Nikki Haley is believed to be very close to announcing she is joining the race to be the Republican presidential candidate
(Picture: Getty Images)It may be over a year until the ballots are counted and US citizens hold their breath as the next president is revealed, but Republican candidates are getting ready to throw their hats in the ring in an attempt to establish themselves as alternatives to Donald Trump – the only declared major candidate thus far of any political party.
The latest? Nikki Haley, 51, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations who, in her own words, has “never lost a race”. She is also a politician of firsts: when she was the governor of South Carolina, she was the youngest governor in the US at the time and the only female governor in South Carolina history. That’s an awful lot of tradition breaking for a Republican, but it’s something she prides herself on, and it will probably become an integral part of her campaign.
Born to first generation Indian immigrants, Haley is all about that good-old-fashioned American dream. “My parents loved that when they came to America if you worked hard, the only things that could stop you were the limits you placed on yourself,” she told the Republican National Convention in 2012. She is firmly anti-abortion, in favour of the “Don’t Say Gay” legislation that prevents homosexuality being discussed in certain American schools, and she’s called critical race theory distinctly “un-American” in the past.
Haley is also the only person Trump has approved (in his own special Trump kind of way) to run against him. “I talked to her for a little while,” Trump told reporters this week: “I said, ‘Look, you know, go by your heart if you want to run.” Before not-so-subtly adding that Haley doing so would be a betrayal: “She’s publicly said that: ‘I would never run against my president, he was a great president.’"
Some have questioned whether Trump’s approval of Haley joining the race is solely because he doesn’t view her as a threat. After all, he hardly took this approach when Trump-lite Florida governor Ron DeSantis was rumoured to be declaring. But with the 51-year-old former South Carolina governor having already been hailed as “smart, ambitious and apparently devoid of any sort of moral compass” by one commentator, she might be a lot more deadly than Trump or DeSantis is ready to admit.
Here’s how she went from helping out in her mother’s clothing shop to setting her sights on the White House.
Raised to be ‘strong’ by first generation immigrant parents
Haley was born in South Carolina to first generation immigrant parents, Ajit Singh Randhawa and Raj Kaur Randhawa, who are both Indian Sikhs. The Randhawas emigrated from Punjab in India to the West in the 1960s, when they packed up and headed to Canada for Haley’s father’s PhD course. The couple then settled in South Carolina in 1969, with both parents securing jobs as teachers. Three years later, Nimrata Nikki Randhawa was born. Nikki credits her parents with a lot of her success, saying they raised her to be “strong”.
“I’m the daughter of Indian parents who said to me ‘whatever you do, be great at it and make sure people remember you for it’,” she said during a UN security council press conference in 2017. “That is all I am trying to do. That is all I have ever known how to be, is to try and just do my job to the best of my ability and if that comes out blunt and if that comes out strong – I’m one of two brothers and a sister – my parents raised us all to be strong.”
Haley’s self-starter attitude seems to have come straight from her mother, Raj, who started her own clothing business, Exotica International, when Haley was four years old. By the time Haley was 13 she was helping with the store’s accounts, which led to her pursuing a degree in accounting at Clemson University and, as soon as she graduated, she was named chief financial officer of Exotica International, establishing herself as a serious businesswoman.
Accused of running from her race
When Nikki Haley gave a rousing speech to the Republican National Convention during the 2020 presidential race, she touched upon feeling like “a brown girl in a black and white world”. It may have been a pointed comment aimed at democratic frontrunner Joe Biden and his freshly appointed VP, Kamala Harris, but it was also a statement: Nikki Haley is a non-white Republican, and she’s not trying to run from that.
She still gets accused of doing so, though – like back in September when TV show panelist Sunny Hostin posited that Haley was trying to be a “chameleon” by not using her first name in politics. Haley, who’s full name is Nimrata, responded by calling Hostin herself a racist for making such comments. “It’s racist of you to judge my name,” she tweeted.
“Nikki is an Indian name and is on my birth certificate and I’m proud of that. What’s sad is the Left’s hypocrisy towards conservative minorities.”
She also had a bit of a blunder in 2011 when it was revealed that she put her race down as “white” on a voter registration card in 2001, leading to allegations that she only identifies as an Indian woman when it suits her. More recently, though, she’s been proudly noting her heritage whenever and wherever she can, and handily using it to destabilise arguments that the right has a race problem.
Her ‘super cute soldier’ husband
Nikki Randhawa met her husband Michael Haley during her first weekend as a student at Clemson University in 1989, though Michael was studying at the University of North Carolina in a neighbouring state. The two stayed together despite the distance, and married in 1996. They had two ceremonies in South Carolina: one a traditional Sikh wedding and the other ceremony in a Methodist church (Nikki converted to Methodism before marrying Michael).
Haley doesn’t shy away from praising her husband publicly, calling him “a blessing” and “the best husband and friend a girl could ask for”. He’s also a valuable campaign asset as an Army major who’s served in Afghanistan (she calls him her “super cute soldier”), as well as a commissioned officer in the South Carolina Army National Guard. Haley’s tour in Afghanistan made him one of the first spouses of a governor to have been on active duty in a warzone, and he was nicknamed the “First Gentleman of South Carolina” by his fellow soldiers as a result.
Nikki and Michael have two children together, a daughter and son named Rena and Nalin. Rena, who is 25 years old and works as a paediatric nurse, recently got engaged to her long-term boyfriend Joshua Jackson (not the actor) whom she met at, you guessed it, Clemson University. Nikki seems to be a big fan of the couple following in her and Michael’s footsteps, posting about their engagement with the caption: “He asked… She said yes! And just like that, we have another son. So proud and happy for both of them.” Rena’s younger brother,
Nalin, who is 21, is currently studying at Villanova University in Philadelphia – breaking the family tradition.
He asked…She said yes! And just like that, we have another son. So proud and happy for both of them. ❤️#MyHeartJustSkippedABeat#ClemsonLoveStory@ClemsonUniv @ClemsonAlumni pic.twitter.com/4ISCCi1xlg
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) July 24, 2022
How she became the ‘Beast of the South East’
Haley first ventured into politics in 2004 after she’d done the requisite reputation building by becoming active in civic affairs, joining as a board member for multiple local business networks and fundraising for charity hospital galas. Once her presence was established, she ran to represent her district in the South Carolina House of Representatives, going up against Larry Koon – the longest-serving legislator in the South Carolina statehouse. But Haley worked from the ground up, knocking on doors, handing out doughnuts and promising to answer the phone when constituents called. In response, the state newspaper in Columbia endorsed her as a “bright, energetic and open-minded” candidate.
In response, Koon played dirty. His campaign ran ads pitting him “a white male” against her “an Indian female” and claimed Haley was a Buddhist, using Haley’s maiden name, Randhawa, to paint her as an outsider. Nevertheless, Haley secured victory and Koon was cast out. Haley ran unopposed for a second term in 2006, and won her third term by a landslide vote in 2008.
In 2010, Haley set her sights on becoming governor. She was endorsed by heavyweights like Mitt Romney (whom she, in turn, had endorsed when he was running for president) and the incumbent first lady of South Carolina, Jenny Sandford. Then came the clincher. A last minute endorsement from Sarah Palin, political personality and former Alaska governor, who said of Haley: "Maybe they don’t like her too much, but it’s because she stands up for what is right. She has that stiff spine, and she’s doing it for you, South Carolina." The race was won, and Haley was re-elected in 2014 with an even larger majority, being hailed as the “Beast of the South East”.
Her second term was supposed to end in 2019, but she resigned her position in 2017 as she was set to take on the bigger role of US envoy to the United Nations thanks to a certain twice-impeached president.
Trump’s on-again-off-again ally
Haley and Trump have a troubled relationship. On the one hand, he appointed her as US ambassador for the United Nations. On the other hand, it could be argued that Haley has always disliked him, and he hasn’t exactly liked her either.
When Trump was running for president in 2016, Haley endorsed Republican alternative candidate Marco Rubio ahead of him, which led Trump to call her an “embarrassment” on Twitter (back in the days where he tweeted his every waking thought). In her reply tweet, Haley simply said “Bless your heart”. Prime Republican mudslinging, this.
She also alleged that Trump was pro-KKK when speaking out against his run for presidency in 2016, saying “I will not stop until we fight a man that chooses not to disavow the KKK, that is not a part of our party.”
But when Rubio dropped out of the race, Haley had to begin her four-year-long climbdown, reaffirming that she would now be voting for Trump in the presidential election. “That doesn’t mean it’s an easy vote,” Haley said at a news conference at the time. “But it does mean that I’m watching out for the people of South Carolina and I’m watching out for the people of this country, and that’s who I will be voting for on November 8.”
She remained loyal for the rest of Trump’s presidency, but was quick to switch sides during his downfall, after Trump was seen to encourage his supporter to storm the Capitol. “We need to acknowledge he let us down,” she told Politico magazine. “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”
Now, the pair’s relationship seems to have cooled. Trump doesn’t perceive her as a credible threat, and Haley doesn’t need to hit out at him this early in the campaign. But with Haley set to announce on February 15, the waters won’t be still for long. And, of the little she has said about her bid, it’s been fighting talk so far. Speaking to Fox News last month, she said simply: “I’ve never lost a race. I said that then I still say that now. I’m not going to lose now.”
