UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05793164 Date: 10/30/2015
RELEASE IN FULL
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From: Mills, Cheryl D <MillsCD@state.gov>
Sent:Tuesday, April 3, 2012 11:07 AM
To: H
Subject: FW: Don't say 'no' to S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley (see highlights)
From: Toiv, Nora F
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2012 9:20 AM
To: Mills, Cheryl D
Subject: Don't say 'no' to S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley (see highlights)
Don't say 'no' to S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley
by
Susan Page
on Apr. 02, 2012, under
USA TODAY News
Source:
USA TODAY
Walking
down the tree-lined streets where she grew up, South Carolina Gov.
Nikki Haley remembers the day she was presented with a beach ball at the
Wee Miss Bamberg pageant — not for winning, but as a consolation prize
when she and her sister were disqualified.
"They
pulled my parents aside and said they had a white queen and they had a
black queen and they didn't want to upset either side by putting us in
that category," she recalls, not the first time nor the last that their
Indian heritage made it hard for her family to fit in this small town.
"My mom said, 'Can she at least do her talent?' "
So
she sang (irony alert) "This land is your land, this land is my land.
..." A family photo from that day shows a solemn Nikki in a ruffled
dress and black patent-leather shoes, accepting the gift-wrapped package
on stage as the other little girls squirm and chatter, waiting for the
contest to continue.
How times have changed.
Now the "Welcome to Bamberg" signs along the two main highways brag, "Home of Nikki Haley." Mayor
Alton
McCollum, her former junior-high principal, scrambles to pose for a
photo with her that later makes the front page of the Bamberg Advertizer
-Herald.
Walking along the berm where
railroad tracks once divided the black and white parts of town, she's
greeted by passing motorists who honk and wave.
Even
so, for years she rebuffed her daughter's entreaties to enter pageants
because of an admittedly irrational fear that the same thing might
happen to her. "That's when you realize things sit with you," Haley
says. Feelings from the past "come running back."
As
a rule, Nimrata Randhawa Haley has been more interested in charging
forward than looking back. At 40, she's written a memoir that is not
only the quintessential story of an immigrant family coming to America
but also the tale of an unlikely political career.
Can't Is Not an Option goes on sale today. (Sentinel; 245 pages;
$27.95)
A
state legislator, she launched a bid for governor in 2010 that seemed
quixotic, facing three better-known, better-funded primary rivals. After
a bare-knuckles campaign in which she faced racial slurs and was forced
to deny accusations of marital infidelity, she won the GOP nomination
and then the election.
Now she is the first non-white governor
in the state where the Civil War began. She is the first female
governor in a state that for a decade has ranked dead last in the nation
in percentage of elected officials who are women.
(Even
today, the 46-member South Carolina State Senate is 100% male.) She is
the youngest governor in the country and a Tea Party favorite who
sometimes is mentioned as a potential running mate for Republican
front-runner Mitt Romney.
Her first year in office hasn't been entirely smooth. The state Legislature has stymied some of her key
proposals.
Several Republican officeholders already are discussing challenging her
for the nomination if she seeks a second term. She endorsed Romney in
the state's January primary, angering some conservative allies, only to
see him crushed in the vote by former House speaker Newt Gingrich.
Still,
when the governor's black limousine and SUV stop at the corner where
she grew up, Bessie Cogburn, 63, hurries out to hug her. The Cogburns
were neighbors in the old days; she phones her son Erick to run home
from his job to see his childhood friend. "Nikki was just such a hard
worker," remembers Erick, 39. From the start, he says, setbacks just
stiffened her resolve: "If you tell her 'no,' she'll make it happen."
Landing on the moon?
Her
parents might as well have landed on the moon when they arrived in
rural South Carolina in 1969. They were Sikhs who had emigrated from
India to Canada, where her father earned his doctoral degree in biology,
and then to the United States to take the only teaching job he could
find, at Voorhees College. The small, historically black school is in
Denmark, S.C.
At first, no one would rent a home to them, Haley says. When they finally arranged to buy one in nearby
Bamberg,
it came with conditions. They were prohibited from entertaining black
people and committed to selling it back to the man they had bought it
from.
"Just imagine a small Southern town of
2,500 people and this family moves in and the man wears a turban and the
woman wears a sari, and they've never seen anything like that," Haley
says during an interview at Bamberg City Hall. " It was Bamberg
experiencing them for the first time and them experiencing Bamberg for
the first time, and I think it was hard on both."
The
family came to call themselves The Original Six: her parents, two
brothers and a sister, a tightly knit clan that was able to take "all
the armor off' only when the family was at home together on Sundays. Her
mother taught sixth grade and started a small shop in their home
offering foreign items from India and elsewhere.
Eventually
Exotica International became a multimillion-dollar clothing and gift
store based in Lexington, S.C. By the time Nikki was 13, her mother had
drafted her to keep the store's accounts, an experience that forged a
business-owner's appreciation of private enterprise and a conservative's
suspicion of regulation.
"I saw how hard it was to make a dollar and how easy it was for the government to take it," she says.
She
earned an accounting degree at Clemson, worked for a waste-management
company in Charlotte, then returned to help run the family business. She
married Michael Haley, an employee of the U.S. Army and officer in the
South Carolina Army National Guard; they had two children, Rena and
Nalin.She credits Hillary Clinton— whom she has never met, before or
since — with the inspiration to jump into
politics.
"I
wanted to make a difference," she says, "but everybody told me that I
didn't need to look into elective office. You know, 'you've got two
young children.' And 'you sure it's right for a woman?' And 'why don't
you run for the school board? You don't need to run for the statehouse.'
In
2003, she and friend Eleanor Kitzman went to a speech that Clinton,
then a New York senator and now secretary of State, was giving at Furman
University in Greenville. Haley remembers her message. "She said,
`There will always be people who say you
shouldn't
do something, but the only thing you should ... think about is why you
should do something.' She said, 'Don't listen to the naysayers.'
"I
walked out of there and I told Eleanor, 'I'm not going to let anybody
tell me T can't do this anymore. I'm just going to do it.' "
The
next year, she ousted a 30-year incumbent from the state House. When
she was frozen out by party leaders after pushing a proposal to require
recorded votes in the legislature, she decided to run for governor. She
says being able to sign that proposal into law was the proudest moment
of her tenure to date.
Pahl' to the rescue
"The stars were in alignment" for her election as governor, Haley says.
The emerging Tea Party was in sync with her policy views — small
government, less regulation and lower taxes — and 2010 was a good year
to be running as an outsider. Romney, whose presidential bid she had
backed in 2008, endorsed her.
Then-governor
Mark Sanford had offered to help, too, but his political implosion in a
2009 scandal over an extramarital affair made him a joke and his support
toxic. Still, Sanford's popular wife, Jenny, campaigned for her.
Then there was Sarah Palin.
Haley,
who had never met Palin, said she had hoped against hope for her
backing. In the final weeks of the campaign, Todd Palin called to say
his wife would swing by South Carolina the next day to endorse her after
addressing an NRA convention in Charlotte. The hastily arranged rally
on the statehouse steps drew 1,500 people and provided a surge of
support for Haley.
When the two women were
chatting that day, Palin gave Haley some private advice. "She said,
'When you start to rise, they're going to come after you, and what you
need to know is that it will never stop,' " Haley recalls. "At that time
I didn't understand it. Now I understand it. "
Two
weeks before the primary, a former Sanford aide sparked a firestorm
when he posted an item on his blog saying he had an affair with Haley
several years earlier. A week later, a consultant who worked for one of
her primary rivals released a statement saying he had a one-night stand
with her. She denied both allegations. Palin called from her home in
Wasilla, Alaska, the day the first story broke. "It was just, 'Nikki, is
it true?' "
Haley recalls. "And I said no, and she said, 'Then let's fight.' " Within minutes, Palin had posted a defiant
message on her Facebook page: "Nikki Haley in Opposition's Crosshairs: A Good Sign for Nikki and South Carolina!"
