South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley will give the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s last State of the Union address that is sure to include his plans for tightening gun sales, seven months after both spoke at funerals for the victims of a massacre at a historic black church in Charleston.
Haley will speak for Republicans following Obama’s 12 January speech to Congress. The South Carolina-born daughter of Indian immigrants is the state’s first female and first minority governor. At 43, Haley is also the country’s youngest governor.
The selection will likely fuel speculation that Haley would join a potential Republican administration in 2017.
Haley, governor of a state that holds the first-in-the-South presidential primary, becomes the third Republican woman ever to give the response.
Since taking office in 2011, Haley has staunchly criticised Obama on everything from healthcare reform to immigration. But the two seemed to share a vision, if only partially, after the 17 June mass shooting at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church, in which nine people were killed, including its pastor.
Days after the shooting, she called for legislators to bring down the rebel flag that had flown on the Statehouse grounds for 54 years. Obama too called for the Confederate flag to be removed from places of honor.
Within weeks of the shooting, the flag was removed from its 30-foot (nine-metre) perch outside the Statehouse and taken to a museum.
Read President Obama’s appeal for stricter gun control laws here.
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