In 1977, the quaint, 2800-person town of Bamberg, South Carolina hosted its annual “Little Miss Bamberg” Pageant, an event showcasing young girls’ singing and dancing prowesses on a local stage. Two winners were awarded that year’s crown, one exclusively for white girls and the other for black girls. That very year, a five-year old girl and her older sister, the daughters of Indian Sikh immigrants, participated in the contest. Despite their best efforts, they were both disqualified. To make up for it, both girls received an inflatable beach ball as a consolation prize. Why? Pageant organizers claimed they were neither white nor black. In an attempt to prevent black and white camps from turning on their event, organizers judged a racist classification system to be the most suitable alternative. 46 years later, Nimarata Nikki Haley, that once-innocent five-year old victim of 1970’s shameless Southern racism, is running for president.
On Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023, Haley released a video marking the start of her campaign bid. As the second Republican presidential candidate to declare for the 2024 election, she now stands as the first major rival to challenge Donald Trump’s path towards potential reelection. As a member of the G.O.P., clinching a victory at the primaries would be a significant historical breakthrough: the Republican Party is yet to nominate an Asian-American woman as a presidential candidate.
Growing up in South Carolina in the 1980’s, Haley experienced her fair share of racist bigotry. While buying groceries at the local produce market, for example, Haley and her father noticed the store clerks nervously whispering into their landline phone. Five minutes later, two police officers in uniform were on the scene. Furthermore, in the preparation of her school’s Thanksgiving play, Haley was assigned the role of Pochahontas by her director. “Did they realize I wasn’t that kind of Indian?” she asked in her biography
Can’t Is Not An Option
. Time and again, Haley was confronted with the roots of a country still plagued by its racist past.
After attending Clemson University and graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting, Haley began her professional career working as an accounting supervisor, before returning home and working for Exotica International Inc., a company founded by her own mother. While in college, she met her husband, Bill Haley, who she prompted to change his name to Michael. In hopes of acquiring her long-awaited social acceptance into South Carolinian society, she thereafter changed her religion from Sikhism to Christianity.
While attending a keynote speaker’s speech intended to empower women, Haley was blown away by the speaker’s words, the major determining factor in launching her political career. (Who was this inspiring individual, whose words propelled the daughter of Sikh immigrants to defy the odds and run for South Carolina Representative in a fashion never seen before? Hillary Clinton.) In 2004, Haley challenged and defeated the legislature’s longest-serving Representative, Larry Koon. Six years later, she demonstrated her political prowess once more, overcoming insults that she was “a terrorist” by critics of her campaign and “a f****** raghead” by former State Senator and Vietnam War veteran Jake Knots. Backed by Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin, Haley spearheaded the Tea Party Movement during her stint in office, calling for lower taxes and a decrease in government spending.
In 2015, the Confederate flag had been flying high at the top of the South Carolina State Capitol for decades on end. In the wake of the Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting, which took the lives of nine African-Americans, Haley stood for the removal of the Confederate flag as a symbol of racial hatred, mounted with stifling pressures over how to address the conflict’s aftermath. In this act of defiance towards right-wing neo-Nazi radicalism, Haley was featured in
TIME Magazine
’s 100 “Most Influential People.”
Following former President Trump’s victory at the ballot box in 2016, Haley’s disdain for him did not stop her from taking her political journey a step further. While on the campaign trail, Trump received Haley’s criticism loud and clear, calling him a failure over his faulty business ventures and consequently endorsing Senator Marco Rubio. “Trump is everything we tell our kids not to do in kindergarten,” she stated at a campaign rally for Rubio in 2016. Once time to vote, Haley declared she never was a fan of Clinton or Trump, and that “this election turned [her] stomach upside down!” Trump wasted no time in firing back, declaring that “the people of South Carolina are embarrassed by Nikki Haley!” Her diplomatic reply: “Bless your heart.”
Nonetheless, once in office, Trump personally appointed Haley as United States ambassador to the United Nations. Stepping down from her role as Governor of South Carolina, Haley imposed a firm pro-U.S. foreign policy stance, in turn earning the respect of her fellow ambassadors. From slashing funds to the Palestinian Aid Agency and withdrawing from the Human Rights Council to running hard-line policies aimed at blocking any Iranian nuclear development, Trump’s vision of a world in which America stands first shone through Haley’s public character.
Today, Nikki Haley is in it to win it, ambitious like never before. In her book
With All Due Respect: Defending America With Grit and Grace
, she writes that “if being ambitious is being good at your job, then fine, you can call me ambitious. I just consider myself a badass.”
A recent poll by
DW News
found that a mere 4% of Republican voters would vote for Haley, compared to 43% for Donald Trump. Faced with the task of defeating both Ron DeSantis and Trump, considered figureheads of the Republican party, the success of the Haley campaign will ultimately come down to how well she can frame the intricacies of her past within an appealing, politically sound message meant to unify voters across the right-wing spectrum. Will Haley’s up-and-coming campaign prove critical in planting the seeds of a progressive post-Trump G.O.P. era? Or will Republican voters cling on to Trumpism and its hyper-conservative ideals, possibly out of fear for what could become the first-ever woman to break the political glass ceiling surrounding the presidency? Regardless of the outcome, one thing is for sure: win or lose, Haley will not be receiving a beach ball this time around.