Nikki Haley Has a Playbook for Winning Tough Races, but 2024 Is Different

Nikki Haley was polling in the low digits, fighting for oxygen among better-known and better-funded rivals in a contest clouded by scandal and involving the man whose job they all sought.

This was 2009, and Ms. Haley was the underdog candidate for governor of South Carolina. At the state Republican Party’s convention that year, she was the last contender to speak. Before she took the podium, Katon Dawson, then the state party’s chairman, handed her a rust-coated nail from a jar collected from an old building in Orangeburg.

“‘Honey, this is a tenpenny, rusty nail,’” Mr. Dawson…