Bakari Sellers, a CNN political commentator and former Democratic representative from South Carolina, condemned Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley as a “white governor from the Deep South” following a town hall hosted by the network on Sunday.
Haley served as governor of South Carolina during a mass shooting which led to the deaths of nine black churchgoers in 2015. She opted to remove the confederate flag from the state capitol following the shooting, but Sellers attacked her for not removing the flag earlier in her tenure.
“One of the major elements of the Nikki Haley story is Charleston,” Sellers said. “Nikki Haley did not take down the Confederate flag. That bothers me when she alludes to it or people state that, because that’s incorrect. Nine people died so that the Confederate flag could come down.”
“But there also has to be some credit given to a white governor from the Deep South being able to go to nine funerals because I saw the exhaustion on her face — being a leader during that time and being able to bridge people together,” he continued.
The comments drew a stiff correction from anchor Kaitlan Collins, who pointed to Haley’s Indian ancestry. “She is the first woman of color that is running in this,” the panelist shot back at Sellers.
Haley became the first Asian American woman to hold the position of governor and, as Donald Trump’s representative to the United Nations, the first Indian American to have an executive position in the presidential cabinet.
The comments drew condemnation from Haley’s presidential campaign. “Did @Bakari_Sellers just call Nikki Haley a ‘white governor’? What a joke,” communications director, Nachama Soloveichik, tweeted on Monday.
Did @Bakari_Sellers just call Nikki Haley a "white governor"? What a joke.
— Nachama Soloveichik (@nachamasol) June 5, 2023
Sellers has become increasingly critical of Haley and Senator Tim Scott (R., S.C.), a black man, for denying the existence of systemic racism in the United States. The trio served together in the state legislature previously.
“I know Nikki and Tim — both are brilliant — but for them not to be able to make the logical jump is troubling: Systemic racism is the issue,” Sellers told the New York Times for an article last Thursday. “For them to recount their own experiences but close their eyes to the bigger picture, it’s troubling.”
During Haley’s town hall discussion in Des Moines, Iowa, the presidential candidate took aim at Republican frontrunners Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis for not tackling entitlement reform.
“I know that Trump and DeSantis have both said we’re not going to deal with entitlement reform, well all you’re doing is leaving it for the next president, and that’s leaving a lot of Americans in trouble,” Haley said.
“We can’t keep kicking this can down the road.”
The former governor has been outspoken about the need to raise the retirement age to avert a financial crisis with social welfare programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
“The first thing you do is you change the retirement age of the young people coming up so that we can try and have some sort of system for them,” Haley said during a town hall debate in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in early March.
“It’s the new ones coming in. It’s those in their 20s that are coming in. You’re coming to them and you’re saying, the game has changed. We’re going to do this completely differently.”
According to RealClearPolitics polling, Haley places third among Republican presidential candidates, with 4.4 percent of primary voters supporting her.