| | | | |  | | By Marissa Martinez and Brakkton Booker | With help from Ella Creamer, Jesse Naranjo, Jesús Rodríguez and Teresa Wiltz
| 
POLITICO illustration/Photo by AP | What up, Recast family! Let us wish you a Happy Valentines, Galentine’s ... or for those celebrating … Singles Awareness Day! President Joe Biden fires the scandal-plagued Capitol manager and former President Donald Trump disses Rihanna’s Super Bowl performance. First, though, we kick things off with a look at the latest 2024 White House bid. As the 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls dally on whether to launch campaigns aimed at moving the party beyond Trumpism, a woman of color has become the first to take on the former president. Nikki Haley’s formal announcement of her candidacy Tuesday morning came with the tagline: “Get excited! Time for a new generation.” And she is indeed of a new generation of politicians: Haley is just the fifth prominent female candidate to seek the GOP nomination, as well as the first female governor and first Asian American woman to do so, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. In her campaign for the White House, there will surely be a lot of focus on her transformation from a Never Trumper — saying this about Donald Trump to The New York Times in 2016: “I will not stop until we fight a man that chooses not to disavow the K.K.K. That is not a part of our party. That is not who we are.” At the time, she was backing Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) until he dropped out, then switching her allegiances to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, before agreeing to serve in Trump’s cabinet as U.N. secretary out of a “sense of duty.”
| 
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks during the Republican National Convention from the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, Monday, Aug. 24, 2020. | Susan Walsh/AP Photo | By the time Trump’s 2020 campaign rolled around, Haley was lavish with her praise: “This president has a record of strength and success,” she said, adding “and he’s a godsend to everyone who wants America to apologize, abstain, and abandon our values.” But then immediately following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, she told POLITICO: “I think he’s lost any sort of political viability he was going to have.” (Haley didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.) The only thing more fraught than her relationship with Trump is the one she has with race. In the announcement video, she opens with an aerial shot of Bamberg, S.C., her birthplace, speaking about a time when railroad tracks divided the town by race and she seemingly didn’t fit with either side. She repurposes her well-trod line: “I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants, not Black, not white. I was different.” And then she quickly pivots to talk about how her parents encouraged her and her siblings to focus not on differences, but on the similarities that bind Americans together. It’s that duality — briefly nodding at racial realities without offering tangible solutions — that has benefitted Haley throughout her career. No doubt Haley, born Nimrata Nikki Randhawa, is a trailblazer.
| 
Gov. Nikki Haley embraces U.S. Sen Tim Scott (R-S.C.) at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church four days after a mass shooting that claimed the lives of nine, Sunday, June 21, 2015, in Charleston, S.C. | David Goldman, Pool/AP Photo | In 2011 she was sworn in as South Carolina’s first governor of color. And during her tenure, following the gruesome 2015 killing of nine worshipers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, a historic Black church, at the hands of a white supremacist, it was Haley that led the state in effort in removing the Confederate battle flag from the statehouse grounds, a point she references in her announcement video. She also elevated a relatively unknown congressman named Tim Scott to the Senate, when then-Sen. Jim DeMint abruptly vacated his seat in 2012, a historic move that made Scott the first Black senator from the South since 1881. (Scott, too, is expected to launch his own White House bid in the coming weeks.) Still, there are other parts of her biography and political record that are a bit more difficult to reconcile. In 2001, for example, she reportedly listed her race as “white” on her voter registration card, three years before she entered into elective politics. (Haley has never publicly addressed her reasons for doing so.) Haley and former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, also a one-time presidential candidate, are easily the two most prominent South Asian Republicans. And both have had an "on-again, off-again" relationship with their race, says Milan Vaishnav, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who surveyed Indian American voting attitudes in 2020. "They have sought to kind of play it up when they thought it was convenient to appeal to a certain kind of narrative,” Vaishnav says, “but at the same time, have stood with the Republican Party when Republican officials, including Donald Trump, [have] engaged in kind of racist tropes or racist activity.” | 
President Donald Trump meets with outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2018, in Washington. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo | Over the past two years, Haley’s publicly leaned more into her heritage, campaigning with Asian American voters in Georgia and prominently featuring her family and her Punjabi Sikh identity in her announcement video. But she’s also shown a willingness to embrace some of the dog whistles deployed by the current Republican Party. Take the time she stumped for Herschel Walker, the GOP nominee for Senate in Georgia last year, telling a mostly white crowd that Walker’s opponent, incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, was weak on border security. | 
Georgia Republican senate candidate Herschel Walker, left, and former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, right, listen as Julie Blanchard, Walker's wife, speaks during a campaign rally, Dec. 5, 2022, in Kennesaw, Ga | Alex Wong/Getty Images | “Legal immigrants are more patriotic than the leftists these days,” Haley said, “so the only person we need to make sure is deported is Warnock.” Both Walker and Warnock are Black and both were born in Georgia. While Haley stands alone on the national stage as the only prominent Republican to challenge Trump, for now, she will have to make a choice, according to former RNC Chair Michael Steele. “The bottom line still remains … you cannot come into this race as someone who is on again, off again in love with Donald Trump,” Steele tells The Recast. “I’ve known Nikki since we helped with her campaign back in 2010 to get her elected governor. And I've admired her and have mad respect for, but she's shown two faces.” As always, we’ll be watching as Haley ramps up her run for the White House. All the best,
The Recast Team
| | | | 
| Power dynamics are changing. With The Recast, you'll get a twice-weekly breakdown of how race and identity are the DNA of American politics and policy. Was this forwarded to you by a friend? Subscribe to the newsletter here.
| | | WOOING ASIAN AMERICAN VOTERS
| 
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley visits "Fox & Friends" at Fox News Channel Studios, Nov. 12, 2019, in New York. | John Lamparski/Getty Images | With Haley challenging Trump — and other potential 2024 GOP contenders waiting in the wings — how will she fare with the nation’s fastest-growing voting bloc: Asian American voters? As a group, Asian Americans experienced the highest vote-share shift to the right in 2022 of any communities of color. But they broadly still support Democrats, and Indian Americans are their staunchest supporters, with 68 percent favoring them on a hypothetical ballot compared to 16 percent who supported a Republican candidate, according to one July 2022 survey. After Haley’s announcement, some are eager for more Asian American Republicans to join — or rejoin — the political fray. Haley is a “sharp, bright” person, said M.R. Rangaswami, a software executive from San Francisco who founded the nonprofit Indiaspora to encourage Indian American political involvement. “This is fabulous for our community, that we’re being represented in all aspects of politics — Republican, Democrat,” said Rangaswami, who identifies as politically independent. Karthick Ramakrishnan, founder of the policy research organization AAPI Data, says Haley’s growing resume also makes her a strong fundraising candidate among Indian American donors, especially compared to previous GOP hopeful Jindal.
| 
| According to Ramakrishnan, “Indian American donors — similar to Indian American voters, [they’re] very strongly Democratic in their leanings.” But he adds, “Nikki Haley could make some headway there, given the strength of her biography.” To appeal to a broader electorate, Haley will likely have to lean more to the right of candidates like Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is a likely 2024 entrant, says Roshni Nedungadi, founding partner of progressive polling firm HIT Strategies. Even if Haley wants to tap into the Asian American voter base, Nedungadi says, they make up a miniscule fraction of likely GOP primary voters, she adds. “It's hard to see how she would be able to carve out enough of that space in order to make an impact, even if she were to bring other AAPI voters into the Republican fold, which seems less and less likely,” Nedungadi tells the Recast. Next stops for Haley: a town hall in her home turf of Charleston, S.C., on Wednesday, then onto events in Iowa and New Hampshire next week. | | | DRAMA AT THE CHC
| 
Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) accompanied by other members, speaks to members of the media following a meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House, Monday, April 25, 2022. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo | It’s been a tumultuous few days for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which was on the verge of potentially ousting its current chair, Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán (D-Calif.), according to reporting from POLITICO’s Nicholas Wu and Daniella Diaz. Following a Monday Zoom call, the pair reports, tensions within the caucus cooled after leaders such as No. 3 House Democrat Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) stepped in. Daniella joins The Recast to break down the latest. THE RECAST: Staffing at individual caucuses rarely makes news. How did the firing of a staffer lead to talks of ousting the CHC chair? DIAZ: You’re right, usually the firing of a staffer at a caucus goes unreported but Jacky Usyk is the top aide on the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and was only a month into the job, which is why her firing sent ripples through the voting bloc. Not only that, she was a respected Hill veteran and has worked for other Democrats including [having] served as a top leadership aide to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and worked previously for Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.), who’s now in Hispanic Caucus leadership as well. Lawmakers who knew her were upset to hear the news. THE RECAST: The Hispanic Caucus is made up of all Democrats, which has strived to project a party that's unified in contrast to a fractured Republican Party. How devastating would replacing Barragán have been to the party and the caucus?
| 
Rep. Nanette Barragan (D-Calif.) attends a press conference at a temporary Customs and Border Protection processing center, May 7, 2021, in Donna, Texas. | Getty Images | DIAZ: Barragán was next in line to lead the caucus in this new Congress and actually ran unopposed for the leadership spot. It would have been a major setback to replace her and appoint a new leader with new staff. THE RECAST: Moving forward, what clues will you be looking for to gauge whether she maintains the full support of the caucus? DIAZ: The caucus meets frequently to discuss issues they wish to promote and influence, and Barragán will set the priorities for the caucus as chair. One thing we’ll keep an eye on is whether she’s able to keep her voting bloc together going forward — and whether she’ll retain staff for the caucus as she sets her eyes on hiring a replacement for Usyk.
| | | ‘STAKES IS HIGH’
| 
Dave Jude Jolicoeur of De La Soul performs at the 2008 VH1 Hip Hop Honors at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York, Oct. 2, 2008. | Evan Agostini/AP Images for VH1 | It wasn’t supposed to end this way. After a long legal battle that kept them off streaming platforms for years, De La Soul, the pioneering hip hop trio, was poised for a comeback: A month ago, they announced that on March 3, the 34th anniversary of their debut album, “3 Feet High and Rising,” fans will — finally — be able to stream all six of their albums. Then on Sunday, David Jude Jolicoeur, aka Trugoy the Dove, aka Plug 2, aka Dave, died. A cause of death has yet to be disclosed, but in the past, Jolicoeur, who was Haitian American, was open about his battle with congestive heart failure. Fans have been waiting and waiting — including some of the Recast crew — for the chance to stream hits like “Breakadawn,” “Me, Myself and I,” “Stakes is High”and “Eye Know.” There’s a reason for the enduring popularity of this rapping triad, whom Questlove calls “one of the most amazing beautiful products of this culture of hip hop.” De La Soul, comprised of Jolicoeur, Kelvin Mercer (Posdnuos) and Vincent Mason (Maseo), three middle-class kids from the suburbs of Long Island, were the antithesis of gangsta rap, with their cheerful embrace of Day-Glo florals, thoughtfully earnest lyrics and whimsical wordplay. Their zaniness earned them the title “hippies of hip-hop,” but the late great music critic Greg Tate was onto something when he dubbed them “the hands-down champs of thinking-person's hip-hoppers.” And at least one president agreed with this assessment. | 
Questlove/Instagram | In 2016, in the waning days of the Obama presidency, De La Soul performed at the White House in “BET Presents Love & Happiness," nicknamed "Barack Obama's Block Party.” RIP, Dave.
| | | THE RECAST RECOMMENDS In case you’ve been living under a rock, Rihanna performed at the Super Bowl, and her sartorial clues led to some big news. Elaine Hsieh Chou’s short story, “Background,” goes inside the complicated mind of a movie extra, Gene, as he attempts to reconnect with his estranged daughter, a film director. Happy Valentine’s! Romance is in the air with “Love Trip: Paris,” a dating show premiering tonight at 9 p.m. on Freeform. In “Cinema Sabaya,” set in a small Northern Israeli town, Arab and Jewish women participate in a filmmaking workshop.
| 
| Lizzo and SZA have a “Special” message to share. Bad Bunny and Arcángel bring the party to a gas station in their visual for “La Jumpa,” which also features some nostalgic clips of the powerhouse duo.
| 
| TikTok of the Day: Justina Miles feat. Rihanna
| 
| | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
Comments
Post a Comment