“It’s time to transition into a new generation of leaders,” announces Nikki Haley. A dig at President Joe Biden, 80, but also at Trump, 76. The former governor of South Carolina is Trump’s first challenger for the Republican nomination for the White House.
It was he who named her UN Goodwill Ambassador in 2017 and relations remain quite good, as evidenced by the fact that he has yet to give her any of his nicknames, despite calling her “too ambitious” last week. Although she has distanced herself at times, such as after the Jan. 6 storming of the convention, Haley has come back to praise him. “Every time he criticizes me, he takes a step back 15 minutes later — Trump said in a 2021 interview — he understands who has the base.”
While he said he wouldn’t run against him, now Haley has, noting in the election video that Republicans lost the popular vote in 7 of the 8 presidential elections to date: “It’s time for a change.” The video starts along of the railroad tracks that divided her hometown of Bamberg, South Carolina, into neighborhoods based on race.
Nimrata “Nikki” Randhawa, daughter of Indian Sikh parents who later converted to Christianity (the surname Haley belongs to her husband’s National Guard officer), was “neither black nor white, I was different,” but her mother he told her , «not to focus on the differences, but on the similarities».
“Even on the worst of days, living in America is a blessing,” he declares, suggesting a combination of over-criticism of the American system by the left and atrocities in places like China and Iran. When she was governor in 2015, she called for the Confederate flag to be removed from state buildings after a white supremacist killed nine black worshipers at a Methodist church. But his path is full of obstacles. And Trump is just one of them.
South Carolina, the third state to vote for the nomination after Iowa and New Hampshire, has been buzzing for the past few weeks. Haley remains popular with Republicans, but Trump made it the first stop of his campaign, winning multiple confirmations (from current Governor McMaster to Senator Lindsey Graham), while others eagerly await Ron DeSantis’ announcement and suggest that Haley could be a great proxy.
There’s a glut of other predictable candidates, from Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson to former Vice President Mike Pence. But her biggest concern right now is the growing possibility that South Carolina’s Tim Scott, the only black Republican senator (whom she herself nominated for governor), will also run. Haley and Scott grew up together politically; they have common allies, donors and advisors, they are two minority faces in a white-majority party. And, for example, Mikee Johnson, a lumber magnate and one of Haley’s biggest donors when she became governor, chose Scott.
On paper, Haley’s experience in domestic and foreign politics (“I don’t condone bullies. If you wear heels, the kicks hurt more,” is his warning to the leaders of China and Russia), has a personal history that I carry ended up being labeled the anti-Kamala Harris (also of Indian descent) and being the first woman to win the nomination. She would have been front runner in a Republican party that no longer exists. Whether voters will leave Trump or not is still unclear, but the forces of Trumpism – economic populism, foreign policy isolationism, election denial – remain crucial.