Washington: Nikki Haley, a former UN ambassador and governor of South Carolina, has competed in 22 events since announcing her candidature less than four months ago in Iowa. She is polling in the low single digits both locally and nationally, and she is also well behind in fundraising.
Only Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, has attacked the former president as unfit to take office again among the other contenders who have so far made their intentions known. Nikki isn't that anti-Trump, at least not yet. She mentions Trump only once in her quick-witted, well-paced town-hall speech, explaining his response when, in her capacity as UN ambassador, she showed him a comparison between American aid to nations and their General Assembly votes on American priorities.
Asked in mid-May at a town hall in Ankeny, Iowa, how she would ensure fair trials for the insurrectionists of January 6th, she replied, “I will continue to say it was a terrible day, it was not a beautiful day,” as Trump has described it. As some members of the audience clapped, she added, “If they broke the law, they should pay the price.” DeSantis has suggested that, like Trump, he might pardon insurrectionists.
She presents her identity as a rebuff to claims that America is racist, and also as something powerful enough to help her unite America. “We weren’t white enough to be white, we weren’t black enough to be black,” she tells audiences as she describes growing up in the only Indian American family in Bamberg, South Carolina. “When I would get teased on the playground, my mom would always say, ‘Your job is not to show them how you’re different. Your job is to show them how you’re similar.’ Our country could use my mom’s advice right now.”