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Nikki Haley was born Nimrata Nikki Randhawa on January 20, 1972 – which happens to be the date presidents are inaugurated – to Raj and Ajit Randhawa, Indian immigrants from Punjab, who worked as teachers and ran a successful foreign goods business called Exotica International Inc.
Her mother, Raj, lost her father at a young age, but came from a wealthy family.
She met Ajit at a mountain vacation area near Dharamsala, India, finding him ‘a good-looking man,’ and their parents decided they could be married.
Haley’s father Ajit got a PhD from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada – marking his first time living in North America.
‘He left India for the new world with eight dollars in his pocket,’ Haley recalled in her 2012 book, Can’t Is Not An Option.
Ajit landed a job as an associate professor of biology at Voorhes College, a historically black college, in Denmark, South Carolina.
He and Raj arrived in Columbia, South Carolina in 1969, with Haley recounting in her book how much trouble they had finding housing.
Nikki Haley celebrating her dad Ajit’s (left) birthday. Her parents immigrated to the United States in 1969 after her father became an associate professor of biology at Voorhes College
‘When it came time for my parents to find a home, no one would rent to them,’ Haley said. ‘Word quickly got around that my father worked at the ‘black school,’ and besides that, he and my mom were obviously foreigners themselves.’
They eventually had to buy a house in the tiny town of Bamberg, South Carolina, a town of 2,500 people located between Columbia and Charleston.
‘When they finally found a house they had to buy it, not rent it. And they were told there were conditions: They couldn’t entertain black people in it. They couldn’t have alcohol in it. And they had to sell it back to the man they bought it from,’ she wrote.
Haley was born and raised in Bamberg.
‘The railroad tracks divided the town by race. I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants – not black, not white – I was different,’ she recalled in her campaign announcement video, released Tuesday. ‘But my mom would always say your job is not to focus on the differences, but the similarities and my parents reminded me and my siblings every day how blessed we were to live in America.’
Nikki Haley (center left) and her husband Michael Haley (center right) during a visit to India while she was serving as governor of South Carolina in 2014
In Can’t Is Not An Option, Haley suggested being the only Indian-American in a small southern town wasn’t easy.
She recalled how in kindergarten, for the Thanksgiving play, she was cast as Pocahontus.
‘To this day, I’m not sure what my teachers were thinking. Did they realize I wasn’t that kind of Indian?’ she wrote.
In another instance, Haley recallls being disqualified – and given a beach ball as a consolation prize – from a beauty pageant, because judges didn’t know if she fit in the white or black category and didn’t want ‘either race to get upset.’
Haley had early memories of her parents, devout Sikh, being pushed to convert to Christianity by Bamberg’s residents – something Haley did herself later in life.
She also recalled being the smartest kid in the class – so much that at the end of first grade her school moved her to second grade so she could start third grade in the fall.
Haley attended the highly-ranked Clemson University and studied textile management and later accounting, explaining in her book that politics wasn’t talked about at home and she never would have thought of taking a political science class.
She met the man she would marry, William Michael ‘Bill’ Haley, her first week at college. Bill, as he was called then, had a roommate from Bamberg, which is how they were introduced.
The couple didn’t date immediately, but eventually did so for five years before Michael proposed.
Nikki Haley (left) and her children and husband Michael (right) in a vintage snap shared on Instagram
In Can’t Is Not An Option, Haley recalled that upon the announcement of their engagement, Haley’s parents said the marriage could go forward despite Michael not being Indian if he got a job, bought a house, bought a car and cut off all contact with their daughter for a year.
The couple waited two more years, with Haley saying they ‘ignored my father’s ultimatum that we not see each other for a year,’ and eventually received the blessing from her family to start planning a wedding.
Their nuptials at Hilton Head got canned due to Hurricane Fran, so the couple ultimately married in ceremonies in Columbia, South Carolina in September 1996.
The couple have two children, Rena and Nalin, and two dogs, Bentley and Rio.
Out of school, Haley worked at a recycling company based in Charlotte, before returning to Bamberg to work for her parents’ business.
She joined the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Women Business Owners.
At NAWBO she met the woman who could become her political mentor, Eleanor Kitzman, who first prodded Haley about what political party she might belong to.
‘Oh, you are clearly a Republican,’ Haley recalled Kitzman telling her after she described herself as wanting the government to leave business alone and the government to stay within its means.
Haley launched her first campaign, for the state House seat in the 87th District, in 2004, under the impression that the incumbent Republican state Rep. Larry Koon was retiring.
He was not retiring, and thus Haley was challenging the longest-serving legislator in the South Carolina Statehouse.
She beat Koon in a GOP primary run-off.
Haley recalled how Koon, who called her ‘little lady,’ never called her to concede – and never spoke to her again.
Nikki Haley and (from left) her son Nalin, daughter Rena and husband Michael
Five years later, Haley was running for governor.
She had the backing of Republican Gov. Mark Sanford, the 2012 GOP nominee and now Sen. Mitt Romney and South Carolina’s first lady Jenny Sanford.
In her book, she recalled becoming briefly ensnared in Sanford’s sex scandal – the then-governor disappeared for several days in 2009 to spend time with his mistres in Argentina.
At the time, Haley – a candidate for governor – was in Washington, but her car was parked at the airport by Sanford’s.
‘They wouldn’t be putting a male candidate in the humiliating position of having to explain why his car was parked by chance next to the governor’s at the airport,’ Haley wrote.
Haley survived another GOP primary run-off to win the nomination in 2010 and then the general election, making history as the state’s first female and Indian-American governor.
One of her most memorable challenges as South Carolina governor was whether to let the Confederate flag continue to be flown outside the state capitol.
She signed legislation in July 2015 – a month after the heinous, racially motivated Charleston church shooting – to have it taken down, later saying that it was hijacked by gunman Dylann Roof, while noting that some southerners see the flag not as a symbol of racism but of ‘service and sacrifice and heritage.’
During the 2016 campaign, Haley was originally aligned with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign, which only lasted until mid-March, as he dropped out after losing to Trump badly in the Florida primary.
She then backed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who also lost to Trump.
Still, Trump picked Haley to serve as his ambassador to the United Nations, making the announcement just three weeks after winning the 2016 election.
Haley stayed in that position until the last day of 2018, making it nearly halfway through Trump’s single term.
There were times she allowed daylight between herself and the president, including when he implemented a so-called ‘Muslim ban,’ and when he was accused of sexual assault.
Haley officially jumped into the presidential race Tuesday with a video announcement.
‘I’ve never lost a race,’ she told Fox in January. ‘I’m not going to lose now.’
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