Kamala Harris has reportedly chosen her Secret Service code name, and it is one with resonance for the first black woman and first Indian and Jamaican American to be part of a major party presidential ticket: Pioneer.
Harris chose the name from a list provided by her new protectors after being picked as Joe Biden’s running mate last week, CNN first reported, citing an anonymous law enforcement official.
Biden, the Democratic nominee for president, is still using the name he had when vice-president to Barack Obama: Celtic. Family members of those protected can choose names beginning with the same letter. Biden’s wife, Dr Jill Biden, is Capri.
It was not immediately known what name Douglas Emhoff, Harris’s husband, has chosen.
Property magnate-cum-president Donald Trump, whom Biden will face at the polls in November, also goes by an appropriate code name: Mogul. Melania Trump, former model turned first lady, is Muse.
Vice-president Mike Pence’s name is Hoosier, a nod to his state, Indiana. His wife, Karen Pence, is Hummingbird.
Barack Obama’s Secret Service code name was Renegade, while first lady Michelle Obama – who delivered a powerful speech on the first night of the Democratic convention on Monday – was Renaissance.
Jonathan Wackrow, a former Secret Service agent, told current employer CNN that code names tended to suit personalities.
“With Obama,” he said, “Renegade is a great example: how he went against the establishment in some of the things that he had done.”
Other presidential codenames have included Lancer, for John F Kennedy, head of a supposed new “Camelot”; Deacon, for the ardently religious Jimmy Carter; Searchlight, perhaps an ironic choice for the notably shady Richard Nixon; and Rawhide, for Ronald Reagan, once a star of Hollywood westerns.
Bill Clinton gloried in the code name Eagle. Hillary Clinton, who remains a bogey figure for Trump-supporting Republicans after losing the 2016 election and who has not counted out a place in a Biden administration, was Evergreen.
