Former 2024 GOP presidential contender Nikki Haley announced the heartbreaking news that her father passed away on Father’s Day, reports said.
“This morning I had to say goodbye to the smartest, sweetest, kindest, most decent man I have ever known,” Haley posted on X, sharing a February 2023 photo from a campaign event in her native South Carolina, where she announced her presidential run.
Haley, a former two-term South Carolina governor who served under then-President Donald Trump as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, did not reveal her father’s age or cause of death in her post.
In January, Haley briefly left the campaign trail to visit her father in the hospital in South Carolina, according to Politico. Reports at the time indicated that he had an unspecified type of cancer. Randhawa, originally from India’s Punjab region, moved to Canada to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia. Later, in 1969, he relocated to South Carolina and began teaching at Voorhees College, according to Politico.
Haley was born three years later.
After dropping out of the presidential race in March following her losses to Trump on Super Tuesday, Haley withheld her endorsement of her former boss for months until finally coming around to it in May. “Trump has not been perfect on these policies. I have said that many, many times. But Biden would be a catastrophe. So I will be voting for Trump,” she said at the time.