An Indian-American woman trying to overcome allegations of infidelity and an ethnic slur to become America’s first Sikh-born governor has won a Republican primary runoff vote in the southern state of South Carolina.
Nikki Haley, a Christian convert who relied on support from conservative tea party voters and former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, could also become South Carolina’s first woman governor.
Haley is now the front-runner to become governor of the heavily Republican state. She isn’t the only candidate trying to upend tradition in the conservative state of South Carolina, which has a long history of racial tension.
Tim Scott, bidding to become the state’s first black Republican congressman in more than a century, won his runoff race. Scott is now the heavy favourite to win the Republican-leaning House of Representatives district, which includes Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the American Civil War were fired.
Scott would be the first black Republican in Congress since 2003.
Haley beat a congressman in a race that illustrates the politics of an anti-establishment year, with frustrated voters casting ballots against candidates with strong ties to Washington and the political parties. The South Carolina elections could also provide a measure of both racial progress in the South and the Republicans’ ability to diversify.
Haley, a married mother of two, spent the weeks before the June 8 primary denying claims by a blogger and a lobbyist that they’d had physical relationships with her. Shortly after those accusations, Haley was called a “raghead” – a derogatory term for people of Middle Eastern or Indian descent – by one opponent’s backer. But voters rejected the nasty campaigning.
With 66 per cent of the precincts reporting in the runoff, Haley led with 65 per cent of the vote to Representative Gresham Barrett’s 35 per cent.
Be the first to comment