Hey NPR, this is Emma and I'm at the finish line of the Miami Half Marathon where I just completed my race.

Listening to NPR Politics Podcasts got me through all of my training runs, so I thought it was only fitting to send a timestamp to celebrate.

This podcast was recorded at 1.45 pm on Wednesday, February 1st.

Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Here's the show.

I think that counts as all of us running the Half Marathon as well if we were there with her training runs.

That sounds right. That's right.

I'll accept that medal. Exactly.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis, I cover politics.

I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, I also cover politics.

And I'm Dominic O'Monts, and I'm our senior political editor and correspondent.

And the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination is officially on.

Former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley is running for president.

That makes her the first major Republican to go in against former president Trump who announced his own 2024 bid back in November.

Her hometown paper, The Post and Courier, first reported the news and NPR confirmed it.

She's going to make it official on February 15th with a kickoff event in Charleston, conveniently located in a critical early state for winning the nomination.

Danielle, you know, there's a lot to say about Haley, but she is joining a very small group of women and an even smaller group of Republican women.

Republican women who have sought a party's nomination. Where does she sort of fit into that narrative?

Right. Yeah. I mean, she, like you said, she's part of a very small group of Republican women who have run for the presidency.

In terms of just recent years, you only have had a few. There was Elizabeth Dole who considered a run ahead of the 2000 election.

There was Michelle Bachman in 2012. She did run and dropped out just after the Iowa caucuses. And then of course, there was Carly Fierina in 2016.

Now, there have been a bunch of reasons why women have not run in the Republican party recently. Part of it is just that, you know, you first of all have a lot more men who support the Republican party these days than women.

The Republicans also just don't have a deep bench of women. When we talk about in recent years, lots more women getting into Congress. There are just a lot more Democrats than Republicans who are in Congress, for example, similarly in governorship.

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