Tim Scott: US senator ready to shake up 2024 electoral race

While Donald Trump continues to hog the Republican Party limelight with increasingly acrimonious outbursts, Tim Scott, the senator from South Carolina, has been quietly impressing the party faithful.

Perhaps not a household name at the moment, Scott “is perfectly placed for national prominence”, said The Root. “If the Republican Party’s 2024 nominee is someone not named Donald Trump, Scott will almost certainly be on the short-list for the VP slot,” the website added.

In fact Scott, who is expected to formally announce his presidential campaign at the end of May, “could ultimately prove a strong alternative” to Trump, said NBC News. He is said to be an exceptional communicator and excellent fundraiser “with an up-from-the-bootstraps personal narrative and a positive vision for the future that will play well on the campaign trail”, said the broadcaster.

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“He’s someone who I would be happy if he became president of the United States,” said former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Who is Tim Scott?

Scott was born in North Charleston, South Carolina in 1965. He grew up in poverty and was raised by a single mother. He attended two Christian colleges, before serving as a Charleston County Council member and eventually arriving at the US Senate in 2012.

In the midterm elections in 2014 he made history by becoming the first Black senator elected from a southern state for more than 130 years. “Our family went from cotton to Congress in one lifetime,” he said.

Like many Republicans, the 57-year-old bachelor is a God-fearing conservative who believes in traditional moral values and says the Biden administration is “ruining America”, reported The Times.

In 1997, when he was a member of the Charleston County Council, Scott backed having the Ten Commandments placed outside council chambers. “Whatever it costs in the pursuit of this goal is worth it,” he was quoted as saying, even after the council was sued. He has promised to “defend the Judeo-Christian foundation our nation is built on and protect our religious liberty” and is deeply opposed to abortion.

On policy issues, his worldview isn’t dissimilar to Trump’s, said MSNBC. “He attributes America’s economic woes to China, champions cops, pledges to defend the borders and provokes fear about crime,” added the broadcaster. But Scott is also different to Trump in the sense that he “projects an optimism that evokes the legacy of Ronald Reagan, the party’s most venerated modern politician and its last president to come from humble beginnings”, said The Times.

‘A dim view’

“America is not a racist country,” Scott declared in 2021, when he was picked to deliver the Republican response to President Biden’s first state of the union address. Despite having been a victim of police harassment and racial profiling, he is “uniquely positioned as a Black man to defend the Republican Party’s turn toward white nationalism”, said MSNBC. “Joe Biden and the radical left have chosen a culture of grievance over greatness. They’re promoting victimhood instead of personal responsibility,” Scott declared in a recent video.

It’s not a sentiment that has played out too well among some Black voters, who say he has forgotten his roots. “Most Black Americans take a dim view of those from their race who stand tall and proud in a Republican Party that has opposed civil rights laws, made voting more difficult and is currently on a crusade to outlaw diversity and inclusion policies,” said The Root.

Black voters note Scott’s refusal to join the Congressional Black Caucus in the Senate, and some remain aggrieved at his decision to block a bill that contained crucial federal police reform following the murder of George Floyd, according to The Grio.

Other commentators take a more generous view. Maya King in The New York Times praised “his overall strategy… of not engaging in personal attacks” over Biden’s old age. “I do not give the president a pass,” Scott told one Republican voter. “I think he’s failing his job because he’s incompetent. I refuse to say it’s because he’s too old or he’s too frail.”

‘Mike Pence 2.0’

Scott’s chances of clinching the Republican presidential nomination, “to put it lightly, are not good”, said MSNBC. “He has no buzz, he’s among the least known of the serious presidential contenders, and it doesn’t look like he’s staking out a unique policy lane.”

Besides, the Republican battle is currently a two-man race between former president Donald Trump and the Florida governor Ron DeSantis. While Scott is certainly popular among Republicans, none has rushed to endorse him.

But there could be something else to gain – a formidable VP candidate. Scott could be a “Mike Pence 2.0: attractive to evangelicals without Pence’s baggage from the first Trump presidency – with the added bonus that he can talk about race in a way that no other major Republican can”, said MSNBC.