IF Donald Trump is going to be tripped up by one of the many legal cases against him or makes a significant blunder before the November election, Nikki Haley could become her party's presidential candidate. She is more popular than the only other candidate, Ron DeSantis, and resonates more with independent voters than he and Trump.
She just garnered 19% of the votes in the Iowa primary, with Trump at 51% and DeSantis at 21%. However, opinion polls place her national popularity at 20%, above that of DeSantis.
Haley, who turns 52 next week, is a former ambassador to the UN and governor of South Carolina.
She is the daughter of Ajit Singh and Raj Kaur Randhawa from the Punjab region in India, who settled in America in 1969. Her birth name is Nimrata Nikki Randhawa. After marrying National Guard officer Michael Haley in 1996, she became known as Nikki Haley. (He was known as Bill [William] Haley but his new wife persuaded him to use his middle name.) They have a daughter, Rena, and a son, Nalin.
Haley's parents are Sikhs; her father always wears a turban and her mother wears a sari. The small community of Bamberg initially found it strange, and Haley has said in many interviews that she has been aware all her life of being different. She had to play the role of Pocahontas in a school play, had to choose whether to play for the white or black sports team, and could not participate in beauty pageants because they were open only to white and black participants.
By the way, Britain's prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is also the child of Indian immigrants. Scotland's first minister, Humza Yousaf, is the son of Pakistani immigrants. Sunak is a practising Hindu and Yousaf is a Muslim. According to an old interview with Haley, her family attends both Sikh and Methodist services.
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