Sen. Tim Scott launches 2024 Republican presidential campaign
Sen. Tim Scott kicked off his 2024 presidential campaign Monday afternoon in his home state of South Carolina by touting his personal story and slamming President Biden and the “radical left” for fostering a culture of “grievance” over “greatness.”
In a launch event at Scott’s alma mater, Charleston Southern University, the only black Senate Republican emphasized his religious faith and ascension to Congress as the son of a single mother and the grandson of a cotton picker in the Jim Crow South.
“My family went from cotton to Congress in his lifetime,” Scott said of his ancestor. “And it was only possible because my grandfather had a stubborn faith: faith in God, faith in himself, and faith in what America would be.”
“This black man who struggled through the Jim Crow South believed then what some doubt now: in the goodness of America,” Scott went on. “Today, I’m living proof that America is the land of opportunity, and not a land of oppression.”
At one point, Scott called his mother Frances, a former nursing assistant who worked 16-hour days at a Charleston hospital before retiring this past February, on stage to thank her for her support.
“Those 16-hour days put food on our table and kept our lights on,” he told a cheering crowd. “They empowered her to move her boys out of a place filled with anger into a home full of love.”
After working in insurance and financial services post-college, Scott entered politics at the age of 29. He was elected in 1995 to the Charleston County Council, where he spent 14 years before winning a seat in the Palmetto State’s legislature.
Elected to the House as part of the 2010 red wave, Scott was plucked from relative obscurity by then-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who appointed him to replace the retiring Jim DeMint. Scott held the seat in a 2014 special election and was re-elected by landslides in 2016 and 2022. He has long said his current Senate term would be his last.
“Joe Biden and the radical left are attacking every single rung of the ladder that helped me climb. And that is why I am announcing today that I am running for president of the United States of America,” the senator declared Monday.
“When I cut your taxes, they called me a prop. When I re-funded the police, they called me a token. When I pushed back on President Biden, they even called me the n-word,” added Scott, calling himself “the candidate the far-left fears the most.”
The 57-year-old attacked the president and the left flank of the Democratic Party specifically for fiscal irresponsibility, taking particular aim at Biden’s proposed student loan bailout.
“The Biden administration has us retreating away from earned success, aspiration and accountability. He wants to make waitresses and mechanics pay the student loans of lawyers and doctors making six figures,” Scott said.
“This administration has taxed, borrowed, and spent trillions of dollars trying to replace a hand up with handouts. All they bought us was crushing inflation that has devastated families like mine.”
Scott floated foreign and domestic policy proposals during his speech, including bringing an end to the nation’s “new economic Cold War” with China and making it “a federal crime to kill, ambush, or assault a cop.”
He also proposed extending a successful incentive he wrote into former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts from 2017 to rebuild the nation’s “manufacturing base with Opportunity Zones 2.0 and an entire Made In America agenda.”
Scott also thanked Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison for his support. In February, the tech titan donated $15 million to a pro-Scott super PAC.
In a surprise move, former President Donald Trump wished Scott luck on his campaign, posting on his Truth Social account that the senator was “a big step up” from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whom he called “totally unelectable.”
“Good luck to Senator Tim Scott in entering the Republican Presidential Primary Race. It is rapidly loading up with lots of people, and Tim is a big step up from Ron DeSanctimonious, who is totally unelectable,” the 76-year-old GOP front-runner said on his own social media platform.
“I got Opportunity Zones done with Tim, a big deal that has been highly successful. Good luck Tim!”
Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-SD), who endorsed Scott and opened for him on Monday, referred to his colleague as “a candidate who comes into this race with boundless hope and optimism for this great country.”
“I don’t know about you, but I think our country is ready to be inspired again,” he said.
Scott will face off against Trump and Haley, among others, for the GOP nomination, with DeSantis expected to enter the race later this week. The South Carolinian enters the race with $22 million cash on hand left over from his 2022 Senate re-election campaign, more than any other presidential candidate in US history.
Democratic National Committee chair Jamie Harrison, who ran unsuccessfully for Senate in South Carolina in 2020, released a statement in response to Scott’s announcement calling the senator “a fierce advocate of the MAGA agenda,” a reference to the former president’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
On many issues, Scott does indeed align with mainstream GOP positions. He wants to reduce government spending and restrict abortion, saying he would sign a federal law to prohibit abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy if elected president.
But Scott has pushed the party on some policing overhaul measures since the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis cops in May 2020, and he has occasionally criticized Trump’s response to racial tensions.
On the Senate floor weeks after Floyd’s death, Scott told his colleagues he had been pulled over by police 18 times since 2000, “including seven times in one year.”
Throughout their disagreements, though, Scott has maintained a generally cordial relationship with Trump, saying in his book that the former president “listened intently” to his viewpoints on race-related issues.
However, Scott has roundly rejected critical race theory, which teaches that racism and white supremacy permeate America’s laws and institutions.
With Post wires
