After her stump speech, as Ms. Haley greeted supporters and took photos with them, Rachel Dankel, a real estate agent in her 50s who is based in Greenville, S.C., said she had told Ms. Haley how much she appreciated her pushing back on Mr. Lemon’s words. When she first heard about his comment, she said, “I wanted to throw up.”
“I thought that was, to me, the worst thing that somebody could say,” she said. “That’s so degrading. You have men in their 80s, and they’re not over — they’re not too old?”
Ms. Haley, who was the first Republican presidential candidate to challenge Mr. Trump in the current campaign, has aimed to separate herself from the pack by taking early stances on issues like age limits among political leaders. Last week, she suggested in an interview with Fox News that President Biden, who is 80, would not live until the end of his second term if re-elected.
Ms. Haley has also raised money off Mr. Lemon’s comments. Her campaign website sells a beverage koozie that reads: “Past my prime? Hold my beer”
Ms. Haley’s campaign is counting on her in-state bona fides — she was a longtime State House member in a district close to the State Capitol and the first woman to serve as governor — to bolster her standing in the Palmetto State. The South Carolina primary is third on the Republican calendar, after Iowa and New Hampshire, and it is the Haley campaign’s belief that her home-state electorate will propel her to the top of the primary field.
And while she is polling in the low single digits in most national surveys, an April poll conducted by Winthrop University showed her with her 18 percent support in her home state, well behind Mr. Trump but within striking distance of Mr. DeSantis.
“There’s a certain segment out there that’s very excited about her running, and then there’s the hard-core Trumpists who are mad at her for running,” said Chip Felkel, a South Carolina Republican political strategist.
