Politics

Candidates of color in the Republican Party like Haley — as well Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott — have been talking about their identities on the trail, while also trying to appeal to a voting base that is less diverse than the country as a whole.

Omar Wasow, a political science professor at UC Berkeley, says they have to navigate their identities in a way that appeals to segments of the Republican Party that have "become increasingly vocal about the idea that this is a white Christian nation."

"A candidate like Nikki Haley has to walk a real tightrope on an issue like immigration," he said, "because she is both the beneficiary of an immigration system that welcomed her family and allowed to her thrive — and at the same time she is embedded in a party that is quite hostile to the idea of an immigration system that is open to the world."

That doesn't mean that Republican candidates of color can completely avoid discussing race, according to Sara Sadhwani, a politics professor at Pomona College.

She says there was a time when Republican candidates could shy away from these issues, but that's not true anymore.

"And I think when we are in this time period in which a very mobilized faction of the MAGA/Trump conservatives are espousing this type of white grievance politics," she explained. "I think they are going to have questions for Republican candidates of color about how loyal they will actually be to the party platform that they want to see advanced."