Nikki Haley asks ‘Haley Voters for Harris’ to stop using her name

Nikki Haley, the first Indian American to get a cabinet rank in the Trump administration, is demanding that a group claiming to represent former Haley voters who support the presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris stop using her name.

“Kamala Harris and I are total opposites on every issue. Any attempt to use my name to support her or her agenda is deceptive and wrong,” Haley stated Tuesday.

“I support Donald Trump because he understands we need to make America strong, safe, and prosperous,” the former US ambassador to UN, said of her former boss turned bitter rival during the Republican primaries. She endorsed Trump last week.

Haley’s comments were directed toward a political action committee (PAC) that was previously known as “Haley Voters for Biden,” according to Fox News.

The group started featuring Harris’ name on Sunday after President Biden ended his re-election bid and endorsed his vice president to succeed him as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.

Haley was a very vocal critic of the former president during their heated primary race. But in late May, in her first public comments since announcing the end of her 2024 campaign, Haley said she would vote for Trump. And in a speech last week at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she formally endorsed Trump.

The group, which says it’s a coalition of former Haley voters, pledged their support for Harris soon after Biden endorsed his vice president. “We support @JoeBiden’s recommendation and will immediately change the name of our organization to Haley Voters for Harris. There is no time to lose,” the group wrote in a social media posting on Sunday afternoon.

The group, which changed the name of its page on X and on its website, also spotlighted that it has no affiliation with Haley or her aligned political committees.

READ: Kamala Harris wins enough delegates to win Democratic nod (July 23, 2024)

“We also do not and never claimed to speak for Nikki Haley. We are reaching out to a subset of Haley voters who will vote their consciences,” the group wrote. “Haley said Trump had to earn our votes. He has done nothing to do so – constantly deriding her – and picked Vance as his running mate.”

But a letter from a law firm representing Haley’s presidential campaign, shared with Fox News, demanded that the group “cease and desist from any unlawful use of Ambassador Haley’s name in your political action committee name, and from any use of her name, image or likeness that implies her support for the election of Kamala Harris as President of the United States.”

“Any use by you of Ambassador Haley’s name, image, or likeness is without her permission. Ambassador Haley has been clear in her support of Harris’ opponent. Any intimation that Ambassador Haley supports Harris is intentionally false and misleading,” the letter continued.

The letter warns that if the group fundraises under the name “Haley Voters for Harris” or a similar name, the Haley campaign will alert investigative authorities, including the Justice Department and the FBI.

Less than 36 hours after Biden’s withdrawal, Harris announced that she had locked up the nomination.
“I am proud to have earned the support needed to become our party’s nominee,” the vice president wrote in a social media post just after midnight early Tuesday morning.

READ: Indian American bodies endorse Kamala Harris for President (July 22, 2024)

Harris showcased that she’d won commitments of backing from a majority of the nearly 4,000 delegates to next month’s Democratic National Convention, which kicks off Aug 19 in Chicago.

Last week, before Biden ended his bid, Haley reiterated her criticism of Harris relating to the crisis at the nation’s southern border.

In her address at the Republican convention, Haley emphasized that the vice president “had one job… and that was to fix the border. Now imagine her in charge of the entire country.”