A bold, kick-ass woman is about to enter the US presidential race. This is how Nikki Haley, the former Republican governor of South Carolina, aims to present herself, anyway. “I wear heels, but it’s not a fashion statement, it’s because if I see something wrong, I’m gonna kick ‘em every single time,” she said, while serving as Donald Trump’s US ambassador to the United Nations in 2017.
Haley deserves applause for having the guts to be the first to take on Trump while male contenders are still cowering and plotting in the shadows. On Wednesday Haley will launch her campaign in the historic port city of Charleston, South Carolina, before heading to New Hampshire and Iowa, two early primary states where presidential candidates are forged or broken. But she faces a tough challenge to prove she is the answer to the Republican party’s problems.
Trump is salivating at the prospect of having a live “victim” to dispatch and prove his campaigning chops. He thinks he can charge Haley with flip-flopping after she criticised him for inciting the January 6 riot at the Capitol. She predicted Trump had “fallen so far” he would not run for office again, before promising not to stand against him when she realised her mistake. Another U-turn is not a good look. Justin Evans, her former political director in South Carolina, tells me: “The Nikki I knew and worked for is not the Nikki who is running today.”
Yet she is not the only challenger who reckons Trump is on the ropes after his hand-picked candidates performed poorly in the midterm elections and his 2024 campaign launch had low-energy vibes. Haley fancies her chances despite starting out at only modest single digits in the polls; well behind Ron DeSantis, the formidable governor of Florida (as yet untested on the national stage), but ahead of other serious players, such as Mike Pompeo, the former US secretary of state.
Haley, 51, is standing for generational change, a handy way to jab at Trump, 76, while ostensibly targeting Joe Biden, 80, who is limbering up for a second term with the sullen approval of Democrats. “I don’t think you need to be 80 years old to go be a leader in DC. I think we need a new generation to come in, step up and really start fixing things,” Haley said on Fox News recently.
DeSantis, 44, the biggest beast after Trump, is seven years her junior. He is about to publish a political book, The Courage to be Free, boasting about his record in Florida, but is unlikely to enter the race before summer, giving Haley a head start. If DeSantis and Trump mortally wound each other, Haley intends to come through the middle.
This is not wholly fanciful. Trump has already accused DeSantis of partying as a teacher with teenage girls and is trying to destroy his reputation for deft handling of Covid-19. And if DeSantis triumphs over Trump, he is going to need a seasoned vice-presidential candidate. There is all to play for.
Haley has huge self-confidence that comes from a record of success. “I’ve won tough primaries and tough general elections. I’ve been the underdog every single time. When people underestimate me, it’s always fun. But I’ve never lost an election. And I’m not gonna start now,” she has claimed. Trump recently belittled her as “overly ambitious” – a classic sexist putdown – but she is more qualified for office than most male candidates. She has hands-on experience as governor of a state and foreign policy nous from her UN days.
Arguably, Haley has another big advantage: her gender. The Republican party has an enduring problem with white, suburban, college-educated women voters. This was plain to see after Biden’s 2020 victory and the Democrats’ surprising resilience in the November midterms. “Once again it’s the women who saved us,” said Jim Messina, a former White House official under Barack Obama. Could Haley bring these missing women back into the Republican column?
I don’t think you need to be 80 years old to be a leader. We need a new generation to step up and fix things
Intriguingly there are whispers that Trump’s own daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner are covert Haley supporters. Pompeo wrote in his newly-published memoir that Haley tried to bounce Trump into appointing her vice-president with their help during the last administration (she denies the charge). Kushner’s father Charlie held a fundraiser for Haley in 2021, predicting she would be America’s first woman president.
Her biography is intriguing. Born Nimrata Randhawa to Indian parents from the Punjab, Haley describes herself as a “brown girl in a black and white world”. Many people regard her as white, though she is proud of her heritage. “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. Eight years later, when the US was inflamed by the death of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests, she reassured the same gathering: “America is not a racist country.” This is a message white voters like to hear.
Raised Sikh, Haley converted to Christianity at 24. In contrast to vice-president Kamala Harris, Haley’s bid to be the first woman – and first woman of colour – to be president does not feature prominently in her sales pitch (although she might well attract Asian-Americans, who are breaking away from traditional Democratic voting patterns). In another era, Haley might have played up her race and gender, but not while some Republicans are flirting with macho, borderline white-supremacist politics.
In single combat against Harris, Haley would be odds-on favourite to win. A cruel but accurate article in last week’s New York Times claimed Harris’s public champions admit in private “they have lost hope in her”. Political consultant Liz Mair says, “Proactively, Kamala Harris puts people off. It’s not that she puts off Republican or independent women voters. She puts off core Democrats like 65-year-old liberal women.”
A fortnight ago, former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren suggested Biden did not have to stick with Harris as his 2024 running mate, though she later walked back her comments. Given Biden’s age and frailty, some Democrats fear voters will be put off by the prospect that Harris could become the first woman president by default, but they are afraid of offending black and female voters by ditching her.
The Democrats have a different gender problem to the Grand Old Party (GOP). While Republicans urgently need to attract more middle-class women voters, particularly after the supreme court’s reversal of abortion rights, the Democrats need to attract more working-class men. Hence Biden called his State of the Union address a “blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America” while the end of Roe v Wade – the 1973 pro-choice abortion law – got barely a mention.
As state governor she passed a bill banning abortion after 20 weeks. But she is no zealot
Haley has a solidly conservative pro-life record. As governor of South Carolina, she passed a bill banning abortion after 20 weeks in her state. But she is no zealot about criminalising it from the moment of conception without exceptions. Trump is also clever enough to row back on the issue. Although he was personally responsible for the pro-life composition of the supreme court, Trump blames his own side’s extreme rhetoric for alienating women at the polls.
“It was the ‘abortion issue’, poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on no exceptions, even in the case of rape, incest, or life of the mother, that lost large numbers of voters,” he said last month.
Trump’s ability to pick his battles shows why he remains a formidable opponent. Haley could end up winning just enough votes to split the opposition, while he powers through the primaries on 30-40% of the vote. This, undoubtedly, is why Trump wants her to stand. “Nikki has to follow her heart, not her honour,” he smirked recently. Be that as it may, she firmly believes she is coming for his head.
