Nikki Haley He assured in April 2021 that he would not enter the fight for the White House for the 2024 elections if Donald Trump ran. With just over a month to go before the primary race begins, however, the former UN ambassador and former governor of South Carolina emerges as her most promising rival for the Republican nomination. An admirer of Margaret Thatcher, the Indian parent politician exhibits international and management experience, but above all she presents herself as an alternative free of the dramas and desires for personal revenge that accompany Trump. She has become the favorite of large donors who see in her a candidate with more guarantees to defeat Joe Biden.
Born in 1972 as Nimrata Nikki Randhawa in Bamberg (South Carolina), she adopted her husband’s surname when she married in 1996 through the Methodist and Sikh rites with Michael Haley, a National Guard officer with whom she has two children in their twenties. Nikki Haley is the daughter of Sikh immigrant parents from Amritsar, Punjab, India. She was, as she has defined herself, “a brown girl in a black and white world,” part of “the only Indian family in a small southern town” of 2,500 inhabitants and two traffic lights where she couldn’t even think about doing something bad without that someone told his family, according to what he says in one of his books.
He studied accounting, but soon became interested in public affairs. She was elected as a state congresswoman in 2004, re-elected without opposition in 2006, and with 83% support in 2008. Two years later, she became the youngest governor of the time, at 38 years old, the first female governor of South Carolina. and the third non-white person elected to govern a southern state. Four years later she was re-elected.
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As governor, she signed a law to remove the Confederate flag, a symbol of racial discrimination, from the state Capitol after a white fundamentalist killed nine black worshipers at Charleston’s historic African-American Emanuel Church. She has drawn on her personal immigrant family history to combat racism. In the 2016 primaries she supported Marco Rubio and harshly criticized Trump, but warmed up to him when he was elected. Since then, she has maintained a certain give and take with whom she is now her rival.
She says that when Trump asked her to be his ambassador to the United Nations, she set her conditions. She had to be a member of the cabinet to be able to deal directly with the president and she also wanted a position on the National Security Council to be in the kitchen when decisions were made. Although she does not remember her being combative with any decision, she was upset when, after announcing sanctions against Russia, the White House changed its opinion and disavowed her, saying that she had made a mess, that it had been a momentary confusion. “With all due respect, I’m not confused,” she replied..
Haley highlighted that phrase in the chapter dedicated to Jean Kirkpatrick, the first female US ambassador to the UN, in a book in which she draws profiles of women she has admired. The first of those women is Margaret Thatcher, who was Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. The book’s title, “If You Want Something Done…” is borrowed from a Thatcher quote: “If you want something to be said, ask a man; “If you want something done, ask a woman.” She herself wore it in the first debate between the Republican candidates, in August in Milwaukee.
That in the primary debates Nikki Haley now seems like an almost centrist politician is proof of how the Republican Party has tilted to the right. Only maintaining a sensible and non-strident speech makes her appear moderate next to rivals who deny climate change, flirt with homophobia or embrace conspiracy theories.
It stands out when the topic is foreign policy, where it is a hawk, aware of the leadership of the United States in the world and the threats to its primacy that come from China or Russia. She has gained popularity. In the last debate she was the center of attention.. She was attacked for her use of revolving doors. She facilitated Boeing with its investments in South Carolina and later served on its board. And after stopping being ambassador to the UN, she dedicated herself to giving conferences paid for by companies that have made her a millionaire.
Haley is a conservative politician, an accountant who demands fiscal discipline and who is willing to undertake reforms and cuts in social security and healthcare, opposed to abortion (although without criminalizing it) and denounces that “some currents of radical feminism are openly contrary to the men”.
As a woman, she has broken many barriers. Polls suggest that she would beat Joe Biden with some comfort in the presidential election. To do that, he would first have to defeat Trump, who has a big advantage, in the primaries of his party. It doesn’t seem easy, but she’s willing to try. Like Thatcher, if Haley were elected she would be the first female president of the United States. As stated in the Constitution, she would be sworn in on January 20, her 52nd birthday.
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