They’re still in the game, both are raising serious money, and each has experienced threats of violence.
Former South Carolina governor and current presidential candidate Nikki Haley has requested a Secret Service detail after experiencing “multiple issues.” While certainly up for debate, it seems about time that remaining candidates receive Secret Service protection. Trump and Biden already have them, and it’d be both sporting and well within contemporary precedent to grant the rest of the field the same.
Paul Steinhauser reports for Fox News:
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has applied for Secret Service protection because of increasing threats she has received on the campaign trail, Haley’s team confirmed to Fox News on Monday.
The former two-term South Carolina governor who later served as U.N. ambassador in former President Donald Trump’s administration is Trump’s last remaining major rival for the 2024 GOP nomination.
Haley discussed the request for protection in an interview Monday afternoon with The Wall Street Journal.
“We’ve had multiple issues,” the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador said after a campaign event in Aiken, South Carolina. “It’s not going to stop me from doing what I need to do.”
Historically, the time and place for granting a candidate a team of Secret Service agents is at the pleasure of the sitting president; and his homeland security secretary, currently the besieged Alejandro Mayorkas, would make the decision in consultation with an advisory committee. There exists a general qualification guideline, as outlined by the Congressional Research Service. To be given protection, a candidate must be:
- A publicly declared candidate
- Actively campaigning nationally and contesting at least ten state primaries
- Pursuing the nomination of a qualified party (i.e., whose presidential candidate received at least 10 percent of the popular vote in the prior election)
- Qualified for public matching funds of at least $100,000, and has raised at least $2 million in additional contributions
- As of April 1 of the election year, has received at least an average of 5 percent in individual candidate preferences in the most recent national opinion polls by ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN, or has received at least 10 percent of the votes cast for all candidates in two same-day or consecutive primaries or caucuses
Then there are extenuating circumstances that might make earlier protection more likely — such as threats or actions against the candidate. Early in 2007, a full 18 months before the general election, Barack Obama received a Secret Service detail after his senior Illinois senator, Dick Durbin, lobbied on his behalf. Jim Geraghty observed of Obama in May 2007 that the protection measures were due to “growing popularity that . . . he and his family would rather not have.” In 2016, Donald Trump, Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and Bernie Sanders were granted Secret Service protection, and Hillary Clinton already received it by dint of her former first-lady status. Ted Cruz was the only one to turn down the protection offer.
All of this to say, Nikki Haley and RFK Jr. should receive security details. Yes, it’s expensive (more than $50,000 per day per person), and, yes, neither has yet won a primary. However, they’re still in the game, both are raising serious money, and each has experienced threats of violence — RFK Jr. as early as the summer of last year.
As Jim Geraghty wrote in September 2023:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should receive U.S. Secret Service protection, immediately. Maybe the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s decision not to grant that protection could be justified before last week. But on Friday, an armed man, allegedly impersonating a U.S. Marshal, was arrested at an RFK Jr. campaign event in Los Angeles. The man allegedly claimed he was part of Kennedy’s security detail and told staff that he had to see the candidate “immediately.”
How many more armed men do we want near a presidential candidate named Robert F. Kennedy at a campaign event in Los Angeles? I think two is plenty.
That was five months ago, and still protection hasn’t been offered to RFK Jr., even after he moved away from the Democratic primary and became fully independent. This brings us to an unfortunate reality: Joe Biden would rather not legitimize a man who is more popular than he is and who bears a name with serious heft on the left side of the aisle (and a fair bit on the populist right, too). To be offered Secret Service protection is to be considered a contender.
Biden is too weak — like, eye-poppingly weak — to offer his opponents anything. Like an elderly man who swipes his cane at the legs of those who don’t require a walking aid in an effort to make them stumble, Biden and Mayorkas are likely to wait until the very last second before granting security to Haley and RFK Jr., no matter the campaign-trail dangers they face. It’s a shame.