Senator Tim Scott is reportedly making preparations to enter the 2024 presidential contest, becoming a member of a crowded record of potential candidates—from former UN ambassador Nikki Haley to Republican governors Ron DeSantis, Brian Kemp, and Chris Sununu—looming behind Donald Trump, the race’s sole official entrant.
In a press release to The Wall Road Journal on Monday, Jennifer DeCasper, one of many senator’s prime advisers, relayed that Scott is “excited to share his imaginative and prescient of hope and alternative and listen to the American folks’s response.” The comment got here days after Axios reported that Scott had revamped his tremendous PAC, Alternative Issues Fund Motion, tapping former Republican senator Cory Gardner and GOP strategist Rob Collins, who was beforehand the chief director of Senate Republicans’ official marketing campaign arm, as its cochairs.
Scott, the one Black Republican within the Senate, can also be embarking on a “Religion in America” tour, stopping in Iowa and his dwelling state, the place he’s scheduled to talk at a celebration of Black Historical past Month with native occasion officers on Thursday. In the meantime, Nikki Haley—who, because the Palmetto state’s governor, appointed Scott to a vacant Senate seat greater than a decade in the past—is reportedly set to announce her personal presidential bid on Wednesday. Haley’s 2024 marketing campaign will probably be headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina, the place Scott as soon as served as a Metropolis Council member earlier than occurring to serve within the state legislature and later the US Congress.
To this point, Scott seems to be the one sitting senator critically contemplating a bid, a notable departure from the GOP’s 2016 main that noticed senators Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and Lindsey Graham all struggle for the nomination. Trump was in the end capable of capitalize on the crowded area of high-profile conservatives pulling potential votes from one another and win the nomination. The identical state of affairs might play out once more subsequent 12 months. In a Trafalgar Group ballot of South Carolina GOP main voters carried out final month, Trump edged DeSantis 43%–28%, whereas Scott and Haley, respectively, drew 14% and 12% of help. Republican respondents in a Yahoo Information/YouGov ballot earlier this month picked DeSantis over Trump 45%–41% in a head-to-head matchup, however when offered with the third choice of Haley, it was Trump who got here out on prime. Prime anti-Trump Republican fundraisers and strategists have reportedly instructed potential candidates to arrange to drop out nicely earlier than voting begins, with a purpose to forestall Trump from sneaking by way of with only a plurality of help.
For now, although, Scott, nonetheless with out a lot nationwide title recognition, has spent current days specializing in police reform and constitution college funding—a attainable window into the makings of a stump speech. “The great thing about America is our future is not going to be depending on the colour of your pores and skin, however the high quality of your training,” he mentioned in a Fox Information interview this month. “That will probably be your future.” He then dropped a line that would simply be a marketing campaign slogan: “The ability of hope,” he urged, can “decrease unemployment, decrease poverty” in America’s poorest communities.
