Blacks hit S.C. gov on voter requirement

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Civil rights leaders bothered by Gov. Nikki Haley's stance on issues like requiring voters to show their IDs at the South Carolina polls are reminding the governor that she is a minority, too.

"She couldn't vote before 1965, just as I couldn't," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, referring to the Voting Rights Act that abolished poll taxes, literacy tests and other ways whites across the Deep South kept minorities from voting.

Critics have said the law is merely a covert effort to take away the right to vote from older blacks and poor people, groups that historically tend to vote for Democrats and are less likely to have a driver's license or other government-issued ID.

Haley's parents were born in India. Haley, born here, is a Republican who became the state's first female governor. She never dwells on her heritage, but has occasionally mentioned it, almost always with the same theme of overcoming adversity.

She refused an interview for this story, instead sending a statement through her spokesman, Rob Godfrey, defending her support of the photo identification law. The governor has said the measure is needed to prevent voter fraud.

Opposes feds on issues

Haley has invoked strong rhetoric against the federal government and the Obama administration on that issue and two others. A federal judge temporarily put a halt to the state's law cracking down on illegal immigrants, while the National Labor Relations Board fought Boeing Co.'s efforts to build a plant in North Charleston that would employ 1,000. The board claimed Boeing built the plant in South Carolina, a right-to-work state where workers are not required to join unions, to retaliate for past union disputes in Washington state.

Leaders of the NAACP said after a Martin Luther King Day rally at the South Carolina Statehouse that they would expect a governor who experienced some prejudice growing up to have some compassion.

"At the end of the day, it's one more governor who is willing to deify the dreamer and desecrate the dream," said Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the NAACP. He was referring to politicians he said will give speeches praising King's work while supporting laws that undermine his message of equality.

Haley was born in 1972, and her first memories came more than a decade after the height of the civil rights struggle, when South Carolina finally gave up allowing only whites to vote. Her family lived in Baamberg County, where about 50 percent of the 16,000 residents were black, according to the 1970 census. Her father wore a Sikh turban and taught biology at the local historically black college, while her mother was a middle school social studies teacher.

Dismisses her critics

"I grew up knowing that we were different. But it's also the reason why I think that I focused so much on trying to find the similarities with people as opposed to the differences," Haley said during her 2010 campaign.

On the King holiday last week when a thousand people rallied at the statehouse to honor the slain civil rights leader, Haley was in Myrtle Beach talking to a tea party convention about how she plans to sue the Justice Department over its rejection of the voter ID law.

"What they don't know is you don't mess with us in South Carolina," Haley said.North Carolina NAACP president the Rev. William Barber was invited to the South Carolina event to speak about the Confederate flag, which he called a "nightmarish vision of democracy." The flag still flies on the front lawn of the statehouse after a compromise in 2000 pulled it off the capitol's dome.

In her speech to the tea party, Haley dismissed critics, including Jackson, who gave the same line about the Voting Rights Act helping Haley.

"Jesse Jackson was talking smack last week, so it's really a good track record, I'll tell you that," Haley said. "I think that means we're doing just fine."