Donald Trump leads polls overwhelmingly, Ron DeSantis has gone down in flames, and various other candidates never got off the ground.
But if the GOP presidential primary is to be a serious contest at all — and it’s not yet clear if it is — it’s Nikki Haley who will make it one.
Trump remains the overwhelming favorite to win, with large leads in every early state and positively gigantic leads in national polls.
But Haley has been creeping up in New Hampshire. Recent polls are mixed on just how close she’s come to Trump — one shows her trailing the former president by just 7 points, while another shows her down 20 points. But she has millions in outside spending lined up to try to make that contest, set for January 23, closer.
Haley is better-positioned than many expect to have a “moment” in the nomination battle, should she do well in New Hampshire. But it’s still very hard to imagine how she could actually defeat Trump. Only if you squint, and make some very optimistic assumptions for her, you could maybe — maybe — see it.
In a field full of also-rans and laughingstocks, though, Haley has ended up being the one Trump challenger who still looks the teensiest bit dangerous as 2024 begins. And the more you know about her political history, the less surprising that is.
Who is Nikki Haley, and how did she rise in politics?
Born to Punjabi Sikh immigrants who’d settled in South Carolina, Haley was born Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She speaks and writes often about the awkwardness of growing up as one of very few kids who were neither white nor Black in her area at a time when South Carolina life was thoroughly organized around that racial binary. But the accusation that she changed her name in some phony Anglicizing fashion, long spread by her political rivals, is false: she’s gone by Nikki since she was born.
Thank you for the question. Nikki is a Punjabi word that means little one. It’s my middle name on my birth certificate.
As someone…
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