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Nikki Haley is an American politician and diplomat, and a prominent member of the Republican Party. She was born in 1972 to Indian Sikh immigrant parents. She is an accountant and businesswoman. She was one of the biggest defenders of Israel in the Trump administration.

She began her political career by running for a seat in the House of Representatives, and was the first woman to hold the position of Governor of South Carolina, and the second Indian American to hold this position in America. She served as ambassador to the United Nations under former President Donald Trump, against whom she is competing to seize the Republican Party nomination for the 2024 US presidential elections.

Birth and upbringing

Nimrata Nikki Randhawa-Healey, known as Nikki Haley, was born on January 20, 1972 in Bamberg, a small town of 2,500 in rural South Carolina whose borders are marked with a sign reading "Nikki Haley's Hometown."

From her early years, she was known by her middle name, “Nikki,” which means “little one” in Punjabi, and when she married in 1996, she took her husband’s last name, “Hailey.”

She is ranked third among her four siblings, two Indian immigrants from a wealthy family. They came from Punjab to Canada and then to America in 1969 in search of greater opportunities, “even if that meant starting over,” as Haley says.

Nikki Haley was appointed US ambassador to the United Nations under former President Donald Trump (Reuters)

They were the only ones of Indian descent living in the town, which was bisected by the railway line, with black residents' homes on one side and white residents' homes on the other.

She said that her family “does not belong to either category,” and even when she participated at the age of five in a white beauty pageant and a black beauty pageant, the organizers kept her away because they did not know which category she could be crowned in, as she was neither white nor black, according to what was narrated in her biography. .

Hailey is proud that her educated family was able to gain acceptance among the townspeople in the end, and her father, who worked as a biology teacher for 30 years at a historically black college, regularly appears with his turban in civic initiatives.

Her mother taught for 7 years in Bamberg public schools, before opening the first shop selling imported gifts and jewelry.

She was raised on Sikh beliefs, and in her twenties she converted to Christianity and began attending the Methodist Church. She is married to a captain in the Army National Guard and they have two children.

Hailey practices Taekwondo and has a 4th degree honorary black belt.

Nikki Haley holds photos of victims of the chemical attack in Syria during an emergency Security Council meeting in 2017 (European News Agency)

Study and scientific training

She was educated in Orangeburg preparatory schools in South Carolina, and attended high school at one of the private "segregation academies," established by white families to avoid the poor public school system.

In 1990, she enrolled at Clemson University, and received a scholarship in textile management. After her first year of study, the love of the language of numbers that she developed while working in her mother’s store prompted her to change her major, so she studied accounting sciences and obtained a bachelor’s degree in 1994.

On May 10, 2018, she received an honorary doctorate in public service from the University of South Carolina. She also received an honorary doctorate in humanities from Clemson University, and was selected to serve for life on the university’s Board of Trustees since October 2021.

Professional life

At the age of 13, she was handling accounts for her mother's business, and after graduating from college, she worked as an account manager for a recycling company in Charlotte, and then worked as CFO for the family company, Exotica.

In 1998 she was appointed to the Board of Directors of the Orangeburg County Chamber of Commerce, in 2003 to the Board of Directors of the Lexington Chamber of Commerce, and in 2004 she became President of the National Association of Women in Business.

In 2010, Nikki Haley was elected as the 117th Governor of South Carolina (Reuters)

In the 2004 primary and general elections, she won a seat in the legislature representing South Carolina's 87th District, and was then re-elected in 2006 and 2008.

On November 2, 2010, she was elected as the 117th Governor of South Carolina, and was re-elected to a second term in November 2014.

On January 24, 2017, she resigned from the position of governor after the US Senate confirmed, by a majority of 96 votes, her appointment as the 29th US ambassador to the United Nations, during the era of former President Donald Trump.

On December 31, 2018, she addressed Trump in her resignation letter as ambassador, saying, "I expect you will appreciate my sense that the return from government to the private sector is not a step down but a step up."

On April 29, 2019, she was elected to Boeing's board of directors, where she received more than $250,000 in fees and stock awards, according to the company's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

It was said that she had previously fought union efforts in the company, and resigned from it in 2020, in objection to her seeking a rescue plan from the federal government during the Covid-19 pandemic. She then joined the board of a major home builder and began advising an investment fund.

Media reports stated that between March 2022 and January 2023, she gave dozens of speeches and generally received $185,000 for each participation, earning about $2.5 million in 11 months.

This amount is much greater than the salary she received during the eight years she spent as governor of the state, when her salary was about 106 thousand dollars, and after that she was an ambassador to the United Nations (she earned less than 200 thousand dollars).

Political formation and experience

Haley grew up in a non-political family, as she describes, and said that her transition to politics happened almost by chance, as her interest in this field began after she became more involved as an accountant at Exotica.

At various times she cited sources of inspiration for her decisions to run, crediting Hillary Clinton's speech in which she said "women should dare to compete in politics."

At other times, she cited veteran politician Britta Allison as influential in her decision to run for election in the state of Carolina, who at the time ranked last in the number of women elected to political office.

When Haley became involved in party work with the Republican Party, she was still a relative newcomer to the political scene and an unknown candidate, as she had never participated in a student union or anything that would qualify her to run in her first electoral race in 2004.

Nikki Haley in the first debate of the Republican candidates for the 2024 US presidential campaign (Reuters)

But she was able to defeat the longest-serving state legislator, and in 2006 she became the majority in a second term, and in a third term in 2008, and by 2009, she was one of 17 women in the 170-member Carolina Legislature.

During her five years in the legislature, she was against increasing taxpayer-funded benefits, but she voted against a proposed tax on cigarettes for smoking prevention programs and smoking-related cancer research.

She also tried to push the legislative authority to publicly record how members voted on bills, and rejected her request by excluding her from membership in an important committee, so she tried to end her career.

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin gave her support to Haley, which gained her popularity and strength, and as a result, she advanced in the race.

She moved from her mother's store to the governor's building in 6 years, and she was the youngest state governor at that time, the first woman to lead an economically, politically, and racially divided state, and the second Indian American to hold this position in the history of the United States, after Bobby Jindal in Louisiana.

She was described as a rising star within the Republican Party, and during her term she focused on attracting major manufacturers, championing Republican causes, banning abortion after 20 weeks, and opposing irregular immigration.

Nikki Haley gave dozens of speeches and received $185,000 for each speech (Reuters)

In July 2013, the state Ethics Commission fined Nikki Haley $3,500 and issued her a "public warning" for failing to report the addresses of eight donors during her 2010 gubernatorial campaign.

The year 2015 marked a turning point in her political path, as her star rose to prominence following the decision to raise the Confederate (separatist) flag from the Capitol building in Carolina, after a white man killed 9 blacks at the Emanuel African Church in Charleston.

She said at the time that the flag was “a deeply offensive symbol of a brutal, oppressive past,” and then faced backlash after she said in a 2019 radio interview that “the Confederate flag symbolizes service, sacrifice and heritage.”

Presidential ambition

In 2016, Haley's political profile continued to rise, when she was chosen to present the Republican Party's answer to then-US President Barack Obama.

Her selection as ambassador to the United Nations was a surprise to her, as she told President Trump's team, "I don't even know what the United Nations does," according to what she stated in her memoirs in 2019.

She then became the permanent ambassador and the voice for the American position at the United Nations in 2017, and the position allowed her to develop her foreign policy credentials, including her efforts to isolate North Korea and Iran. She suddenly resigned from her government position in 2018, but at the same time remained active in politics.

Nikki Haley questioned the numbers of Palestinian refugees and accused UNRWA of exaggerating it (Anatolia Agency)

In February 2019, she launched a new political group called For America, which works to promote public policies. In early 2021, she established a political action committee to endorse and support candidates in the 2022 midterm elections. On February 14, 2023, she officially announced her candidacy for the US presidential elections, which are scheduled to begin on November 5, 2024.

The former Trump ally and rival has never lost an election in the past, and is the only woman competing in the Republican primary. In August 2023, she became the 12th woman to participate in a presidential debate in the country's more than 200-year history of presidential politics, and the third Republican woman to do so.

Pro-Israel

Aspects of Haley's tenure as US ambassador included her strong and continuous defense of Israel. In fact, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy - a supporter of the rights of the Palestinian people - accused her in an article published in the Israeli newspaper "Haaretz" of being "ignorant of the Palestinian issue" and said that she was "more Israeli" than the president of the United States. Israeli government Benjamin Netanyahu.

She was the one who made the head of the United Nations committee resign after her report stated that there was apartheid in Israel. She also removed the Palestinian Salam Fayyad from the position of United Nations envoy to Libya, and admitted that this was only because he was Palestinian.

She is proud that she was the first state governor in America to sign legislation to combat the anti-Israel movement known as “BDS,” which made Israel the first to welcome her nomination for the position of United Nations Ambassador.

In her confirmation speech as UN ambassador, she said, "I will not go to New York and will abstain from voting when the United Nations seeks to create an international environment that encourages a boycott of Israel." Haley used her veto power against the draft resolution of Kuwaiti Ambassador Mansour Al-Otaibi, which called for international protection for the Palestinian people.

In December 2017, she strongly defended Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and issued an American veto in the United Nations Security Council, defending the "right" to move the American embassy there, and threatened to stop funding the world organization if it voted to condemn this decision.

It refused to reveal the “blacklist” of about 206 international companies operating in settlements within the occupied Palestinian territories, which international law considers illegal.

It also questioned the numbers of Palestinian refugees, accused the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) of exaggerating their numbers, and refused their return to their lands, saying that this would threaten the Jewish majority in the country.

She pushed for America's withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council in protest against what she described as "bias against Israel," and defended the withdrawal of funding from UNRWA. It incites the displacement of Gazans and their resettlement in other countries.

Compositions

Nikki Haley has written several books, including:

  • “If You Want to Do Something Here Are Leadership Lessons from Bold Women,” published in 2022.

  • “With All Due Respect...Defending America in Good and Bad,” published in 2019, chronicles the scenes of the Trump administration.

  • “Can't Is Not a Choice: My American Story,” a 2012 memoir about her life and path to the governor's office of South Carolina.

Source: Al Jazeera + websites