Nikki Haley: Meet the trailblazer challenging Trump in 2024

Watch: Five things to know about Nikki Haley

By Gareth Evans

in Washington

Nikki Haley's announcement that she will run for president in 2024 makes her the first Republican to challenge Donald Trump for the party's nomination. It's the latest first in a career that has been marked with them - so how did she become a presidential hopeful?

Nikki Haley rose to national prominence more than a decade ago when, in 2010, she became the youngest governor in the US aged 39. Her victory in her home state of South Carolina made history on multiple fronts - she was the conservative southern state's first female and Asian-American governor.

Her candidacy had been considered a longshot from the start. "She was not taken seriously. There were like 10 of us who thought she could win," a friend of hers recently told Politico magazine. But through grassroots campaigning she gathered steady momentum and eventually picked up high-profile endorsements from Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin.

Her victory against an all-male field led to her being hailed as a rising Republican star who could change the party's male-dominated image. "This is a great night for the thousands of people across this state who believed in this underdog campaign," she told a crowd gathered at her victory rally.

Her two terms as governor, served between 2011 and 2017, give an indication of where the 51-year-old stands on major issues. She developed a reputation as a mainstream conservative and business-friendly leader who focused on attracting major companies to South Carolina. "If you come [here], the cost of doing business is going to be low," she said at the time. "We are going to be one of the lowest union-participation states."

She has described herself as pro-life and supported legislation in South Carolina designed to curb access to abortion. Ms Haley signed a bill cracking down on illegal immigration in her first year as governor and has since criticised President Biden's border policies. She has said she supports - and would defend - gun rights.

Image source, Getty Images

Nikki Haley's victory in the South Carolina governor race led to her being hailed as a rising Republican star

Perhaps the defining moment of her governorship, and one that raised her profile nationwide, came in 2015 when a white supremacist entered the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston and shot dead nine black worshippers.

The attack - which Ms Haley later said "shattered my world" - was an attempt to spark a race war, prosecutors said. The gunman was pictured carrying the Confederate flag of the slaveholding South during the American Civil War, a banner still seen by some as an emblem of racism. A backlash to the flag, which at the time was flying over the state Capitol building, soon grew.

Ms Haley had for years resisted opposition to the flag but changed her position. Five days after the church massacre she called for it to be removed from state grounds, setting in motion a process that culminated a month later when, after a fractured and emotional debate, a motion was passed in the state legislature to take it down.

"There is a place for that flag," she said after signing its removal into law. "It's not in a place that represents all people in South Carolina."

But several years later in 2019, Ms Haley faced a backlash after telling a conservative radio host that the Confederate flag symbolised "service, sacrifice and heritage" and had been "hijacked" by the Charleston gunman.

She also said the media had sought to dictate the narrative around the shooting. "They wanted to make this about racism. They wanted to make it about gun control," she said.

At the time, J A Moore, a Democratic state representative in South Carolina whose sister was killed in the shooting, said Ms Haley's "continued use of this tragedy for political reasons is disgusting".

She later wrote in an essay for the Washington Post that her position had not changed - pinning the backlash to her latest comments on a change in culture. "Today's outrage culture does not allow any gestures to the other side. It demands that we declare winners and losers," she wrote.

Image source, Getty Images

A mass shooting at a South Carolina church in 2015 was a defining moment of Nikki Haley's governorship

Mr Haley often touches on her background - she was born Nimrata Nikki Randhawa in Bamberg, South Carolina, to Punjabi Sikh immigrants from India who owned a clothing boutique. She has said she endured racist taunts throughout her childhood and, in a video announcing her presidential bid, said she grew up "not Black, not white - I was different".

"We were outsiders when I was growing up. But that's not unusual. People who are different are outsiders everywhere in the world," she wrote in her 2019 memoir. "America is different because our community came to accept us."

Ms Haley has said that, despite experiencing racism herself, she does not consider the US to be institutionally racist. "That is a lie. America is not a racist country," she told the Republican National Convention in 2020.

Ms Haley was criticised by some social media users after these comments for not going by her first name - with some claiming she had "white-washed" her identity. But a spokesman later told USA Today that she had gone by her legal middle name - Nikki - since birth.

And when in 1996 she married Michael Haley, who she met at Clemson University while studying accounting, she adopted her husband's last name. The pair held two wedding ceremonies - one Methodist and one Sikh - and have two children together.

After graduating, Ms Haley helped her parents' clothing business before taking on various senior roles in the private sector. She entered politics in 2004 after winning a seat in the South Carolina legislature, serving three terms before becoming governor.

Image source, Getty Images

Nikki Haley was appointed US ambassador to the United Nations under Donald Trump

Ms Haley was critical of Donald Trump during the 2016 election, endorsing several of his rivals in the primaries and saying she was "not a fan" of his. She said he represented "everything I taught my children not to do in kindergarten".

But she resigned as South Carolina governor in 2017 after accepting the then-president's nomination for her to become US ambassador to the UN.

She served there for two years and, unlike many of Mr Trump's early appointees, never had a public falling out with the president. She consistently pushed the administration's pro-Israel stance and took tough positions on North Korea and Russia.

After stepping down before the 2018 November midterms, there was speculation that Ms Haley would challenge Mr Trump for the 2020 nomination or replace Mike Pence as his vice-president. Instead, she returned to South Carolina, taking on speaking roles and writing two books.

She publicly criticised Mr Trump after the 6 January 2021 riot at the Capitol - "We need to acknowledge he let us down," she told Politico. And in a speech the day after the riot she said "his actions since election day will be judged harshly by history".

Her view of the former president has apparently shifted since. At one point in 2021, she vowed not to challenge Mr Trump for the White House. But she changed this position in recent months, citing the need for "generational change" in an apparent hint at the 76-year-old Mr Trump.

"It's time for a new generation of leadership to rediscover fiscal responsibility, secure our border and strengthen our country," she said when announcing her presidential bid.

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