I wrote the Nikki Haley campaign song being trashed all over the internet. How embarrassing

As a white, middle-aged, gay New York musician, my voting record is very liberal. The only time I’ve ever voted for a Republican candidate was for New York City mayor Rudi Giuliani. We have all seen how that turned out.

So, when legendary investor Tim Draper asked me to write a song to his lyrics in support of Republican Nikki Haley’s presidential run, I hesitated. Tim, a libertarian iconoclast in the field of finance, was one of the first investors in Hotmail, Twitch, Skype, Coinbase, and even Tesla before Elon Musk. He helped launch companies that are now worth over ten billion dollars. In other words, he has a good track record of knowing what he’s talking about.

As we all know, Nikki Haley is a fighter and she didn’t fold to Trump like all the other candidates. People who have directly opposed Trump for any reason run a great political risk.

I didn’t know much about Nikki Haley when the request came through — just that she was the former US Ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, and her husband is a major in the National Guard. But I felt strongly that it was good for someone to stand up to Trump, especially a female candidate of color. I also have my own reservations, like many voters from both political parties, about re-electing older past presidents like Biden and Trump. We need younger leaders and a fresh start to bridge the divides in this country.

So I relented and co-wrote and produced the song “We Need You Nikki.” It is a solid, catchy song, but I only had a day to finish it so perhaps not my most brilliant creation. I figured none of my blue friends had to know about my red gig anyway.

Little did I know that within days of finishing it, the song would get trashed on The Late-Night Show with Stephen