She could well overshadow Donald Trump. Republican Nikki Haley had promised her supporters a “special announcement” Wednesday, February 15, prefiguring a candidacy for 2024. It is now done a day in advance this Tuesday: “I am a candidate for the presidential election”she said in a video to her followers.
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The former UN ambassador thus becomes the first notable candidate to challenge Donald Trump, who is currently not enjoying the campaign momentum he was hoping for.
Indian origin
Of Indian origin, Nimrata Nikki Randhawa is the daughter of a couple of Sikh immigrants. In her fifties and mother of two children, she is married to a National Guard officer formerly deployed in Afghanistan.
Elected to the South Carolina Parliament with a Stalinist score
She entered the political scene in 2004. After defeating outgoing State Representative Larry Koon, in office since 1975, in the Republican nomination, she was easily elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives with 98.94% votes.
Six years later, elected the youngest governor at the head of South Carolina (but also the first woman also from a minority background), she displays her hostility to unions, as well as to gay marriage, and is reluctant to reception of Syrian refugees in his State.
Trump’s staunch supporter
In 2016, Nikki Haley refuses to see Donald Trump as the candidate the Republican Party needs. She even pays herself the luxury of making fun of the billionaire, a novice in politics. Once Donald Trump was elected, however, the governor displayed her loyalty to the head of state, which earned her the appointment of ambassador to the United Nations during the first half of Trump’s mandate.
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Considered a pragmatist, she manages to maintain a channel of discussion between the UN and the Trump administration hostile to the international institution. Despite everything, she defends the withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, from the Paris climate agreement, from the Human Rights Council. man of the United Nations, UNESCO and the Vienna Iranian nuclear agreement.
Step aside
If she qualifies as “natural” her membership in the Republican Party, Nikki Haley sometimes surprises her own party. This is the case in 2015, when she dared to remove the Southern Confederate flag, a symbol of secession and slavery, from her State Parliament after a racist massacre in a black church in Charleston. A gesture perceived as unifying.
Two years later, in 2017, as white supremacists marched through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, she called Donald Trump to convince him (unsuccessfully) that he was wrong to cover them half-heartedly.
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Opponent
She withdraws her support for Donald Trump after the invasion of the capitol on January 6, 2021 by supporters of the outgoing president. She declares in February that the latter will not be able to seek a new mandate in 2024, this one having ” Let it go “ the Republican Party and being “fallen too low” by persisting in refusing his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
For the time being, she is only credited according to a latest YouGov poll, relayed by ” the Sunday newspaper “, than 11% against Donald Trump and the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.
