New Hampshire-bound Nikki Haley starts presidential bid

1st candidate to announce a run against Trump for nom

Despite previously saying she would not challenge former boss Donald Trump should he choose to seek the presidency again, Nikki Haley will spend two days in the Granite State to end the week and begin her run at the White House.

“It’s time for a new generation of leadership,” the former South Carolina governor and Ambassador to the United Nations declared in her campaign announcement.

Haley, the first candidate to make official her run against former President Donald Trump for the Republican party presidential nomination, will visit New Hampshire Thursday and Friday for town hall-style campaign events in Exeter and Manchester.

Haley held a campaign kickoff event Wednesday in Charleston, South Carolina, and will visit Iowa next week, where the nation’s earliest caucusing begins.

The daughter of Indian immigrants, Haley represents something new for Republican voters: a minority woman with conservative bona fides.

“She’s a woman of color running for the Republican nomination, so she’s a potentially history-making candidate,” University of New Hampshire Professor Dante Scala, who teaches political science and is an expert on the primary, told the Herald Wednesday.

Haley may even, Scala said, find voters in New Hampshire who are uniquely ready for and particularly welcoming of her candidacy.

“New Hampshire is a place where people are accustomed to seeing women run for office and win,” he said, in reference to the state’s two female Senators, both of whom were governors before moving up. “She presents a very different profile than a bunch of white guys running for office.”

Still, Haley will have her work cut out for her. Both Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have sucked up much of the oxygen in the room, Scala said.

“But I do think there is a lot of Trump fatigue up here,” he said.

That fatigue is especially strong, according to the professor, among watchers of presidential politics, ergo exactly the people Haley is hoping to connect with on

Thursday and Friday.

“Especially the activists and the close political observers — they want to get out there and see candidates other than Trump. Regardless of whether they like Trump or not, they want to see new candidates,” he said.

Her work in New Hampshire, which will host the first primary next year, is especially important, as she does not enjoy wide name recognition there, Scala said, especially when held against other likely candidates.