SCOTT TO ANNOUNCE 2024 RUN TODAY
S.C. senator’s bid could raise profile of Black conservatives
Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., addressed the Charleston County Republican Party at a dinner in February, offering a stirring message of unity and American redemption that has become the center of his stump speech. The next day, he called the chair of the county party to ask for his support.
Scott told the chair that he was considering a presidential run. The chair, who had planned to endorse former President Donald Trump, told the senator he would switch allegiances and back him instead.
The exchange was, in some ways, traditional party politicking as Scott works to build support in his home county and in his home state. But it also underscored a subtle change shaping GOP politics — both men are Black Republicans.
“I’m pretty locked in helping Sen. Scott in every way that I possibly can,” said the former county party leader, Maurice Washington, who stepped down from his role as chair in April. It was Washington, Charleston County’s first Black Republican chair and a longtime ally of Scott’s, who first encouraged him to run for a county council seat nearly 30 years ago.
Scott, who plans to formally announce his presidential campaign today, will become one of a handful of Black conservatives to run for president in recent years. Herman Cain made a bid for the White House in 2011 and
Ben Carson did so in 2016, but neither garnered widespread support. Scott, 57, will be the second Black conservative to enter the 2024 race: Larry Elder, a talk radio host who ran unsuccessfully for governor in California’s 2021 recall election, announced his campaign last month.
As a U.S. senator and a former member of the House of Representatives with $22 million in campaign funds, Scott will begin as more of a contender than most of his predecessors,
and he will be one of the bestfunded candidates in the 2024 presidential primary. His support is in the low single digits, according to public polling. But his candidacy could raise not only his profile, but those of Black conservatives across the country.
Black Republicans are a small group of voters and politicians who say they often feel caught in the middle — ignored and subtly discriminated against by some Republicans, ridiculed and ostracized by many Democrats.
Those elected to office have expressed frustration that they are viewed not simply as conservatives but as Black conservatives, and they often decry what they describe as the Democratic obsession with identity politics.
“I think the commonality of virtually all Black conservatives is that we don’t think we’re victims,” said Elder, who has emphasized his roots in both California and the segregated South. “We don’t believe we’re oppressed. We don’t believe
that we’re owed anything.” He and Scott share a belief in “hard work and education and self-improvement,” Elder added. “So it would not surprise me that he and I are saying the same things, if not in different ways.”
Other Black Republicans have won state races and primaries since the 2022 midterms.
On Tuesday, Daniel Cameron defeated a wellfunded opponent in Kentucky’s Republican primary for governor. Cameron, the first Black man to be elected attorney general in Kentucky, is the Trump-endorsed protégé of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Last year, a record number of Black Republican candidates ran for state offices.
With Scott in the Senate and four Republicans in the House, there are now five Black Republicans in Congress — the most in more than a century.
Still, the number of Black Republicans who won seats last year is a fraction of the total number who ran for state and local office under the GOP — more than 80. And the Republican Party’s inroads with Black candidates have yet to overcome enduring feelings of distrust among Black voters toward the party. But many in the Republican Party, its members of color are proof of its inclusivity.
In speeches, Scott has criticized the “victim mentality” he believes exists in American culture, and has blamed the left for using racial issues as a means of further dividing the electorate. Elder said racism “has never been a less important factor in American life than today.”
“What Black Republicans have to do is they either have to lean all in and just be an unapologetic, uncritical supporter for where the Republican Party is now, or they have to find a way to walk that tightrope of not alienating the party, but also not alienating their community,” said Leah Wright Rigueur, an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University. “Somebody like Scott has to find a space to navigate those worlds.”