Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, enters the 2024 GOP primary
(CNN) — South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott on Monday will formally enter the Republican presidential primary as he seeks to upend a contest that has so far been dominated by coverage of former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to enter the fray in the coming weeks.
The most prominent Black figure in the Republican Party, Scott will address supporters at his alma mater, Charleston Southern University, in his hometown of North Charleston.
Following the “major announcement,” Scott heads to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina – states he frequented on his “Faith in America” tour in the run-up to his announcement – before returning to the Hawkeye State next week for GOP Sen. Joni Ernst’s annual “Roast and Ride” gathering.
Scott, 57, is no stranger to pathbreaking campaigns. In 2010, he became the first Black Republican elected to the US House of Representatives from South Carolina in more than a century. Years later, after being appointed to his Senate seat (he won a special election to retain the seat), Scott made history as the first Black US Senator from his native South Carolina.
Ahead of his entry into the presidential race, senior campaign officials briefed reporters on their view of the path forward, acknowledging he will need to win over support from Trump and DeSantis, but vowing – in a veiled dig at both – that his candidacy will strike a more optimistic tone and condemn the culture of victimhood and grievance that, as his aides described it, has taken over both parties.
Faith and optimism, one said, will be the keystones of his underdog campaign.
“The seeds of greatness, not the seeds of grievance, is our future,” Scott said at the Heritage Foundation 50th Anniversary Summit in April.
The South Carolina senator received a boost on Sunday, less than 24 hours before his kick-off event, when news broke that his colleague Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, planned to endorse him.
“I think he’d be a great candidate. I’m excited about it. I’ve been encouraging him,” Thune previously told CNN. “I think he’s getting a lot of encouragement from his colleagues. He’s really well thought of and respected.”
Focus on early states
A senior campaign official said Scott will continue to invest resources and time in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, as the campaign ramps up.
Though Scott hails from South Carolina, they won’t count on it as a firewall, according to one senior campaign official, who emphasized Scott will have to compete as a top-tier candidate in other early primary and caucus states like New Hampshire and Iowa.
Even before the official launch, Scott revealed plans to pluck from his deep campaign coffers – with millions now transferred over from his Senate account – through a series of big-dollar ad buys in Iowa and New Hampshire.
The initial $5.5 million TV ad buy – including broadcast, cable satellite and radio – will air statewide starting Wednesday and run through the first GOP debate in August.
During the same period, Scott will also launch a seven-figure digital ad campaign.
Though he is only officially entering the race now, Scott has already gotten caught in the churn of the campaign season. Shortly after announcing an exploratory committee last month, he was tripped up by questions over his position on a potential national abortion ban.
After initially sidestepping the matter and refusing to say whether he would back a 15-week ban, Scott told WMUR he would support restrictions beginning at 20 weeks. Days later, though, Scott said in an interview with NBC News that he “would literally sign the most conservative pro-life legislation that they can get through Congress.”
Pressed on what precisely that meant, given he had applauded DeSantis for signing a six-week ban in Florida, Scott demurred – saying it was a decision for the states to make.
“I’m not going to talk about six (weeks) or five or seven or 10,” Scott said.
Road to national political stardom
Back at the senator’s home church near Charleston, there are hundreds of worshipers that see him most weekends.
“I’ve heard him talk about hope and opportunity for 25 years. It’s who he is. It’s a part of his story. And so I don’t think he’s going to change,” said Greg Suratt, founding pastor of Seacoast Church.
“I think a misconception that people might have about him is that his niceness, his humility, translates as weakness. And they don’t know the Tim Scott I know, I would like to kind of see it as an iron fist in a velvet glove,” Suratt added, noting that even people who disagree with his politics tend to like him as an individual.
Scott’s faith and his humble beginnings will be a central theme in his campaign, an aide said. Scott grew up in a single parent household in North Charleston, where his mother worked long hours to keep their family afloat.
“Think about the kid whose grandmother has to open the stove to heat the home in the middle of the winter. I think to myself, it kind of feels like that now,” Scott said at a town hall in New Hampshire this month. “So many people with our energy prices doubling in just the last couple years, are experiencing a crisis similar to the one that I had when I was just a kid.”
On his listening tour, Scott said that between the ages of 7 and 14, he “kind of drifted,” failing world geography, civics, English and Spanish in his freshman year of high school. But through the “tireless” encouragement of his mother and mentor, the late John Moniz, a Chick-fil-A manager, Scott says he was able to graduate from Charleston Southern University. He would eventually open his own insurance agency affiliated with Allstate.
Scott credits Moniz with teaching him that anyone can “succeed beyond their circumstances” if they take responsibility for themselves.
“In today’s culture of victimhood, it seems nobody wants to be responsible for themselves,” Scott said earlier this month. “My mentor literally taught me that if you take responsibility for yourself, that in that mirror you see the problem, but in that same mirror, you find the promise.”
Scott’s political career began in 1995, when he ran in a special election to the Charleston City Council, winning a seat he would keep for nearly 15 years. After one term as a state lawmaker, Scott won a US House seat representing South Carolina’s 1st district.
Fellow presidential candidate and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley then appointed Scott to the US Senate in 2012 to fill a vacancy left by Sen. Jim DeMint’s retirement. He retained the seat in a 2014 special election, was re-elected to a full term in 2016 and later won for a third time last year.
“To every single mom who struggles to make ends meet, who wonders if her efforts are in vain, they are not,” Scott said after being appointed by Haley.
During his time in the Senate, Scott has amassed a strictly conservative voting record, but has also led bipartisan police reform talks alongside New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat.
Those talks have gone on for years now, beginning in the summer of 2020 with then-California Sen. Kamala Harris also involved, but hopes for a comprehensive deal were effectively abandoned in 2021. (The conversations reportedly continue, but there is no legislation currently in the offing.)
In 2017, his “Investing in Opportunity Act,” which had some Democratic support, was included in the controversial Republican tax cut bill. The provision called for the establishment of “Opportunity Zones,” which would create tax incentives for businesses that invested in parts of the country struggling with poverty and stalled economies.
Still, Democrats in South Carolina welcomed Scott to the race with harsh words about his political record – and an attempt to tie him to the GOP’s far right.
“We know how dangerous Tea Party extremist Tim Scott is,” South Carolina Democratic Party chair Christale Spain said in a statement. “From promising to sign the most conservative abortion ban possible as president, to doubling down on his role as ‘architect’ of the 2017 GOP tax scam that pushed tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy at the expense of working families, Scott has proven himself to be just as MAGA as the rest of the 2024 field.”
Though Scott has expressed more openness to working with Democrats than most Republicans in Washington, he also owns one of the most conservative voting records in Congress. He rarely broke with Trump during the latter’s presidency, though he did criticize Trump’s response to White supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
“What we want to see from our president is clarity and moral authority,” Scott told Vice News at the time. “And that moral authority is compromised.”
Scott largely backed off that line, though, after a meeting with Trump in the White House.
“(Trump) was certainly very clear that the perception that he received on his comments was not exactly what he intended with those comments,” Scott told CBS News.