An already crowded discipline of presidential hopefuls has elevated: South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott has formally launched his bid for the White Home, turning into the sixth Republican to enter the race. Scott will look to unseat former President Donald Trump because the social gathering’s 2024 frontrunner, and begins his marketing campaign having raised $22 million, in accordance with The New York Instances.
Scott, 57, has turn out to be one of the well-known Republican faces on Capitol Hill, described by the Instances as “a rising star within the GOP.” He already has one key backing: Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the quantity two Republican within the Senate, has endorsed Scott for president, and launched him at his marketing campaign announcement in Charleston, South Carolina. Throughout his remarks, Scott mentioned the nation was “standing at a time for selecting: victimhood or victory? Grievance or greatness? I select freedom and hope and alternative.”
Whereas polling from Harvard/Harris reveals Trump beating Scott 79% to 21% in a hypothetical matchup, Scott marketing campaign officers informed Newsweek it was too early within the race for these figures to be significant.
Not solely is Scott the lone Black GOP senator, however he’s additionally South Carolina’s first Black senator of both social gathering. He’ll now look to one-up this accomplishment by turning into the Republican Celebration’s first Black president — however the place did he come from, and the way good are his odds?
Scott’s beginnings
Tim Scott was born in North Charleston, South Carolina, in a “poor, single-parent family” the place he “grew accustomed to shifting each few years, in addition to the lengthy hours his mother labored to maintain a roof over their heads,” in accordance with his official Senate biography.
He graduated from Charleston Southern College, a personal Baptist faculty in his hometown, and was finally elected to the South Carolina Home of Representatives. From there, he was elected to the U.S. Home of Representatives in 2010. Upon his election, Scott and Florida’s Allen West grew to become the primary Black Republicans in Congress in seven years, NPR reported on the time.
Scott finally garnered committee assignments and started elevating his profile in Washington, D.C, transitioning from the Home to the Senate in 2013. He was not elected to his first Senate time period, however somewhat appointed by the South Carolina governor to interchange a retiring senator. Paradoxically, the governor who appointed him was Nikki Haley, now competing in opposition to Scott in a Republican presidential marketing campaign of her personal.
The newly minted senator was re-elected to a full time period in 2016, then once more in 2022. In 2019, he informed Charleston newspaper The Publish and Courier that his 2022 Senate marketing campaign could be his final political outing, although from his presidential ambitions, it appears he could have been speaking about his senatorial profession.
Scott’s controversies and future
The senator is a uniquely profitable Southern Black politician, Politico reported, calling him “a sufferer of racism in shops, on roads, on-line and even within the U.S. Capitol itself, who does not see the nation as racist and does not see himself as a sufferer.”
Certainly, Scott has usually campaigned on the assertion that the U.S. isn’t inherently racist. Throughout a 2021 speech, he generated controversy by saying, “America isn’t a racist nation. It is backward to struggle discrimination with several types of discrimination.” He later elaborated on this stance following a slew of backlash, saying he acknowledged there was “a lingering impact after a few centuries of racism and discrimination on this nation.” He has additionally generated anger amongst some liberals for his help of “pulling your self up by your individual bootstraps,” categorized by some as a racist trope.
Regardless of these controversies, Scott’s web site states he’s a supporter of “conventional conservative values.” Will these values assist him win? Some within the social gathering appear to consider so, with GOP pollster Frank Luntz describing Scott as “the precise reverse of Donald Trump, and that is why he’s so intriguing. He’s as good and kind-hearted as Trump is hard and important.”
For now, although, Scott, like the remainder of the GOP candidates, stays far behind Trump, and solely time will inform if his “conventional conservative values” will probably be sufficient to hold him to the White Home.