Nikki Haley's Political Challenges and Controversies.
CNN political analyst Bakari Sellers referred to Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley as “a white governor from the Deep South” while criticizing her handling of racial tensions in South Carolina following the 2015 massacre of nine black parishioners at a Charleston church by a white supremacist. Sellers later acknowledged his mistake and corrected himself, saying she is “a governor of color.” Haley was elected South Carolina governor in 2010, becoming the first Asian American woman to serve as a state’s chief executive. She had defended flying the Confederate flag at the state Capitol in Columbia, but reversed her position after the June 2015 mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.