She was a good governor in South Carolina. The fact that Nikki Haley will lose in the Republican primary there has to do with her attitude towards Trump – but not only. A visit to Bamberg, a town with 3,000 souls.
Bamberg was already going through difficult times before the tornado: the population is shrinking and many houses are in poor condition.
Christian Weisflog / NZZ
Nikki Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, is a miraculous product of American integration. The search for their roots leads not to a multicultural metropolis, but to the deepest province in the southern state of South Carolina: to Bamberg, a community of 3,000 people halfway between the capital Columbia and the coastal city of Charleston. Nimarata Nikki Randhawa was born here in 1972.
Nikki Haley visited the place where she grew up in mid-February – just before Saturday’s Republican primary. It was a return under bad auspices: On the one hand, a tornado caused extensive damage along the historic shopping street a few weeks ago. The Storm ripped entire floors apart of the obviously already dilapidated brick houses from the 19th century.
South Carolina area code
On the other hand, the former governor was still around 30 percentage points behind Donald Trump in the polls in her home state just a few days before the election. And this despite the fact that she increasingly criticized her rival. Many politicians who paid homage to Trump publicly would fear him privately, Haley said recently: “You know what a disaster he was and will remain for our party.”
From outsider to climber
Against the backdrop of destroyed houses in Bamberg, Haley tried above all to convey compassion to her voters and give them hope. “This little town has been through so much.” But she also taught her to be strong and to go through life with decency. “She taught me: The neighbors worry about the neighbors – no matter what.”
Her home community taught her to be strong, said Haley during her visit to Bamberg.
Meg Kinnard / AP
Jamie Brabham was also among the listeners. She and her daughter have been friends with Haley and her family for many years. “I used to model for her mother’s clothing store,” says the 78-year-old beautician. “They were very fine clothes – for the upper class,” remembers Brabham. Haley and her older sister worked in the store: “Nikki did the accounting and Simmi did the shopping.”
Jamie Brabham himself seems to belong to the wealthier class in Bamberg. Her family owns, among other things, a forestry business covering around 400 hectares and a company that grinds large saw blades. It’s only a short walk from the destroyed houses in the town center to her stately country house. The tornado also distorted the pillared portal above her front door and tore away part of the veranda in the garden. But the building structure appears solid in comparison. The house next door, like many shops in Bamberg, is empty, and many other buildings are dilapidated or offered for sale. In the last decade alone, the population has shrunk by almost 15 percent.
When the Randhawas arrived in Bamberg, after a long search they found a small house just a few blocks away from the Brabhams. “They were quite strangers to us,” remembers Jamie Brabham. They were the only Indian family in a city that was divided into African-American and white neighborhoods. Haley also discussed this a year ago in her video with which she launched her candidacy: “The railway line divided the city along the lines of skin color. I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants. Not black, not white. I was different.”
Her father in particular stood out as a devout Sikh with his colorful turban. The fact that he was a biology professor teaching at an African-American university in the neighboring town only increased the mistrust, Haley herself writes in her memoirs. However, the more the people of Bamberg realized how educated, hard-working and friendly the Randhawas were, the less this was a problem, says Brabham.
Jamie Brabham has known Haley since she was a child and today particularly admires her independence: “She never went with the herd.”
Christian Weisflog / NZZ
Preferably against the tide
Although she voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, Brabham is now fully behind Haley. The storm on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 was crucial for her. “I felt a real pain in my chest.” You only see something like this in other countries. “People broke in there like animals.” And Trump could have stopped them at any time. “But he did not do it.”
What she values about Haley is her respect for other people, her openness to other opinions and her independent thinking. “She never went with the herd,” says Brabham. Not even privately. Her parents would have liked her to date a man would have married in Indian circles. But Nikki chose Michael Haley, whom she met during her college years. She converted to Christianity. Today the politician is proud to have an even more colorful family. Last year, Haley’s own daughter Rena married her college sweetheart, an African American math teacher.
One of Haley’s supporters in Bamberg is Paula Dyches, the co-owner of “Rusty and Paula’s Restaurant”. Whenever Haley is in town, Dyches says she comes to her place for dinner. Your inn with hearty southern cuisine is a social institution. Now, however, the tornado has also devastated their restaurant and covered the entire roof. Thanks to insurance and help from the neighborhood, she wants to be able to open her doors again in March. A new roof and new windows have already been installed. The display case with a family picture of the Haleys remained intact. There is also a small Statue of Liberty inside, with a red wooden board in front of it with the inscription: “It’s not food if it’s not fried.”
A rooster is drawn on another small board in the display case. It also says: “The rooster crows, the hen delivers.” Dyches comments on the saying that she wants to see her country ruled by a female president. However, unlike Brabham, she only recently changed her mind about Trump. She is still convinced that Joe Biden did not win the election four years ago fairly. She therefore shows understanding for the demonstrators who stormed into the Capitol. “We had to show them that we are the people.”
The tornado also devastated Paula Dyches’ restaurant. But the renovation work is progressing and she plans to reopen in March.
Christian Weisflog / NZZ
Trump has done a good job in his four years in power. “Only the corona pandemic cost him a second term in office.” However, Dyches became increasingly bothered by the former president’s habit of humiliating other people. He likes to call his former UN ambassador Haley a “birdbrain”. In order to stir up racist resentment, he even called her by hers First name Nimarata. Last he mocked her husband, who served in Afghanistan and is currently stationed in the East African country of Djibouti. «What happened to her husband? Where is your husband? He’s gone,” Trump said at a rally in South Carolina, suggesting that Michael Haley was intentionally trying to distance himself from his wife.
For Dyches, this was the turning point. She is the child of a military member and her son served in Afghanistan. “I know what sacrifices these people have to make.” Trump promises to make America great again. “But then he’s not allowed to humiliate other people.” She wants a person like Haley who can bring Americans together with a positive message.
However, Dyches’s opinion puts her in the minority among South Carolina’s conservative electorate. Her business partner Rusty Kinard also thinks that Haley served as governor from 2011 to 2017 have done a lot of good. Although it was unable to stop the decline in rural regions such as Bamberg, large companies such as Boeing, BMW and Volvo expanded or relocated their production in South Carolina. Over the past decade, unemployment in the southern state fell from 12 to 3 percent and the overall population grew by around 10 percent. But Kinard can’t forgive Haley for something: “She shouldn’t have had the Confederate Southern flag removed. It didn’t hurt anyone.”
The flag flew on the Capitol grounds in Columbia until 2015. But then a white supremacist killed nine African Americans in a church in Charleston. After photos of the perpetrator posing with the southern state flag became public, Haley, as governor, campaigned for it to be taken down from the mast in the regional capital. Under the blue St. Andrew’s Cross with white stars on a red background, the southern states fought to preserve slavery in the Civil War. That’s why the flag is a racist symbol, especially for African Americans.
However, 72-year-old Kinard sees it a little differently. He runs a farm south of Bamberg with his son. He mainly grows corn, soybeans and watermelons on around a thousand hectares. He believes that many people here think like him. “My neighbor painted a big Confederate flag on his barn,” he says in a broad Southern accent in front of his house.
There is also a for sale sign in front of the Randhawas’ former clothing store in Bamberg.
Christian Weisflog / NZZ
Kinard will vote for Trump. Because the farmers received a lot of money from Washington during his term in office. But also because he is a man. Foreign leaders wouldn’t take a woman so seriously, says Kinard. There are a lot of ruthless people in world politics.
It is impossible to estimate how widespread Kinard’s politically incorrect views are. But what the mechanic Matt Javis has to say is often heard: “We all loved Haley until she stood up to Trump,” explains the 57-year-old craftsman as he holds two shopping bags and a pack of beer cans in front of the supermarket in Bamberg loads into his pickup truck. “I paid $65 for these few things,” Javis complains, explaining how inflation has driven up prices: “The day Joe Biden won the election, a gallon of gas cost $1.79. Six months later it was $3.”
To him, Haley is just a career politician. “They’re all corrupt.” She doesn’t even live in Bamberg anymore. Haley owns a home on the beach resort of Kiawah Island, southwest of Charleston. Her parents also live there. Trump, on the other hand, is for the people. “It will stop the flow of illegal migrants across the border,” Javis is certain. Thousands come every day. America can no longer afford this.
When asked why Trump and the Republicans in Congress then rejected a compromise to tighten asylum policy and support Ukraine with new aid funds, Javis waves it off. «60 billion dollars for Ukraine and not a penny for America. Only an idiot could agree to that.” The USA now has to take care of its own people first. “The war in Ukraine is the Europeans’ damn problem.”
Javis is angry. When in doubt, he prefers to trust Trump instead of established institutions. «The media reports one-sidedly. And if you don’t believe what they say, they demonize you.” Haley can hardly do anything about it. But she apparently doesn’t want to give up yet. Not even after another loss in South Carolina. She doesn’t seem to want to accept that her battle for the soul of the Republican Party is essentially already lost.
The tornado tore down entire floors of Bamberg’s historic shopping street. A month later there is still a pile of rubble on the street.
Christian Weisflog / NZZ