It was the 1970s, and Nikki Randhawa was having trouble fitting in at Bamberg Elementary.

Her father wore a turban. Her mother wore a sari. And now, after she had finally adjusted to being the only Indian girl in her first-grade class, she was going to be a 7-year-old taking classes with kids who were pushing 8 and 9.

She’d placed out of her grade, having already learned how to read and write in cursive. She also had a knack for math. In this small town where there was nowhere to hide, as a tender-aged child she was recognizing how her religion, her race and even her gender would, as she put it in her first book, “be a constant issue.”

Then, she learned a lesson that would change her life forever.

"Your job is not to show them how you're different,” her mother told her. “Your job is to show them how you're similar.”

It has been more than 40 years since those days and Nikki Randhawa has become Nikki Haley, a 2024 Republican presidential candidate and the second woman of color to ever seek the GOP’s nomination for the White House. (The first was Angel Joy Chavis Rocker, a school guidance counselor from Florida, who entered the 2000 presidential race as a Republican, becoming the first African American to do so.)

“If you first talk about what you have in common, then people let their guard down,” Haley said in 2019, while discussing that formative moment during a book event at the Reagan Foundation. “And then usually, you can take on a challenge and get closer to a solution.” 

Nikki Haley discusses her book, "With All Due Respect: Defending America with Grit and Grace."

Her finely tuned political antenna has helped Haley defeat entrenched incumbents, win election twice to the governor’s mansion and form unlikely alliances with people she once publicly trashed.

Now, as a Republican presidential hopeful, Haley’s deft maneuvering between her identity as both an outsider and a sometimes underestimated political insider will begin to unfold on the national stage.

If her pattern continues, she will reject being pushed around and show some of the fire she’s displayed while operating in a male-dominated political world, be it in Columbia, New York or Washington, D.C.

One of her memorable moments at the UN came in 2018. After Haley went on TV to say Russian sanctions were imminent, National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow suggested Haley had suffered “momentary confusion” over what the Trump administration was actually planning.

“With all due respect, I don’t get confused,” she responded. Kudlow apologized.

But to understand what a Haley presidential bid could look like, you have to start in Bamberg, South Carolina, back to the days when she was an outsider.

The outsiders 

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The Randhawa family was tightknit as the only Indian family in rural Bamberg County when Gov. Nikki Haley and her siblings grew up there. Her parents, Ajit and Raj Randhawa, are in the center surrounded by their children. Nikki is in the jumper on the left, sitting on her father's knee. Clockwise from her are older sister Simran, big brother Mitti and, at bottom, little brother Simmi. Provided

Nikki Haley’s parents, both affluent natives of India, moved to rural South Carolina in 1969 when segregation ruled southern towns like Bamberg — bathrooms, schools, neighborhoods, all divided.

Haley’s father took a professor post at Voorhees College, a small historically Black school near Bamberg. The town, a county seat about 90 minutes northwest of Charleston, was home to a few thousand people who mostly farmed or worked in the local cotton mill.

Haley’s mother, Raj Randhawa, set out to find a house that could accommodate her elderly mother’s needs. She called the doctor who would deliver her four children.

Given Dr. Michael Watson made many house calls, could he suggest a place?

Watson, a White man, showed Randhawa two houses, both in White parts of town. At each, neighbors or owners balked at renting to the non-White family.

So, Watson found a third house, this one near Bamberg Textile Mill. He appealed to the mill’s CEO, persuading him to let the Indian family move in.

Soon after, in January 1972, Watson delivered the Randhawas’ third baby, a girl named Nimrata. Most people called her by her middle name, Nikki.

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Nikki Haley grew up in Bamburg, S.C. Haley's parents moved to rural South Carolina in 1969. File/Staff

Black, White and Brown

In her books and interviews, Haley often describes her childhood challenges through the lens of growing up a brown girl in the Black-and-White world.

One formative chapter occurred when she was 4 or 5 years old. She and her older sister, Simmi, entered the Wee Miss Bamberg pageant. In a ruffly white dress, Haley sang “This Land is Your Land.”

Judges lined up the contestants on stage: White girls on one side, Black girls on the other, one from each set to receive a crown. The organizers summoned the Randhawa girls. Haley wrote about the moment in her second book, “With All Due Respect.”

“The pageant organizers thought in categories, and they didn’t have a category for us,” she wrote.

Haley was left holding a consolation beach ball.

A family friend who taught with Randhawa and adored the family, said people in Bamberg were surprised to read that story in Haley’s book. Harriet Coker was among those who were shocked. She heard from a lot of people who didn’t remember the incident.

She also doesn’t think Haley would make it up.

Maybe the moment, inconsequential to many, simply meant far more to Haley. As a child, Haley felt the stares when her family walked into the area’s restaurants, her father wearing a turban, her mother in colorful saris.

When other families flocked to First Baptist and Trinity Methodist churches, the Randhawas were not part of the strong social networks that Sunday worship provides, especially in South Carolina’s small towns. The family practiced the Sikh faith; they had a room in their house for worship.

People in Bamberg didn’t know what to make of the strange new arrivals.

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Nikki Haley, former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor, speaks to students at Richard Carroll Elementary School in Bamberg in April 2019. File/Andy Shain/Staff

‘You have to pick a side’

Regardless of locals’ perceptions, the Randhawas welcomed a fourth child and set out to become part of Bamberg. It wasn’t easy, not at first.

By third grade at the recently desegregated public elementary school, other kids bullied Haley badly enough that her father, Ajit Randhawa, approached her teacher about it.

Raj Randhawa, who went back to school and became a teacher, spoke to Haley’s class — about India, about their traditions, about what it meant to come from another country to a little town like Bamberg. She also brought Indian snacks.

At home, the Randhawas taught their children to focus on how people are alike, not different, Haley later said. Indeed, some of the kids who had harassed Haley the worst eventually became her good friends. And she learned to fit into places where she stuck out, a skill that would prove invaluable later in politics.

She has since often told the story of one recess when the girls in her class divided into teams by race.

“You have to pick a side. Are you White, or are you Black?” she recalled a girl holding the ball asking.

The young Haley’s stomach clenched.

“I’m neither,” she said. “I’m Brown!”

Then, she grabbed the ball and ran for the field. Soon, the kids all played together, Haley recalled.

As locals tell it, the Randhawas didn’t particularly seek to join the Black community. Childhood friends of Haley remember a popular student, quiet and studious, who melded into the White world.

“She always fit right in with our group,” recalled Roberta Brabham Cothran, whose mother owned a hair salon the Randhawas frequented.

Part of that was the family’s openness, she said. Rather than try to hide their differences, they spoke about their faith. They showed guests the worship room in their home.

Cothran didn’t recall kids at recess separating into Black and White teams. Then again, she added, she mostly remembered dreading recess because she often was picked last.

Republican state Rep. Mark Smith, R-Mount Pleasant, a classmate who later was Haley’s junior prom date, recalled their circle of friends riding bicycles around town together. During the hot days of summer freedom, they’d pedal to the community pool, towels draped around their necks, change in their pockets for snacks.

Although local residents couldn’t point to a specific rule, they said everyone knew the pool was for Whites.

Rising stature

After several years in the classroom, Raj Randhawa opened an upscale clothing boutique called Exotica in 1976. It had an international flare, with clothing on one side and housewares like plates and glasses on the other. The store was filled with goods that local shoppers couldn’t find elsewhere in the rural area.

Instead of shunning the Indian shop owner, people flocked to the store.

Long before Amazon shipping, Randhawa also sent clothing she selected to customers in cities like Atlanta. The shop flourished despite the old cotton mill town’s economic woes.

The Randhawas moved into a high-end house, among the finest in a town where most people didn’t have much money. Classmates recalled Haley and her sister as top students, nicely dressed and well-liked.

“It might not have been easy at first,” Coker said, “but they became very well thought of.”

Haley often tells the story of becoming Exotica’s bookkeeper at 13, an after-school job that sparked her interest in accounting.

As she prepared for high school in the mid-1980s, the mill in Bamberg closed, tossing hundreds out of work. The Randhawas moved about 20 miles up the road to Orangeburg, a larger town with a mall and a movie theater, where they built their business into a multimillion dollar enterprise.

Haley enrolled at the new Orangeburg Preparatory School, a nearly all-White private institution formed by the merger of two former segregation academies. Its mascot: the Indians.

After she graduated in 1989, Haley headed to Clemson University and studied accounting. She met her future husband, Michael Haley, and converted to the Christian faith he practiced, cementing her place in the White milieu of South Carolina.

Armed with an accounting degree, Haley worked for a waste-management and recycling company in Charlotte, then returned to Exotica. She eventually became chief financial officer of the multimillion-dollar business her mother started in their living room.

Those early seasons of life lessons honed the conservative fiscal views that soon propelled her into public office.

Early leap into politics

Haley’s first run for elected office in 2004 was almost by mistake.

A half-decade after moving to ruby red Lexington County with her husband and parents, she learned that Larry Koon, the longest-serving Republican in the S.C. House of Representatives, was going to retire after more than 30 years in office.

Koon, the descendent of a prominent family that first settled the area in the 1730s, was the poster image of the Statehouse's good-old-boy network. Koon was well liked in the General Assembly, but after three decades, he had few legislative achievements to his name. His most notable bill dealt with hunting dogs.

Haley and another contender had already filed for the Republican nomination to replace Koon when the veteran legislator decided he wouldn’t retire after all.

Haley said she wouldn’t have run if she knew Koon would seek reelection. But she stayed in the race anyway, casting herself as a youthful, energetic candidate ready to take on the tired Statehouse status quo.

Haley wasn’t well-known in a county whose politics were long dominated by names like Koon, Shealy, Rawl and Metts.

But she embraced her role as an underdog, famously outworking her opponents.

She knocked on doors and handed out doughnuts and coffee. She touted her small-business experience and promised to answer the phone when constituents called. She called for lower taxes, greater investment in public education and better planning in fast-growing Lexington.

Haley’s grassroots campaign raised more than $50,000 and made her a local media darling.

The State newspaper in Columbia endorsed her as a “bright, energetic and open-minded” candidate.

Desperate, Koon’s campaign went dirty. Attack ads claimed Haley was a Buddhist and used Haley’s maiden name, Randhawa, to label her as an outsider.

Still, Haley forced a runoff with Koon and then beat him outright two weeks later, becoming South Carolina’s first lawmaker of Indian descent.

A quick start

In South Carolina’s 170-member General Assembly, new legislators are expected to watch and learn during their first few terms. The job of shaping meaningful legislation is mostly left up to a precious few who derive their power from experience and seniority.

Haley missed the memo.

Her colleagues in the 2005 freshman caucus, a group that included future U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman, elected her as their chairwoman.

She became a player in House floor debates, railing against anything that could be interpreted as government overreach. Seat belt laws, tobacco taxes and proposals to ban smoking in restaurants landed squarely in her crosshairs.

Haley aligned herself with then-Gov. Mark Sanford, who spent his two terms as governor quarreling with the Legislature. She irked her colleagues in voting to sustain almost all of the governor’s unpopular budget vetoes in 2005.

"These are taxpayer dollars we're voting on, and it's our responsibility to be conservative," Haley said at the time.

In letters to the newspaper, Haley’s constituents described her as far more responsive than her predecessor. When an elementary school student chose to do a research project on Haley, the legislator appeared at the student’s house for an interview.

By the end of her first two-year session, Haley had earned a leadership role in the House Republican Caucus and soon would gain a subcommittee chairmanship.

She was building a reputation as a prolific fundraiser and politician. Some pundits could already see a statewide run in her future.

"The job is truly what you make it," Haley said then. "If you want to be a player, you can be a player right from the beginning."

Haley’s star only continued to grow.

She championed a series of proposals calling for greater transparency and accountability in government, collecting powerful allies and enemies alike.

She supported an effort to discourage pet projects in the state budget by requiring the legislators behind them to attach their names to the spending. She co-sponsored a bill to eliminate “leadership PACs” — slush funds of campaign dollars controlled by top lawmakers.

Most notably, Haley launched a statewide campaign for on-the-record voting in the Legislature, hoping to end the practice of informal voice votes that shielded legislators from scrutiny.

She traveled the state promoting the bill. Local news outlets rallied behind her efforts to drench the Statehouse in sunlight. Influential figures like Gov. Sanford and powerful state Sens. Glenn McConnell and Harvey Peeler joined her cause.

In a tactic she would repeat often as governor, Haley touted the bill in part by shaming her colleagues in the Legislature, recounting how they had recently boosted their own retirement pay with an unrecorded voice vote.

Not everyone was thrilled with the upstart legislator’s boat-rocking.

House Speaker Bobby Harrell, Charleston Republican and former Haley ally, pushed through a rule change that prevented Haley from being elected chairwoman of the powerful House Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee.

Haley and one of her allies were then kicked off the committee entirely, prompting claims of retaliation that Harrell denied.

The episode turned Haley into a martyr for good government, only propelling her political rise.

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Then-Republican candidate for South Carolina governor Nikki Haley (second from left) watches election results come in after the polls closed from a hotel restaurant with her husband Michael (from left), son Nalin, 9, and daughter Rena, 12, on Nov. 2, 2010, in Columbia. File/David Goldman/AP

Running for governor

Haley had made a name for herself within the Statehouse bubble.

But she was still widely unknown among everyday South Carolinians when she launched her campaign for governor in May 2009.

In a crowded GOP field that included the attorney general, lieutenant governor, a congressman and a state senator, the 37-year-old Haley was yet again the underdog.

And in a state with few women in the House and none in the Senate, Haley was again an outsider playing an insider’s game.

The campaign got off to a rocky start. A month in, the value of Haley’s most-prized endorsement plummeted when Sanford admitted to an extramarital affair and faced calls to resign.

Haley quickly scrubbed photos of Sanford off her campaign website, but the damage was done. Her close ties to the governor — Mark Sanford in a dress, she was sometimes called — hamstrung her fundraising efforts even as her opponents built sizable campaign war chests.

Early straw polls showed Haley in dead last, behind even prospective candidates not yet in the race.

By February 2010, just four months ahead of the GOP primary, a Winthrop Poll found a whopping four out of five South Carolinians were still unfamiliar with Haley.

Still, Haley plugged away. She ran what she would later describe as “the best grassroots underdog campaign we have ever seen.”

She asked supporters to call 10 of their friends to spread the word about her campaign, then ask each of those 10 to call 10 more.

Haley surfed the era’s anti-establishment Tea Party wave, casting herself as a fresh face in a field of career politicians. She touted her small business credentials and her push for on-the-record voting.

She proposed cutting taxes on businesses, saying her upbringing taught her “how hard it is to make a dollar and how easy it is for government to take it.”

A March endorsement from former Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney buoyed her campaign.

In the race’s final stretch, former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin made a surprise visit to Columbia to endorse Haley as a “scrappy underdog” and conservative reformer.

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Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin waves to supporters after she endorses South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley (left) during a campaign rally at The Statehouse on May, 14, 2010, in Columbia. File/Mary Ann Chastain/AP

And finally, Sanford came through. After repeated pleas from Haley and her supporters, the famously frugal governor reluctantly agreed to pour $400,000 into Haley’s campaign from his political group. The money bought two weeks’ worth of pro-Haley TV ads at a critical point in the campaign season.

Haley soon surged to a commanding lead, one that survived even the desperate final days of the primary.

A veteran state senator called Haley a “raghead” on a popular political show. And two men separately claimed they had extramarital affairs with her.

In what would become a trend over Haley’s career, the attacks merely glanced off Haley without doing damage. She repeatedly denied the affair allegations, which were never proven.

Republican voters responded with sympathy rather than scorn, rallying to Haley’s side and decrying the dark side of S.C. politics.

Just as she had in her first run for Statehouse, Haley forced a GOP runoff. Then she crushed former U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett for the Republican nomination two weeks later.

Five months later, after a bruising race against Democrat Vincent Sheheen, she won the general election as well.

During her inaugural address, Haley briefly alluded to the state’s history of slavery and discrimination and said it was time to turn the page on the past.

She pointed to her journey as a daughter of immigrants to the top of South Carolina politics, winning an office never before held by a woman or person of color.

“Today is a great day in South Carolina,” she said, issuing one of her favorite catchphrases. “It’s a day for new beginnings.”

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Chief Justice Jean Toal administers the oath of office to Gov. Nikki Haley. Haley's family looks on, including husband Michael Haley and children Nalin, 9, and Rena, 12, on Jan. 12, 2011 in Columbia. File/Grace Beahm Alford

Haley as governor

Haley’s election as the country’s youngest governor rocketed her to national GOP stardom.

But her plans for a conservative overhaul of state government received a more lukewarm reception in the halls of the Statehouse. Haley mostly followed the Sanford playbook of dealing with lawmakers: bullying and shaming them into submission, often unsuccessfully.

She handed out “report cards” to legislators, flunking those who wouldn’t support her agenda. She told visitors to the Statehouse to “take a good shower” after they left the legislative chambers.

She tried — and failed — to call lawmakers back into session during the offseason to pass her government restructuring plan. And she worked to oust her legislative foes as they came up for reelection, vocally backing their Republican challengers with mixed results.

Still, Haley was able to cajole legislators to back key aspects of her agenda, including passing on-the-record voting and restructuring government.

While many questioned Haley’s dedication to diplomacy, few doubted her ability as South Carolina’s chief saleswoman.

Haley proved adept at luring new industries to the state. South Carolina added 400,000 jobs during her time as governor, with Haley playing a key role in recruiting a Volvo manufacturing facility to Berkeley County and a Giti Tire plant to Chester.

She employed catch-phrases like “Get excited!” and “It’s a great day in South Carolina” to boost the state’s perception, though critics said the words rang hollow as the Palmetto State’s roads crumbled, dams burst and schools churned out waves of unprepared graduates.

With one finger ever to the GOP winds, Haley took hard-line stances against immigration, abortion and Medicaid expansion. She put social programs to the ax and pushed for stronger voter ID laws.

Just as in the 2010 campaign, Haley weathered scandals and attacks that might have sunk a lesser politician.

Dysfunction marred her state agencies, many of them reeling after Recession-era budget cuts. The Department of Social Services failed to protect children in its care, and the Department of Revenue allowed hackers to steal the sensitive personal data of more that 6 million people and businesses.

Haley botched her ouster of prominent financier Darla Moore from the University of South Carolina’s board. Her office was caught in a lie as it pushed a narrative that Moore was removed for being unresponsive to the governor’s calls. Emailed obtained by The State newspaper showed Haley was planning to replace Moore with a campaign donor well before ever reaching out to her.

Haley also survived a hard-fought ethics case over whether she had used her position as a legislator for personal benefit, including questions about her work for a hospital foundation and engineering firm that each had business before the General Assembly.

Then she used the experience to push for a new ethics package, including more transparency of lawmakers’ income sources and independent investigations of legislators who previously policed themselves.

Where Haley shined brightest were times of crisis.

After a White North Charleston police officer shot and killed an unarmed Black motorist, reigniting national discussions of race and police brutality, Haley signed a bill requiring body cameras for police officers.

The Emanuel AME Church massacre in 2015 displayed her empathy and prompted her signature legislative achievement, successfully calling on lawmakers to remove the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds.

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Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley attended all nine funerals for victims of the Emanuel AME Church shooting in 2015 and was a fixture with other leaders at events. She also formed friendships with the survivors, particularly Felicia Sanders. File/Grace Beahm Alford/Staff

Her daily press conferences during a series of hurricanes showed her calm and poise under pressure.

As Haley took on a role as South Carolina’s “healer-in-chief,” she also continued to flirt with national politics. She spoke at Republican National Conventions and gave the GOP response to then-President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.

In 2016, she was named one of the world’s most 100 influential people by Time magazine.

“It is during challenging times when you really learn the mettle of a leader,” U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham wrote, “and in the case of Nikki Haley, she excelled to the lasting benefit of our state.”

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American Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaks during a Security Council meeting on the situation between Britain and Russia on April 18, 2018, at United Nations headquarters. File/Mary Altaffer/AP

On the global stage

At the time, almost no one at the United Nations knew her name.

It was 2016, before Thanksgiving and after the U.S. presidential election. The international community was in shock, and diplomats were bracing for impact after Donald Trump's win.

But no one expected Nikki Haley.

The South Carolina governor had no obvious foreign policy experience, outside of convincing companies like BMW and Volvo to open manufacturing plants in her state.

Yet, Trump had picked Haley to be his United Nations ambassador, characterizing her as a “proven deal-maker.”

Her 2017 State of the State address acted as a farewell speech, in which she promised South Carolina would never be far from her mind.

“As I move into this new capacity, it is the lessons I learned from this state and its people, starting all the way back when I was a young Indian girl in small, rural Bamberg who spent her time playing tennis and dreaming big, that I will take with me,” she said.

Haley was a rising GOP star, but her lack of foreign policy experience — along with her initial opposition to Trump’s candidacy — made her a surprising choice for the job.

The position would require deft political maneuvering on issues of global significance, from condemning human rights violations to brokering nuclear sanctions.

Haley confronted the glaring omission in her resume during her first confirmation hearing.

“Like most government agencies, the United Nations could benefit from a fresh set of eyes. I will take an outsider’s look at the institution,” Haley said in opening statements to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Still, the patronizing comments continued among foreign diplomats: How could she be expected to wrangle with the Russians? The Chinese? Fellow members of the Security Council?

"There were always two Nikki Haleys here," said Richard Gowan, a U.N. expert at the International Crisis Group.

“There was the public-facing representative of the Trump administration who said she had come to the U.N. to take names, but there was also a second track to a lot of her diplomacy,” he continued. “In her meetings, especially with other ambassadors from the Security Council, we heard that she came across as hard-nosed but also as someone who came to the U.N. to do business.

Haley showed a willingness to chart her own path. Even though Trump appointed her, she broke with the president on a number of foreign policy stances, like declaring Russia was guilty of war crimes in Syria.

Asked if she favored establishing a registry for Muslims in the United States — an idea Trump had proposed on the 2016 presidential campaign trail — Haley said no, but then suggested that it no longer reflected his views either. “This administration and I do not think there should be any registry,” she said.

But she also stood by Trump when he announced the United States would be leaving the Paris Climate Accord, a landmark agreement to reduce carbon emissions and stop climate change. During her tenure, the administration also withdrew from the U.N. Human Rights Council.

A few weeks after Trump formally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and announced plans to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, member countries at the United Nations turned against America and, by extension, Haley.

Before taking a vote to condemn the United States for its actions on Jerusalem, Haley punched back. It was Haley against the world.

“At the UN, we’re constantly asked to do more and give more — in the past we have. So, when we make a decision, at the will of the American people, about where to locate OUR embassy, we don’t expect those we’ve helped to target us,” Haley wrote on social media, promising, “On Thursday, there will be a vote at the UN criticizing our choice. And yes, the US will be taking names.”

When it came time to vote, Haley raised her hand to veto the resolution — the only one to do so. The other 14 members of the Security Council voted in favor of the text.

Resignation from UN

In a tumultuous administration, where most Cabinet-level officials were frequently fired (and then given a nickname), Haley was the rare exception. She not only left the Trump administration on her own terms, but she received a glowing public review on the way out.

During a joint press conference in the Oval Office, a gracious Haley sat next to Trump as he lavished praise on her and lamented her departure.

“She got to know the players. She got to know China, Russia, India. She knows everybody on a very first-name basis. And they like her,” Trump said. “And I think maybe more importantly, they respect her.”

Her reason for stepping away was not clear at the time but many political analysts were quick to cast her as a formidable GOP prospect in 2024 or beyond.

“In my mind, she will be the first female president,” U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman, who entered the Statehouse along with Haley in 2005, said at the time of Haley’s departure. “But this is a shocker.”

She moved back to South Carolina, closing on a Kiawah Island home in the fall of 2019 some 45 minutes south of Charleston.

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President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2018, in Washington. File/Evan Vucci/AP

Life after the Trump administration

Returning to South Carolina did not mean slowing down. Instead, Haley started an advocacy group called Stand for America that says it promotes policies that “strengthen America’s economy, culture and national security.”

She began writing her second book, went on a speaking tour that took her around the country and accepted a seat on the Boeing Co. board.

She also reengaged with her nonprofit group, The Original Six Foundation, which she had to step away from while working at the United Nations. The foundation is named for the six members of her family who grew up in Bamberg, a town of 3,300 residents some 90 miles northwest of Charleston.

Her home base moved to the resort island of Kiawah, 45 minutes south of Charleston.

She also returned to the campaign trail, a move that kept her in the minds of voters even when her name was not on the ballot.

In 2020, in her home congressional district, she endorsed and headlined a fundraiser for then-state Rep. Nancy Mace, who went on to flip South Carolina’s coastal 1st Congressional District back to Republican control.

Outside of politics, she continued to make waves and capture national headlines. In March 2020, Haley resigned from Boeing’s board of directors when she disagreed with the planemaker’s push for a $60 billion federal bailout to help it weather the coronavirus pandemic.

“I want to be part of helping the company as it pushes through it. However, the board and executive team are going in a direction I cannot support,” Haley wrote.

While noting that “cash is tight” at Boeing, she added, “that is equally true for numerous other industries and for millions of small businesses.”

“I cannot support a move to lean on the federal government for a stimulus or bailout that prioritizes our company over others and relies on taxpayers to guarantee our financial position,” Haley wrote. “I have long held strong convictions that this is not the role of government.”

In 2021, she hit the campaign trail with Republican Glenn Youngkin, who flipped the Virginia governor’s office by defeating Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a President Joe Biden ally who’d already previously been governor. She also campaigned with New Jersey GOP gubernatorial hopeful Jack Ciatterelli that year, who stunned Democrats by coming within a few percentage points of winning in the solidly blue state.

One of her shrewdest political moves happened on her home turf in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District.

It was one of the Palmetto State’s most competitive Republican congressional primaries and seasoned GOP operatives pointed to her maneuvering as a sign of her star power. In that race, Haley found herself at odds with Trump.

Haley backed U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace; Trump backed challenger Katie Arrington.

Haley sided with the winner.

Mace’s campaign manager later compared that early endorsement to an opening move in chess, dubbing it “Haley’s gambit.”

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Gov. Nikki Haley and Marco Rubio attend a rally on Feb. 19, 2016, at Stall High School in North Charleston. File/Grace Beahm/Staff

Flip-flops on Trump

When the violence of Jan. 6, 2021 unfolded in Washington, Haley condemned the attack in a series of tweets and later released a statement calling what happened “a national disaster.”

At the time, it seemed like Haley was making a strong break from her former boss, even condemning him in a speech to Republican National Committee members.

But Haley’s initial criticisms of Trump would soften. Her political instincts would recalibrate. Where she had once predicted Trump’s words and actions would be “judged harshly by history,” she soon began making distinctions.

When asked about Trump and his role in the future of the GOP, she would heap praise on his policies and the work of the Trump administration rather than zeroing in on the man himself.

Then, she flip-flopped.

“We need him in the Republican Party. I don’t want us to go back to the days before Trump,” she told the Wall Street Journal nine months after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

Her shifting assessments of the former president are expected to come under even more scrutiny now that she is offering herself as a GOP presidential nominee and, by proxy, as an alternative to Trump. Others could soon join her on the campaign trail, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and possibly a fellow South Carolinian, Republican U.S. Sen. Tim Scott.

During a recent interview on Fox News with Bret Baier, Haley signaled her clearest indication yet that there is a place for her in the 2024 presidential field. She boiled her thinking down to two questions: Does the current situation call for new leadership, and is she the person who could be that new leader?

“Yes, we need to go in a new direction,” Haley answered. “And can I be that leader? Yes. I think I can be that leader."

Reach Caitlin Byrd cbyrd@postandcourier.com, Avery Wilkes is at awilkes@postandcourier.com and Jennifer Berry Hawes is at jhawes@postandcourier.com

Senior Politics Reporter

Caitlin Byrd is the senior politics reporter at The Post and Courier. An award-winning journalist, Byrd previously worked as an enterprise reporter for The State newspaper, where she covered the Charleston region and South Carolina politics. Raised in eastern North Carolina, she has called South Carolina home since 2016.

Projects reporter

Avery G. Wilks is an investigative reporter based in Columbia. The USC Honors College graduate was named the 2018 S.C. Journalist of the Year for his reporting on South Carolina's nuclear fiasco and abuses within the state's electric cooperatives.

Political Editor

Schuyler Kropf is The Post and Courier political editor. He has covered every major political race in South Carolina dating to 1988, including for U.S. Senate, governorship, the Statehouse and Republican and Democratic presidential primaries.

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