<\/a> in Iowa say they would vote for President Joe Biden over Republican front-runner Donald Trump \u2014 and a liability with others. She is, after all, campaigning for the nomination of a Republican Party in which many voters abhor \u201cidentity politics\u201d and reject the concept that they would pick a candidate based on her gender.<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI vote on issues,\u201d Forrest Levielle, an Iowa caucusgoer who is likely to back Haley, told NBC News. \u201cI\u2019m a registered Republican. \u2026 You vote on issues, on what we feel is the best candidate for us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He added that he\u2019d thought about the potential for Haley to shatter the last glass ceiling in politics, but \u201cit doesn\u2019t really matter to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\u2002<\/a>NBC News<\/a>\/Des Moines Register\/Mediacom<\/a>\u2002poll<\/a> released Sunday showed Haley in second place in Iowa with 20%, 4 points ahead of DeSantis but 28 points behind Trump. In New Hampshire, where independent voters are expected to give her a boost again, she is running a closer second to Trump in recent surveys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even as Haley courts independents and Democrats, who can choose to caucus with Republicans on Monday, DeSantis\u2019 allies are comparing her to 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton \u2014 a longtime GOP foil \u2014 in ads here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNext thing you know, they\u2019ll call her Nancy Pelosi, the South Carolina Nancy Pelosi,\u201d said former Polk County Republican Party Chair Will Rogers, who plans to caucus for Haley, adding that the Clinton line of attack \u201cis gender-specific.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clinton famously leaned away from her gender in her failed 2008 effort to win the Democratic nomination against Barack Obama, who often spoke of history without making his race an explicit part of his appeal. In 2016, Clinton won her party\u2019s nod while embracing feminism but lost to Trump in the general election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The history she made as the first woman nominated by either major party for president \u2014 and the narrowness of her loss \u2014 helped convince a bumper crop of Democratic women to run for the presidency in 2020. <\/strong>Ultimately, Democrats picked a man, Biden, to match up against Trump that year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rogers thinks Haley\u2019s gender is more of plus than a minus with Iowa voters, who have elected women \u2014 Kim Reynolds and Joni Ernst \u2014 to the governorship and one of the state\u2019s two Senate seats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHave we moved into a post-gender political world? I\u2019m not suggesting that in its entirety,\u201d he said. \u201cI think we\u2019ve moved into where women can be expected to be strong leaders with an important voice in politics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for how it affects Haley\u2019s <\/strong>campaign, Rogers said gender is one of the ways she <\/strong>has been able to distinguish herself from the pack with certain sets of voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat\u2019s giving her some advantage with undecided voters,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd maybe it\u2019s also attracting \u2014 I would call it nontraditional Republican voters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Former California Rep. Mary Bono, R-Calif., says she would like to see a woman win the presidency, but not <\/strong>because of her gender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t believe people should vote for that reason,\u201d Bono said. \u201cI believe a leader will rise to that occasion and then that will happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s why she plans to endorse Haley after watching the Republican primary unfold over the past year or so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNikki has risen through this scrum,\u201d Bono said in a telephone interview. \u201cShe\u2019s duking it out, and that in and of itself is going to prove to people that she\u2019s a strong leader.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Haley\u2019s campaign is freighted with the tension of communicating to voters who want to be part of making history and those who don\u2019t want to be told that\u2019s why they should pick her. That can make for some unexpected rhetorical turns on the campaign trail. In one now-familiar refrain, she focuses voters intently on empowering women \u2014 to make a social policy point about protecting girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe need to raise strong girls, because strong girls become strong women, and strong women become strong leaders,\u201d she said in Ankeny earlier this week. \u201cAnd none of that happens if you have biological boys playing in girls sports.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n