The Candidate Nikki Haley Could Have—Should Have—Been

Nikki Haley has once again fallen short—by a mile and in her home state of South Carolina— losing the Republican presidential primary there to former President Donald Trump. Even the Koch organization is pulling its support.

Haley was the candidate many people wanted to like. Besides the fact that she’s never lost an election, she had a real spark and came across as a likable person. There was a sense that she represented something different and would have helped swing the Republican Party’s pendulum of collective values back toward center, and away from the toxicity that currently dominates the public theater.

But in her push to make herself appealing to MAGA Republicans, Haley missed a big opportunity. In her attempt to walk a tightrope across the party line and beat former President Donald Trump at his own game, she’s fumbled the nomination, though her zombie campaign continues on.

Throughout her political career, Haley has made the layers of her personality—largely informed by her experience growing up as a first generation Indian-American in the American South in the 1970s and 80s—into an asset. And this strategy has served her well: she was the first female governor of South Carolina and only the second Indian-American governor to serve in the United States (Bobby Jindal, Republican of Louisiana, was the first in 2007). But in her race for the Republican presidential nomination, Haley has become practically one-dimensional as she focuses on courting the Republican base.

On one debate stage, Haley slammed the concept of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion). For those of us who know something about Haley, this was a glimpse into where contradictions might lie. Her father, a Sikh who came to the U.S. by way of Canada, taught at Voorhees College, a historically Black institution. In 2015, Haley shared that her father had been racially profiled at a fruit stand when she was a child—an experience that stuck with her viscerally ever since.

Someone who has both witnessed and experienced numerous hardships due to inequality should understand the need to fix it. If you’re listening closely, there is more to the story—but Haley hasn’t offered it to us.

She’s not the first female candidate for president that has run into this issue. We saw something similar in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential run. Clinton felt the need to remain guarded and became so focused on talking points that there is no glimpse of the woman underneath—her brilliance and her complexity. This is a common issue when talented women like Haley and Clinton ascend to power, having to balance a complex political landscape with rules of engagement that have historically been established by men.

The primary race was the first opportunity Haley had to introduce herself to the country as a whole, and she did not own that spotlight. Instead, she stuck to safe answers, recycled campaign promises, and talking points that left people scratching their heads.

We saw it in a town hall in New Hampshire in December, where Haley was so focused on trying to satisfy the Republican base that she effectively said slavery did not cause the Civil War. She repeated her assertion in a Fox News interview, saying, “America has never been a racist country.”

Nikki’s style is in stark contrast to Trump, who is widely known for his authenticity. Voters are loyal to him not because he’s perfect, consistent, or at times, even logical. Many voters admire Trump because he tells it like he sees it. When Haley decided to try to beat Trump at his own game, by appealing to the base with similar rhetoric to his, it backfired. Nikki Haley is not Donald Trump.

She could have dug deep, giving voters a clear view of the candidates’ contrasts in a way that not only resonated with the Republican base, but universally resonated with the American people. Haley should have considered playing her own game.

The fact that she outlasted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis indicates that it wasn’t just her policy positions that attracted votes and crucial financial backing—it’s who she is. And she is very different from any of her opponents. Leaning into her lived experiences and leveraging them as assets has always worked for Haley; choosing not to do so on a national stage is an unforgettable misstep.

Haley’s upbringing is an American Dream story; despite the challenges, racism, and other marginalizing experiences her family faced, Haley rose to become a serious candidate for the U.S. presidency. Not acknowledging America’s difficult past with race—a past she herself has been impacted by—is a missed opportunity to share her vision for creating an America that better fosters families like hers.

There may have been a very different outcome for Haley—and for the Republican Party—had the former governor chosen to embrace who she is instead of quashing herself, and had she decided to lean into her lived experiences, along with her ability to overcome challenges that has made her so appealing as a candidate her entire career.

Christie Lindor is the founder of Tessi Consulting and a workplace inclusion and political strategist. She partners with business and political women leaders to create inclusive leadership identities, cultures, and policies that shape the corporate and political world.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.