By announcing early, Ms. Haley, 51, who called for “generational change” in her party, seized an opportunity for a head start on fund-raising and to command a closer look from potential Republican primary voters, whose support she needs if she is to rise from low single digits in early polls of the G.O.P. field.
As she seeks a broader following, Ms. Haley plans to lean into cultural issues, denouncing Democrats for pushing “socialism” in government and “wokeism” in schools, while citing her own biography as the daughter of Indian immigrants who rose to be South Carolina’s first female governor, and first nonwhite governor, as a rebuke of leftist claims that America harbors “systemic racism.”
1. Relationship With African Americans…
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. :D:D
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.
[ATTACH=full]495890[/ATTACH]
A mass shooting at this South Carolina church in 2015 was a defining moment of Nikki Haley’s governorship
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”.
Haley 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.
2. On Trump
Ms. Haley is best known on the national stage for pursuing Mr. Trump’s foreign policy agenda for two years at the U.N…
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”. :D:D:D
[ATTACH=full]495891[/ATTACH]
Nikki Haley was appointed US ambassador to the United Nations under Donald Trump
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.
In the video, Ms. Haley does not mention Mr. Trump’s name, but she makes clear her intention to make a break with the Trump era.
In addition to calling for a new generation to step up, she urges a return to “the values that still make our country the freest and greatest in the world.”
“Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections,” she said. “That has to change.”
In interviews last month, Ms. Haley swiped at the age of both Mr. Trump, 76, and President Biden, 80.
“I don’t think you need to be 80 years old to go be a leader in D.C.,” she told Fox News.
That the former president has so far not coined an insulting nickname or otherwise attacked Ms. Haley is a sign, perhaps, of his lingering regard for her, as well as the perception that she was not a major threat. :D:D:D
Her announcement reversed a statement in 2021 that she would not run if Mr. Trump were a candidate. She was a rare figure to leave the Trump administration while earning praise from Mr. Trump rather than a parting insult. Mr. Trump recently said that when Ms. Haley informed him she was testing a run, he told her, “You should do it.”
