- Anthony Zurcher
- BBC North America Correspondent
Nikki Haley, former US ambassador to the United Nations and two-term governor of South Carolina, is reported to be announcing her bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
With the upcoming launch of the election campaign on February 15 in Charleston, South Carolina, Haley, 51, will become the second leading candidate from the Republican Party for the presidential elections, after her former boss, Donald Trump, launched his campaign in November.
Haley will be the third person of Indian descent to try to win the presidential nomination. She is following in the footsteps of Bobby Jindal, the deeply unpopular Louisiana governor when he tried in 2015, and Kamala Harris, the current vice president who sought the nomination in 2020.
During her time as governor of South Carolina, Haley developed a reputation as a business-friendly leader, focused on attracting large companies to the state. She gained national prominence for her response to the racially motivated mass shooting at Emmanuel Church in Charleston in 2015, which included a successful push to remove the Confederate flag from the Capitol grounds in Columbia, the state capital.
Although she endorsed Florida Senator Marco Rubio in the Republican presidential race in 2016, Trump offered her a position in his cabinet as ambassador to the United Nations after he won the White House. She served there for two years and, unlike many of Trump’s early appointees, never had a public falling out with the president.
However, Haley criticized Trump’s behavior up until and during the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol in Washington by his supporters. The day after the riots, she said in a speech that “History will judge harshly his actions since Election Day.”
Later that year, as speculation swirled about her political future and Trump regaining his standing and influence within the Republican Party, Haley said she would not run in 2024 if her former boss sought one.
But she backed away from that position in the past few months.
“When you look at running for president, you look at two things,” she said in an interview with Fox News last week. “First you look at whether the current situation is pushing for a new leadership. And the second question is: Am I the person who could be that new leader? ?”
And Hayley answered yes to both questions. This points to a possible campaign strategy in which she highlights her relative youth compared to both Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, should she win the nomination.
According to Trump, Haley recently called him to inform him of her interest in running. He said he told her she should and that he would welcome the competition.
It came shortly before the former president made his campaign appearance on Saturday in Hailey’s state, which is set to become a key early battleground for the Republican nomination.
Most early polls show Trump comfortably leading in the state he won primaries on his way to the presidency in 2016 — an indication of the uphill battle the former diplomacy will wage, even on what should be friendly territory.
A recent poll by the Trafalgar Group poll of current and potential candidates put Trump in first place with 43 percent and Haley in fourth place with 12 percent.