We have to talk about…Nikki Haley

While everything points to Trump becoming the Republican nominee, the chances of him being found guilty in one or all of the many cases against him, mean that his path back to the White House may not be so clear. And should that happen, there’s one woman waiting in the wings. A woman who has never lost an election she’s run for.

(Last updated 22 May 2024)

Full disclosure. I’m obsessed with Donald Trump. I dislike — make that loathe — everything about him, but I’m fascinated with everything about him: his appearance, his use of language, and more than anything, his ability to seemingly get away with all that he does, no matter how egregious or illegal.

That obsession has, so far, led me to pen no less than five essays on different aspects of the man and his mannerisms. The most recent of these, Lingua Trumpa focused on the words he uses, his rhetoric and how his narrative has changed over the years. Prior to that, another essay was all about his use of alternative facts as a propaganda tool.

As I write this, at the beginning of November 2023, exactly one year before the 2024 US Presidential Elections, the twice-impeached, four times indicted former President is not just the front-runner for the Republican nomination, but the clear favourite to beat Joe Biden for the Presidency.

Whilst many see this as a terrifying prospect, Trump is currently so unopposed he wouldn’t even take part in the Republican debates with his fellow Presidential candidates. And now that Mike Pence, Tim Scott, Chris Christie and most recently, Ron De Santis, have all dropped out, Nikki Haley is the only one left standing against Trump.

Of course, Trump’s road back to the White House is not quite as straightforward as he may claim. For a start, he’s the first former US President in history to face criminal charges and he’ll be spending a good part of 2024 sitting in a courtroom during the entirety of the election. And, let’s face it, his record in front of judges is pretty dire to put it mildly.

Trump’s trials include no less than 91 felony counts across five court cases, of which only two have so far commenced. Currently, the only one with a ‘fixed’ date is Jack Smith’s federal election interference case in Washington DC presided over by Judge Chutken. This was due to start on 4 March 2024 but even though it’s now likely to be delayed by at least a month or two, it should be completed before the voters go to the polls.

Following that, should be Fani Willis’ Georgia case whose schedule has also slipped from its original March date to a 5 August 2024 start. As it’s likely to be a five, six or seven month trial, this one almost certainly won’t get finished before the election.

Originally scheduled for May 2024, the start date for the Mar-a-Lago documents case presided over by Trump-friendly Judge Aileen Cannon has currently not been formalised and is likely to slip as she has announced a ‘scheduling’ conference for 1 March 2024.

The only other case that is likely to take place before the election — as it will be much shorter than the rest — is the Stormy Daniels case brought by Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg. This is currently set for trial in New York starting 25 March 2024.

On top of those is Letitia James’ civil case in New York. Judge Arthur Engoron has already found the Trump Organisation guilty over systemically misrepresenting the value of its properties and we now await the level of disgorgement that he rules on which should come before the end of January 2024.

So, almost certainly, during much of 2024, Donald Trump will be involved in at least two time-consuming trials, both requiring his presence in court. The likelihood is that the litany of evidence mounting against him will be so strong he’ll be found guilty in both and that further cases may well be brought against him.

Beyond financial penalties, what’s far less clear is what additional punishment Trump could face. These are unprecedented times, as no other former President has been brought to justice in this way or accused of committing such egregious crimes against the United States.

With so many cases against him, and with the presumption of guilty verdicts, there is a very real possibility that, regardless of current polling results, Trump will find himself caught between a rock and a hard place: compelled to attend trial while he should be on the campaign trail.

Should he be found guilty of the charges against him — and remember whilst the biggest case in Washington DC, which accuses him of leading the insurrection and attempting to pervert the peaceful transition of power, won’t be televised, the Georgia case will — many of those who previously supported Trump could well have their minds changed.

And of course, once a guilty verdict is reached, the immediate issue in all of the cases will be: what will the punishment be?

As The Guardian’s Emma Brockes wrote on 15 November 2023:

“The question in all of these cases is less whether Trump will be found guilty, than whether there is any outcome whatsoever that would be capable of preventing him from standing for president next year.”

Facing so many charges, Trump’s game plan along is the one he always uses: first claim it’s all a political witch hunt, that it’s the Democrat’s and not him who are guilty and then delay, delay, delay. His one and only aim is to get himself re-elected, and then pardon himself of all crimes against him. All of which is possible, with the exception of the case in Georgia brought by Fawni Willis. If found guilty there, as it’s a state rather than federal case, even if he’s President, Trump won’t be able to revoke the outcome.

All these cases are piling up for Trump at the worst possible time, the run-up to the GOP nomination and, following that, November 2024s Presidential election. With so much attention on his misbehaviour and likely guilty verdicts, there remains a possibility that he’ll be prevented from running for the White House. Indeed, two states, Colorado and Maine have already said he is ineligible to be on their ballots and we are awaiting legal clarification as to the legality of their decisions.

Should he be barred in some states, the Republican party will have a huge decision to make: back Donald Trump and risk losing for the second time to Joe Biden, or nominate someone else as their Presidential candidate.

On 11 November 2023, MSNBC legal analyst, Glenn Kirschner made that exact prediction. He believes Trump will be convicted and incarcerated before the election and that Republicans will have to scramble to find a new 2024 nominee.

If that were to happen, who might that be?

Right now, the only contender is former South Carolina Governor, Nikki Haley. A year or so back, Florida’s Ron De Santis was the clear favourite to challenge Trump, but he has now dropped out the race.

That means should Trump not be in the running, 51-year-old Haley could find herself becoming the GOP Presidential candidate to face off against Joe Biden, who at 81 is already the oldest President in American history.

So just who is Nikki Haley? And what kind of Presidential candidate would she be?

As I didn’t have an answer to either question, I did some research. This is what I found out.

Origin story: The first thing that really surprised me was that Nikki Haley’s birth name was Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She was born in 1972 in the small South Carolina town of Bamberg to Indian Sikh parents, Ajit and Raj Randhawa who had immigrated to the US from Amritsar, in the Punjab.

Her father, Ajit, earned a doctorate from the University of British Columbia and worked as a biology professor at Voorhees College in Denmark, South Carolina, for 29 years before retiring from teaching in 1998.

Haley’s mother, Raj, studied law at the University of New Delhi. After moving to South Carolina, she earned a master’s degree in education and taught in Bamberg public schools for seven years.

She has three siblings: two brothers, Mitti and Charan, and a sister, Simran.

The Randhawas also operated a foreign-goods store in Bamberg that grew into Exotica International, a clothing boutique. Having relocated to larger premises in Lexington, SC, after thirty-two years, the business closed its doors in May 2008, citing it was due to its owners ‘retiring’.

As a teenager, Nikki began working at Exotica, doing the accounts from the age of 13 and after graduating she joined the family business as its CFO.

She has talked about the discrimination she faced growing up in the only Indian family in Bamberg.

“My father wore a turban. My mother wore a sari. I was a brown girl in a black and white world. We faced discrimination and hardship, but my parents never gave in to grievance and hate.”

When she was five, she was disqualified from the Miss Bamberg beauty pageant because she was neither black nor white, and told by classmates she couldn’t play ball unless she picked a team — which she said was picking a race.

She went on to study accounting at Clemson University in South Carolina.

How she got her present name: She’s received criticism for not going by her first name — some accused her of denying her heritage and even of “whitewashing” herself.

She addressed this in 2021:

“Nikki is a Punjabi word that means little one. It’s my middle name on my birth certificate.”

She’s not used her maiden name since she was 24, when she married William Michael Haley at Hilton Head, South Carolina in 1996. They had both Sikh and Methodist ceremonies and a year later she converted to Christianity. The couple met in college and have two children, daughter Rena and son Nalin.

The Haley name came about after Michael and his four siblings were placed in foster care when their mother sustained a traumatic brain injury in a car accident that left her unable to care for her children.

4-year-old Michael and his younger sister Lee Anne were adopted by Bill Haley, a steel mill manager and Carol Haley, a teacher, who eventually moved from Ohio to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

In 1989, 17-year-old Nikki began school at Clemson University. Michael, then 19, was at nearby Anderson University and the pair were introduced by Michael’s roommate who happened to know Nikki from his hometown.

Before college, Michael Haley was known as Bill Haley, but when they began dating Nikki wasn’t keen on Bill and would call him Michael.

Michael Haley is a major in the South Carolina National Guard. In June 2023 he was deployed to Djibouti for a year. It means he will be abroad for much of his wife’s campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, making him the first spouse of a candidate to be deployed during a Presidential run.

The family home is a four-bedroom, 5,700 square foot house on Kiawah Island, South Carolina, which was bought in 2019 for $2.4m. As of September 2023, the property value has doubled to around $4.7m.

Her children: Daughter Rena attended her parents alma mater Clemson University, where she studied nursing. In 2021 she received her bachelor’s degree and became a registered pediatric nurse. In April 2023 she married her college sweetheart Josh Jackson, a math teacher and high school football coach who played on Clemson’s college football team as a student. Their lavish wedding was held at Kiawah Island Golf Resort on Kiawah Island.

Son Nalin, 21, is currently a political science major at Villanova University near Philadelphia, PA. Of his mother’s run for the GOP nomination, he recently said:

“There’s nothing she can’t handle. I mean, criticism just bounces off of her.”

Running for office: She won a seat in the South Carolina state legislature in 2004, serving three terms before her election as governor in 2010, when she became the state’s first woman in the role. What’s more, she was also the youngest governor in the US and only the second person of Indian descent to serve as a state governor which she did until 2017.

Despite endorsing Marco Rubio in 2016, she was Donald Trump’s ambassador to the UN between 2017–2018, and in February 2023 she became the first Republican to challenge the former president for the nomination saying:

“It’s time for a new generation of leadership in Washington DC.”

To date, she has never lost an election she has ran in.

Her strong performances in the Republican presidential debates — debates of course that Trump has not taken part in — have won over several of the party’s big donors and intrigued other Wall Street figures who want an alternative to Donald Trump.

Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller, traditionally a big GOP donor, has already announced his support and New York-based donor Eric Levine said he would host a fundraiser for Haley in early December.

She also looks to benefit from the decision by South Carolina senator Tim Scott, a one-time donor darling, to drop out of the race.

Many wealthy financiers have been reluctant to back a Republican candidate given Trump’s strong lead in polls of likely primary voters. The former president is significantly ahead of his GOP rivals in the early states — Iowa, New Hampshire as well as Haley’s home state of South Carolina.

A CNN poll of New Hampshire voters showed that since September, Haley had jumped from 12 per cent to 20 per cent, eclipsing DeSantis but remaining far behind Trump, who was holding steady at 42 per cent.

Will Hurd, a former presidential candidate who now supports Haley, said it was now time for donors to make up their minds.

“We need the donors that have been on the sidelines, who want to see an alternative to Donald Trump. Now is the time to get in this race.”

And exactly that happened on 28 November 2023.

Haley’s campaign got a major endorsement from Americans for Prosperity (AFP Action), the SuperPAC founded by the billionaire Charles Koch. This powerhouse donor base which has funded conservative causes for more than two decades is, in the words of The Guardian “swinging behind Nikki Haley’s 2024 presidential bid.”

Despite currently polling some 54 points behind Trump, The Guardian go on to say that the Koch endorsement has “the potential to reshape the race.”

Speaking the same day on MSNBC’s Alex Wagner Tonight show, Charlie Sykes, Editor of The Bulwark, said he thought this was a significant development for Haley’s campaign as it not only provides her with a good deal of money, but it is a signal to other donors that she is the one person who will be the last woman standing against Donald Trump as the field consolidates.

Whilst it’s still Trump’s to lose, Sykes says it’s significant that the Koch organisation has decided that now is the time to get behind Nikki Haley, rather than Ron DeSantis, who is polling in second place, but whose campaign appears to be faltering.

AFP Action described Haley as “a candidate capable of turning the page on Washington’s toxic culture — and a candidate who can win.”

As she rises in the polls, she also draws Trump’s ire. Speaking at a campaign rally in Fort Dodge, Iowa on 18 November 2023, the former President had this to say about Nikki Haley:

“I know her well, she’s not up to the job!”

In keeping with how he treats rivals and those he dislikes, Trump has given her a derogatory nickname, Birdbrain. In response, she posted on social media the hashtag #PrettyPatheticTryAgain

A published author, Haley has written three books. In 2012 she published a memoir, Can’t Is Not An Option: My American Story. She followed this up with With All Due Respect: Defending America With Grit And Grace in 2019 and If You Want Something Done: Leadership Lessons From Bold Women in 2022.

As things progress towards November 2024 in this most unprecedented of Presidential elections, I’ve no doubt there will be numerous twist and turns along the way. To that end, I will update this article whenever something newsworthy comes about.

And that first twist didn’t take long to happen. Despite being elevated as the most palatable alternative to Trump among Republican donors, while speaking at a Town Hall event in North Conway, New Hampshire on 27 December 2023, Nikki Haley made two comments that garnered a lot of flak for her campaign.

The one that received most attention was her answer to a question about the cause of the US Civil War. As the former governor of South Carolina, one of the Confederate states fighting to retain slavery, she began her faltering reply by saying:

“I think the cause of the civil war was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”

She continued by saying much the same thing using different words.

Her questioner responded: “In the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you answer that question without mentioning the word ‘slavery’.”

The blowback was swift and fierce, so the following day, when asked about this, rather than apologise for her omission, she doubled down:

“Of course , the civil war was about slavery, but it was also more than that, it was about the freedoms of every individual.”

Of course Haley knows that slavery started the civil war, but she’s unable to tell the truth because she’s unwilling to offend those voters she so desperately thinks she needs.

The damage however had been done, and her original comments will be what people will remember.

She even went on to blame “a Democratic plant” for the hostile question that tripped her up.

However, perhaps of more lasting damage to her campaign and to her personally was her response to a 9-year-old boy who at the same event asked her, if she became President, whether she would pardon Donald Trump. Without giving the question a second thought, this is what she said:

“I would pardon Trump, if he were found guilty.”

That’s a pretty unequivocal statement and one that certainly surprised me. As a seasoned politician, she could have given numerous answers all of which weren’t so definitive or demonstrate that she cannot bring herself to disavow the former President.

She realises, however — as does every Republican candidate, save for Chris Christie — that their party’s base still loves Trump which means they find themselves unable to criticise him without alienating his voters. It’s no wonder that it leads to all sorts of moral compromises, or that many are calling this a race for the Vice-Presidency.

But back to New Hampshire where Haley made things even worse for herself when she clarified her thinking:

“A leader needs to think about what’s in the best interests of the country. What’s in the best interest of the country is not to have an eighty-year-old man sitting in jail who continues to divide our country. What’s in the best interest of our country would be to pardon him so that we can move on as a country and no longer talk about him.”

I find it hard to understand the naivety of her comments. How pardoning Trump could ever be “in the best interests” of America, or for even thinking whether he’s in jail or not in jail, that Donald Trump would stop “dividing” the country and no longer be the subject of such discourse.

I’m also surprised she doesn’t appear to know his age. Trump is 77 not 80-years-old. Perhaps she was getting him mixed up with Biden who recently turned 81.

Politicians need to be much more savvy when responding to unfiltered (and especially unexpected) questions. It goes to show just how easy it is to create a faux pas that will forever affect peoples’ perceptions of you. In the space of just a few hours, these two comments are likely to now dominate Nikki Haley’s campaign going forward and will no doubt prove very difficult to displace from future narratives.

On 10 January 2024, Chris Christie, one of Haley’s rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, dropped out of the race. He did so at the same time as Ron De Santis’ campaign continued to falter. Both were good news for Nikki Haley who closed the gap on Donald Trump in the New Hampshire primary to just 7 points, with Trump on 39% and herself now up to 32%.

Unsurprisingly, Trump immediately responded by attacking her on his Truth Social platform, claiming that she was ineligible to run for President as her parents, despite attaining citizenship after her birth in 1972, were not US citizens when she was born. Of course, such birther conspiracy is not new, Trump made similar claims against Barack Obama as well as Kamala Harris.

Following Chris Christie’s withdrawal, it was revealed he’d been caught on a hot mic after his announcement making some disparaging remarks about Nikki Haley:

“She’s gonna get smoked. You and I both know it. She’s not up to this.”

Her allies however say she’s playing to win, insisting that as the field narrows, she will become the clear alternative to Trump, and that she will pull ahead, propelled by moderates and a growing swathe of Republicans concerned about the former President’s intentions and criminality.

Of course, her detractors see it differently. They say she’s running a campaign for the wrong era of Republican politics, whose base has turned so definitely towards Trump that Haley’s establishment-friendly conservatism no longer makes sense.

On 14 January 2024, just ahead of voting in Iowa, Trump repeated his claim that she was “not tough enough” to be President. Haley immediately responded by saying:

“I find it comical, because when I was at the UN he used to tell people ‘Don’t mess with her, she’s tough!’ Everybody that’s ever worked for or with me, no one ever questions my toughness. He’s doing this because now he knows he’s in trouble. Now he knows this is becoming a two-person race.”

On the same day, Trump continued to attack Haley saying that her money comes from ‘globalists’ — one of his anti-semetic dog whistles:

“She’s starting to fade as people find out that she’s got some really bad money behind her. She’s got Democrats financing her in New Hampshire, and she’s got Koch — who’s a total globalist — financing her.”

On 16 January 2024 he posted this on Truth Social:

“Anyone listening to Nikki ‘Nimrada’ Haley’s wacked out speech last night, would think that she won the Iowa Primary.”

By the way: Her given name is Nimarata not Nimrada.

He then added:

“Nikki came in a distant THIRD! She said she would never run against me, ‘he was a great President’ and she should have followed her own advice. Now she’s stuck with WEAK POLICIES, and a VERY STRONG MAGA BASE, and there’s just nothing she can do!”

Well, one thing she can most definitely do, but so far chooses not to, is to call out Donald Trump for at least some of the crimes he has either been accused of, or proven to be liable for.

In a 17 January 2024 interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, she was asked this question:

“As the only woman in this race, how do you feel about your party’s frontrunner being held liable for sexual abuse?”

Instead of giving a straightforward, honest answer, Haley instead chose to respond by saying:

“First of all, I haven’t paid attention to his cases. And I’m not a lawyer. All I know is he’s innocent until proven guilty and when he’s proven guilty and he’s sitting in a courtroom that’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

That strikes me as a very disingenous reply. You don’t need to be a lawyer to recognise the illegality of his deeds and in this particular case, both the judge and jury have found him guilty of sexual assault, which the judge has ruled is rape. The current case is not about his guilt for rape, but for defaming E. Jean Caroll a second time. The judge has already awarded her $5 million from the previous defamation case.

Regards her not paying attention to his cases, that’s hard to believe. Not only is she fighting him for the Republican nomination, but it’s nigh on impossible for anyone in America to not be aware of the myriad of felony accusations and court cases involving Donald Trump, for they take up most of the news cycle, almost every day.

With her unwillingness to criticise him or call him out, she’s clearly being economical with the truth. And, especially being a woman, her response will not go down well, either with her supporters or her detractors.

Days ahead of the vote in New Hampshire, some leading political commentators are already predicting that if she loses the Granite State, especially if she loses by double digits, it’s game over for Nikki Haley.

Speaking of which, on 21 January 2024, Ron De Santis confirmed growing rumours that, despite finishing second in Iowa, he was dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump. As he made his announcement, it was no surprise he took a parting shot at Nikki Haley.

Given Trump’s substantive lead, it’s hard to see how Haley can close the gap between herself and the former President. The one ray of light she will be hoping for is that Trump’s mounting legal woes prove an encumbrance to his re-election chances and pave a way for her to progress. That said, despite all his predicaments, it’s hard not to see Teflon Don becoming the Republican nominee.

The big question right now is how long Nikki Haley stays in the race and, if she does decide to continue, whether she will change tack and actively challenge and castigate Trump as being unfit to run.

Until she makes her position clear, one thing is obvious, she will find herself the focus of Trump’s animus and be subject to his ramped up malevolence.

Following the ending of De Santis’s campaign, Nikki Haley was asked by CNN’s Dana Bash if she would ever endorse Donald Trump. Her response:

“Biden and Trump are equally bad. If either one of them was good, I wouldn’t be running.”

She added:

“I don’t think we need to have two 80-year-olds sitting in the White House. We need to know that they’re at the top of their game, we need to know that they can take care of our national security and our economy. Right now, I don’t know that people feel like that with either one.”

She also stated that she’ll stay in the race until her home state’s primary in a month’s time.

“There’s two people in this race, we’re going to keep on going!”

Trump easily defeated her New Hampshire. That was to be expected. What wasn’t was what she said during her concession speech:

“I want to congratulate Donald Trump on his victory tonight. He earned it. And I want to acknowledge that.”

She concluded by saying:

“Now you’ve all heard the chatter among the political class. They’re falling over themselves saying this race is over. Well, I have news for all of them. New Hampshire is first in the nation, it is not last in the nation. This race is far from over. There are dozens of states left to go. And the next one is my sweet state of South Carolina!”

After two straight defeats, we wait to see how well she does there, but right now it’s hard to see anything other than her having to congratulate Trump on yet another victory. And if that happens, will she herself concede or will she continue in the hope that he gets convicted in court and sentiment against him drastically changes?

On 31 January 2024 a Quinnipiac poll on the 2024 Presidential Election, revealed that if Trump took on Biden, he’d lose 44% to 50%, yet if Nikki Haley went up against Biden she’d win by 47% to 42%. Figures like that might just make some Republicans sit up and think about which of their two candidates stands the best chance of beating Joe Biden.

The survey came after Haley appeared on The Breakfast Club syndicated radio station where she made her sharpest and most unequivocal attack on Trump to date, saying that “He’s just toxic.”

The question you have to ask is what took her so long, why wasn’t she saying that months ago?

Speaking at a rally in Conway, SC, two weeks before that state’s primary, Trump continued his attack on Haley, but in a surprising way. Given that his own wife, Melania, has virtually disappeared from view in recent months and whose pathway to becoming a US citizen is under more scrutiny than ever before, Trump used the ultimate in projection when he went after Haley’s husband, Michael, mocking him for not being with her on the campaign trail:

“What happened to her husband? Oh, he’s away. Where is he? He’s gone! He knew, he knew.”

Now Trump himself (and those in the audience) clearly knew that Michael Haley was deployed overseas with the South Carolina National Guard.

That same day, a clearly incensed Haley immediately hit back saying:

“Donald Trump had a rally today and in that rally he mocked my husband’s military service. And I’ll say this: Donald, if you have something to say, don’t say it behind my back, get on a debate stage and say it to my face!”

She then added this stinging rebuke:

“If you mock the service of a combat veteran, you don’t deserve a driver’s license, let alone being President of the United States.”

She followed that up with this social media post:

“Michael is deployed serving our country, something you know nothing about. Someone who continually disrespects the sacrifices of military families has no business being commander in chief.”

On 6 March 2024 The Wall Street Journal broke the news that Nikki Haley was pulling out of the 2024 presidential election race.

During her campaign, she had won only two primaries – the District of Columbia and Vermont. It was the first election she had run for in which she was unsuccessful.

As recently as January 2024, Haley was branding Donald Trump “toxic” and unfit to serve, yet just a few months later, she like everyone else in the Republican Party was kow-towing to the former President and on 22 May 2024 after claiming Joe Biden was “a catastrophe” she announced “I will be voting for Trump”. Talk about the ultimate flip-flop!

About the author: Based in Sussex-by-the-Sea, on England’s south coast, Gary is a creative writer and image-maker. He specialises in creating out of the ordinary portraits of musicians and people with interesting faces, as well as photographing some of the world’s finest flowers and gardens, not forgetting an array of automotive exotica.

On the writing side, he has used his research skills to author deep dives into some noteworthy songs beginning with Bryan Ferry’s ‘These Foolish Things’ ‘Ghost Town’ by The Specials, ‘Real Wild Child’ by Ivan and ‘All The Young Dudes’ by Mott the Hoople.

He has also written a biography of Robert Palmer and the stories behind Whitesnake’s blatant Led Zep rip-off, ‘Still Of The Night’, Harry Styles’ anthem to positivity, ‘Treat People With Kindness’ and the little known Queen track ‘Cool Cat.’

Most recently, Gary has penned the fascinating story behind George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ as well as ‘Believe It Or Not’ a look into the rise of fake news and his latest essay ‘Nadir: How the cost of living crisis has brought so many in broken Britain to the depths of despair.’

All these can be found here on Medium, along with his reviews of gigs and events and chats with musicians including the likes of Royal Blood, Joe Satriani and Wolf Alice.