Nikki Haley is running for president, the 1st GOP rival to take on Trump

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, officially entered the race for president Tuesday, a well hinted-at move that is likely to leave her the lone major Republican challenger to former President Donald Trump for many weeks, if not months, as other potential 2024 rivals bide their time.

By announcing early, Haley, 51, who called for “generational change” in her party, seized an opportunity for a head start on fundraising and to command a closer look from potential Republican primary voters, whose support she needs if she is to rise from low single digits in early polls of the GOP field.

She made the announcement in a video, vowing to take on adversaries both foreign and domestic.

“Some people look at America and see vulnerability. The socialist left sees an opportunity to rewrite history. China and Russia are on the march. They all think we can be bullied, kicked around,” Haley said. “You should know this about me: I don’t put up with bullies. And when you kick back, it hurts them more if you’re wearing heels.”

Haley’s campaign has drawn encouragement from many polls showing that in a hypothetical multicandidate field, Trump wins less than 50% of Republican voters. Her entry into the race underscores how the former president has failed to scare off rivals in his third presidential campaign, announced in November after a historically disappointing midterms for Republicans

Haley is best known on the national stage for pursuing Trump’s foreign policy agenda for two years at the U.N.

As she seeks a broader following, Haley plans to lean into cultural issues, denouncing Democrats for pushing “socialism” in government and “wokeism” in schools, while citing her own biography as the daughter of Indian immigrants who rose to be South Carolina’s first female governor, and first nonwhite governor, as a rebuke of leftist claims that America harbors “systemic racism.”

Her announcement reversed a statement in 2021 that she would not run if Trump were a candidate. She was a rare figure to leave the Trump administration while earning praise from Trump rather than a parting insult. Trump recently said that when Haley informed him she was testing a run, he told her, “You should do it.’’

That the former president has so far not coined an insulting nickname or otherwise attacked Haley is a sign, perhaps, of his lingering regard for her, as well as the perception that she was not a major threat.

Since leaving the Trump administration in 2018, Haley has walked a fine line with the former president, praising his policies and accomplishments in office while offering criticism that appeals to Republican moderates. The day after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, she said his actions “will be judged harshly by history.”

But she opposed his impeachment for his actions surrounding the riot. “At some point, I mean, give the man a break,” she said on Fox News in late January 2021.

In the video, Haley does not mention Trump’s name, but she makes clear her intention to make a break with the Trump era. In addition to calling for a new generation to step up, she urges a return to “the values that still make our country the freest and greatest in the world.”

“Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections,” she said. “That has to change.”

In interviews last month, Haley swiped at the age of both Trump, 76, and President Joe Biden, 80. “I don’t think you need to be 80 years old to go be a leader in D.C.,” she told Fox News.

To advance into the top tier of Republican presidential hopefuls, Haley’s campaign is banking on her skills as a retail campaigner in early primary states. She will travel to New Hampshire after a rally planned in South Carolina on Wednesday, for a pair of town hall-style events, and she plans to be in Iowa next week.

Haley, who was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, and graduated from Clemson University, worked for her family’s dress boutique, including as bookkeeper, before winning the first of three terms in the South Carolina House of Representatives.

She was elected governor in 2010, becoming the first woman to hold that office in South Carolina. After a mass shooting in 2015 at an African American church in Charleston by a white supremacist, she called for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state Capitol.