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COLUMBIA, S.C. — Shortly after she announced her presidential bid, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley called her high school classmate and longtime GOP donor Mikee Johnson. He cut straight to the chase in what he described as a difficult chat: He would back Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), if he ran.
“Her last comment to me was: ‘I’ll still be here when you see a different direction,’” Johnson, who is national finance co-chair for Scott’s campaign, said in an interview, adding that Haley handled the news well. “I’ve just been with her a long time. And it was a hard, hard conversation. And it was very uncomfortable for me. But I was very certain of what I wanted to do, it just still wasn’t easy to tell a friend that.”
Chad Walldorf, whom Haley named as chair to the Board of Economic Advisors when she was governor, was in a similar situation. After praising Scott in an interview with a reporter, he sent an email to Haley informing her…
This article was written by Marianne LeVine and originally published on www.washingtonpost.com