Likely Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) speaks at a campaign town hall meeting on the Recent Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, Recent Hampshire, U.S., May 8, 2023.
Brian Snyder | Reuters
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina filed paperwork Friday to run for president in 2024, officially throwing his hat right into a growing Republican primary lineup that former President Donald Trump has to date led.
Scott is predicted to announce his presidential campaign on Monday morning in North Charleston. He made it official Friday morning when he filed an announcement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission designating a principal campaign committee for a presidential bid.
The 57-year-old lawmaker, who’s the Senate’s sole Black Republican, arrives as an underdog in the first. He has polled within the low single digits in surveys of the potential field even after launching an exploratory committee last month.
Scott’s campaign didn’t comment on the filing, which allows the senator’s campaign to start out placing TV and radio ads as a part of a large $6 million buy for Iowa and Recent Hampshire. The ads are expected to start running next Wednesday.
Scott’s brand of politics, marked by optimism and gestures toward stitching a divided nation back together, has been mostly absent from the Republican presidential conversation.
Trump, the clear polling frontrunner, is a daily source of divisive rhetoric that describes the U.S. under President Joe Biden as something like a dystopia. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a top contender who is predicted to announce his own presidential run next week, rose to national prominence by engaging in polarizing political fights over hot-button social issues.
Scott has been critical of Biden, but he has also homed in on a message of unity that in some ways echoes the Democratic president’s messaging within the 2020 election. He announced his presidential exploratory campaign on the day marking the start of the Civil War, underlining that America’s soul in that contest “was put to the test, and we prevailed.”
“I won’t ever back down in defense of the conservative values that makes America exceptional,” he said in a video released on that day.
Scott’s fellow South Carolina Republican, former Gov. Nikki Haley, has been running for president since February.
Democrats quickly sought to tie Scott with Trump.
“Even before he refused to call a policy difference with Trump, Scott was a fierce advocate of the MAGA agenda – supporting national abortion bans and championing plans to finish Medicare and Social Security as we all know them,” Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, who once ran for certainly one of South Carolina’s U.S. Senate seats, said in an announcement Friday. “There isn’t any query that special interests are celebrating as Tim Scott throws his hat into the 2024 race for the MAGA base.”
