What to learn about Tim Scott, the latest 2024 GOP presidential candidate
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — As Sen. Tim Scott enters the 2024 GOP presidential discipline, he shall be desirous to introduce himself to voters who won’t know a lot about him.
Listed below are 5 issues to know concerning the South Carolina Republican:
Foremost: Religion
Raised by a single mom, Scott, 57, talks usually of how Frances Scott labored lengthy hours as a nurse’s assistant to offer for her two sons. It was a meager existence, the senator stated, but it surely was centered round their sturdy Christian religion.
At age 18, Scott turned what he phrases a “born-again believer.”
His religion is an integral a part of his political and private narrative, in addition to his perception in being a constructive catalyst for change. He usually quotes Scripture at marketing campaign occasions, weaving his reliance on non secular steering into his stump speech and utilizing “Religion in America” to explain his collection of appearances earlier than becoming a member of the race.
Final 12 months in a speech on the Reagan Presidential Library, Scott stated he noticed America “at a crossroads — with the potential for an incredible resetting, a renewal, even a rebirth.” His autobiography, launched final 12 months, is titled “America: A Redemption Story.”
When his now-rival Nikki Haley appointed him to the U.S. Senate in 2012, Scott turned the primary Black senator from the South since simply after the Civil Warfare. In a 2014 particular election to serve out the rest of his time period, Scott turned the primary Black candidate to win a statewide race in South Carolina for the reason that Reconstruction period.
Earlier than that, Scott had simply been elected to his second time period representing South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District. He served a single time period within the state Home, in addition to, starting in 1995, almost 14 years on the Charleston County Council, whereas additionally working an insurance coverage enterprise. He additionally briefly ran for lieutenant governor, finally abandoning that pursuit to hunt the congressional seat vacated by retiring Rep. Henry Brown.
At the moment, South Carolina’s governor and lieutenant governor had been elected individually; had Scott stayed in that race and received it, he and Haley would have served collectively as South Carolina’s prime officeholders.
‘I disrupt the narrative’
The Senate’s sole Black Republican, Scott doesn’t draw back from stating that his is commonly the one face of colour in lots of rooms of conservatives.
“Once I fought again in opposition to their liberal agenda, they referred to as me a prop. A token. As a result of I disrupt their narrative,” he stated in an April video saying his presidential exploratory committee, shot on the location of Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, the place the Civil Warfare’s first photographs had been fired.
In his Reagan Library speech final 12 months, Scott stated that perception in conservative values had modified his life, arguing that his potential to achieve politics had disproven critiques from liberals he stated “you possibly can name me a prop, you possibly can name me a token. … Simply perceive what you name me is not any match for the proof of my life.”
Rejecting the notion that the nation is inherently racist, Scott has repudiated the educating of essential race concept, an instructional framework that presents the concept the nation’s establishments preserve the dominance of white individuals.
He has additionally spoken on the Senate ground about his private experiences as a Black man in America.
“I’ve felt the anger, the frustration, the disappointment and the humiliation that comes with feeling such as you’re being focused for nothing extra than simply being your self,” Scott stated in 2016, recounting how he was pulled over seven occasions in a 12 months.
However Scott argues that liberals have tried to weaponize race by portraying nonwhite residents as politically oppressed.
“Hear me clearly: America will not be a racist nation,” he stated in a nationally televised response to President Joe Biden’s 2021 handle to Congress. “It’s backwards to struggle discrimination with several types of discrimination. And it’s unsuitable to attempt to use our painful previous to dishonestly shut down debates within the current.”
Cash Talks
Scott is coming into the marketing campaign with additional cash readily available than every other presidential candidate in U.S. historical past. On the finish of his 2022 marketing campaign, he had $22 million left over, which he plans to instantly switch to his presidential coffers.
There are thousands and thousands extra in different organizations created to assist Scott and his efforts. Alternative Issues Fund, a pro-Scott tremendous political motion committee, spent greater than $20 million to assist Republicans in 2022, reporting $13 million-plus readily available to start out 2023. Tech billionaire Larry Ellison has donated at the very least $30 million to the group since 2021, based on federal filings.
One other tremendous PAC, Alternative Issues Fund Motion, had round $3 million on the finish of final 12 months.
Historical past with Trump
Scott has maintained a typically cordial relationship with Trump, regardless of initially endorsing Florida Sen. Marco Rubio within the 2016 GOP presidential major.
However he additionally spoke out in opposition to Trump after the then-president stated there have been “very fantastic individuals on each side” of a lethal conflict between white supremacists and anti-racist demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Scott stated that Trump’s rules had been compromised and that with out some introspection, “will probably be onerous for him to regain … ethical authority.”
Scott additionally referred to as it “indefensible” after Trump retweeted a publish in June 2020 containing a racist slogan related to white supremacists. Trump later deleted it.
In his 2022 e book, Scott stated that Trump “listened intently” to his viewpoints on race-related points. And on the marketing campaign path, Scott has railed in opposition to political correctness in a lot the identical style as Trump.
“In case you wished a blueprint to destroy America, you’d hold doing precisely what Joe Biden has let the far left do to our nation for the previous two years,” Scott stated this 12 months in Iowa. “Inform each white child they’re oppressors. Inform Black and brown youngsters their future is grievance, not greatness.”
Story by Meg Kinnard, Related Press
