WEST COLUMBIA – Nikki Haley has made a name for herself in politics since leaving her hometown of Bamberg.
Elected to represent District 87 in the S.C. House in 2004, in May she announced her candidacy in the June 2010 Republican primary for governor.
But Haley, 38, says she hasn’t outgrown her roots or the values she learned growing up in the small, rural town.
Haley, who is assistant director of the Lexington Medical Center, now lives in Lexington with her husband, Michael, a full-time federal technician with the S.C. National Guard, and their two children, Rena, 11, and Nalin, 8.
She began doing the accounting for her parents’ Bamberg clothing business, Exotica, when she was just 13. They – Dr. Ajit Randhawa and Raj Randhawa – entrusted her with that responsibility because they didn’t want her to know limitations, she says.
“They didn’t want me to know limitation of age, they didn’t want me to know limitation of gender, and they didn’t want me to know limitation of being Indian,” said Haley, whose parents are Indian Punjabi Sikh immigrants from Amritsar. “They said whatever you do, be great at it and make sure that people remember you.”
She apparently took that advice to heart, graduating from Clemson with a degree in accounting and going on to make history as the first Indian American Republican legislator in the U.S. Now she’s got her sights set on being governor.
