Nikki Haley’s Campaign Opened With an Appeal to Race. Some Indian Americans Say It Won’t Work.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has long rejected the idea that the U.S. is a racist country. But when it came time to announce her 2024 candidacy for president on Tuesday, she began by sharing her identity — and a memory of her hometown.

“The railroad tracks divided the town by race,” she said of Bamberg, South Carolina. “I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants. Not Black, not white, I was different.”

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But if Haley, born Nimrata Randhawa to Sikh Punjabi parents, is trying to make inroads with Indian Americans, experts say it’s not working.

She doesn’t represent the community, said Varun Nikore, executive director of the AAPI Victory Alliance, a nonprofit group representing Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. In fact, Nikore said, “there’s a multitude of issues where she specifically and the Republican Party are diametrically opposed to where AAPIs are.”

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Some South Asians say Haley’s on-and-off acknowledgment of her ethnic background is a routine they’re familiar with. Nikore, who has followed Haley’s career since the beginning, says her use of her racial identity often goes hand-in-hand with perpetuating the model minority myth, taking anti-immigration stances and opposing comprehensive education about race in the U.S.

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According to the 2022 Asian American voter survey, only 15% of Indian American voters are decidedly Republican. Fifty-six percent are Democratic, and 19% are independent. Nikore says he sees Haley’s appeal to some older, first-generation Indian Americans, but he doesn’t foresee the community as a whole getting behind her.

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An overwhelmingly Democratic constituency with a large immigrant population, Asian Americans are concerned about racism, health care access, gun control and the environment, according to the 2022 survey. Indian Americans prioritize gun control more than any other ethnic group, and it’s a policy position that Haley has firmly opposed.

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Neil Makhija, executive director of the voter-mobilization nonprofit Indian American Impact, said the Biden administration had engaged South Asian American voters in a way Republicans have never done. On Haley’s presidential bid, he said, “I think it will be hard for Republicans to put a dent in our community’s support, unless they reverse course on the nativism and xenophobia that Trump unleashed.”

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