Tim Scott starts presidential campaign and adds to list of Trump challengers
Tim Scott, the first black Republican elected to the Senate from the South since Reconstruction, announced his campaign for president on Monday.
Mr Scott’s decision, which followed a soft rollout in February and the creation of an exploratory committee in April, this time came with a signal to the Republican establishment that he was the candidate to rally if the party rejected the nomination of the Mr. Trump wants to quit. . Introduced by No. 2 Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota, he will immediately begin a $5.5 million advertising blitz in the early nominees states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
“Our party and our nation are at a moment to choose: victimization or victory? Complaint or greatness?” he intended to say during a busy and boisterous morning meeting at the gym at his alma mater, Charleston Southern University, according to prepared remarks. “I choose freedom and hope and opportunity.”
Long considered a rising star in the GOP, Mr. Scott, 57, is entering the primary field after amassing $22 million in fundraising and recruiting veteran political operatives to work on his behalf.
But the field of Republicans hoping to take over Mr. Trump’s nomination is about to get much busier. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie are expected to enter the race in the coming days. Chris Sununu, New Hampshire’s popular Republican governor, hinted over the weekend that he would also likely throw his hat in the ring and scramble the battle for the state’s first Republican primary. Mike Pence, Mr Trump’s former vice president, is still considering a run.
With Trump’s most ardent followers unwilling to abandon their flag bearer, the former president’s critics worry that more opponents will only split the anti-Trump vote and ensure his victory. Mr. Thune’s presence on stage on Monday was an acknowledgment of that concern and a call for other elected Republicans to get on board with Mr. Scott.
Scott campaign aides said his $22 million war chest was more than any presidential candidate in history, and that the $42 million he’s raised since 2022 — much of which has been distributed to other Republicans — is a depth of loyalty created. candidates do not have.
Perhaps the biggest question looming over Mr. Scott’s candidacy is whether his message of positivity steeped in religiosity can attract enough Republican voters to win in a crowded primary.
One of Mr. Scott’s rivals for the nomination is Nikki Haley, a former United Nations ambassador and governor of South Carolina who nominated him to his Senate seat in 2012. February, potentially complicating their efforts in an early primary state to be won.
“I bet there’s room for three or four” candidates from South Carolina, Mr. Scott told conservative radio personality Joey Hudson during an interview in February.
Mr. Scott has consolidated the support of several top Republican donors and political advisers while touring Iowa and New Hampshire, key early nominee states, along with South Carolina, his home base. Longtime political operative Rob Collins and former Colorado Senator Cory Gardner, two well-known figures in Republican politics, are the leaders of his affiliate super-PAC. Last month it was two top agents from South Carolina, Matt Moore and Mark Knoop tapped to run the group’s domestic operations.
Mark Sanford, the disgraced former governor of South Carolina whose political comeback was cut short by his fierce criticism of Mr. Trump, joined the crowd.
“I’m a big fan of Tim Scott,” he said.
Born in North Charleston, Mr. Scott was raised by a single mother who worked long hours as a nursing assistant to raise him and his brothers. A high school car accident killed his football dreams, but he attended Presbyterian College on a partial athletic scholarship before eventually studying political science at Charleston Southern.
His first foray into politics was through the Charleston County Council. After serving one term in the State House, he defeated Strom Thurmond’s son to win a seat for the First Congressional District in 2010, making him the first Black Republican House member from the Deep South since Reconstruction.
In speeches, he often uses his biography—a tale of humble beginnings and meteoric rise to the political scene—to underline his view of America as a laudable work in progress rather than an irredeemably racist nation.
“This is the freest and fairest country, where you and I can go as high as our character, perseverance and talent take us,” he would say Monday. “I bear witness to that.”
The importance of his position does not escape him. After a white gunman killed nine black parishioners at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Mr. Scott denounced the act as a “crime of hate” and joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers that Ms. Haley supported removing the Confederate emblem from South Carolina’s state flag. As the nation was reeling from the deaths of several black men at the hands of police in 2016, he gave a speech from the Senate floor describing instances where he was racially profiled, including by the Capitol police.
And the following year, after Mr. Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” of a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, Mr. Scott criticized his words and forced the former president to invite the senator in the White House for discussion.
Mr. Scott was a leading Republican voice in police reform negotiations following the 2020 killing of George Floyd, helping to draft legislation proposed by Republicans that called for limited reforms, but ultimately failed to pass. In 2017, he spearheaded the creation of Opportunity Zones, an initiative that provides tax incentives to investors in low-income neighborhoods, many of which are predominantly black.
However, it’s not clear whether these efforts will result in additional support from black voters on a national stage. To many black Democrats, Mr. Scott’s race matters little in light of his conservative voting record.
“The same black people who would normally vote Republican, those are the people who will vote for Tim Scott,” New York Democrat Representative Jamaal Bowman said. “The majority of black people, the near majority or new black voters will not run for Tim Scott.”
Mr. Scott has already been tested as a presidential candidate. Days after he formed his exploratory committee, Mr. Scott balked at questions about whether he would support a federal abortion ban and did not specify the number of weeks he would limit access to the procedure if elected president.
Mr. Scott’s entry into the race also comes as the search for Republicans to take the party’s mantle in 2024. Mr. Trump has increased his lead in the polls even as he faces new personal and political controversies, including his indictment by a Manhattan grand jury and subsequent liability in a sexual assault trial involving columnist E. Jean Carroll. Mr. Scott has emphatically refused to criticize Mr. Trump head-on, preferring oblique references to his own righteousness.
The senator’s supporters have hailed that message, mostly positive and laced with biblical references, as a welcome contrast to the vitriol that has become a hallmark of national campaigns.
“You didn’t see him burn effigy because of a side he took,” said Mikee Johnson, a Columbia-area business owner and donor to Scott. “He’s more the one who seems to have brought some people together.”
Mr Johnson added: “And I love him because that’s his place.”
At a March presidential forum in Charleston hosted by the conservative Christian Palmetto Family Council, Mr. Scott themes likely to be central to his presidential campaign.
“There are two visions: one that feels like it’s dragging us down and another that wants to restore faith in this nation,” he told the crowd after quoting the letter to the Galatians. “We believe we need more trust in America, more trust in Americans, not less.”