Trump or a more diverse GOP? SC’s Tim Scott promises both in 2022 fundraising appeal
If there’s one image that U.S. Sen. Tim Scott is trying to sear into the minds of South Carolina Republican voters, it’s the one his reelection campaign keeps putting in nearly every fundraising letter.
The glossy photo shows Scott, the Senate’s lone Black Republican, sitting in the Oval Office and shaking hands with former President Donald Trump. The two popular GOP figures sit side-by-side, their eyes locked, as they grip each other’s hands in agreement.
It’s the ultimate personification of an intact political alliance and a visual reminder to voters here in the Palmetto State that the relationship between Trump and Scott still thrives as South Carolina’s junior senator seeks reelection in 2022.
The former president gave Scott his “Complete and Total Endorsement” in March — a seal of approval that Scott reciprocated recently when he told reporters “of course” he’d support Trump if he ran for president again in 2024.
South Carolina and national political watchers agree this letter shows Scott understands the Republican Party still very much belongs to Trump. But what’s more telling is how that reality is now shaping the way Scott navigates the issue that came between him and the former president the most: Race in America.
Scott, who was initially reluctant to focus on race when he first arrived in Washington 10 years ago, had long sought to downplay his exceptional standing in the Republican Party as its only Black senator. He even developed a go-to line on the matter: “I am a Christian who is a conservative, and you may have noticed that I’m Black.”
Yet in a recent fundraising letter obtained by The State newspaper, Scott has adopted a more defensive, divisive and partisan tone on the topic when communicating with the Republican base.
“Last year, my vote to reelect President Donald Trump so we could continue our pro-growth, pro-freedom, America-first agenda, meant, according to Joe Biden’s condescending comment, ‘you ain’t black,’” the letter said, underlining the quote.
“Well,” Scott continued, “I have two pieces of news for Joe Biden…”
In the only all-caps text in his entire six-page fundraising appeal, Scott then wrote:
“...FIRST, DO NOT BE A HYPOCRITE AND JUDGE ME BY THE COLOR OF MY SKIN!”
“...SECOND, DO NOT EVER TRY TO DICTATE TO ANYONE FROM THE SOUTH HOW THEY MUST VOTE!!”
“I’m not sure where his head was when he made this arrogant comment,” Scott wrote, questioning Biden’s mental and cognitive fitness, “but you would have thought he could remember that here in America, blacks are free!”
‘That picture tells it all’
While dialing up the partisan rhetoric is a common tactic ahead of a primary election to excite the base and preemptively box out any serious potential challengers, Scott’s change in tone comes at a time when his star power within the Republican Party has never been greater.
In 2020, on the first night of the Republican National Convention, Scott delivered a powerful and optimistic speech that closed out the night. It had his best friend and former South Carolina congressman Trey Gowdy tweeting, “Tim Scott 2024!”
And earlier this year, Scott got national attention and pundits buzzing over 2024 speculation yet again when he delivered the GOP response to President Joe Biden’s prime-time address to a joint session of Congress. He was also his party’s chief negotiator on a bipartisan police reform package, but those talks fell apart when lawmakers could not agree how to move forward on a swath of issues.
“He’s gotten his tail back inside the tent. That picture tells it all,” said Neal Thigpen, a retired Francis Marion University political scientist and longtime tracker of Republican races.
So far, Scott’s pitch to Republicans is paying off big. The more than $31 million he has raised since 2017 makes Scott the Republican Party’s strongest fundraiser among Senate candidates running in 2022, according to the Federal Election Commission.
And in South Carolina, a solidly Republican state, Scott remains the clear favorite in this statewide contest.
Gibbs Knotts, a political scientist at the College of Charleston who has studied Scott’s past campaigns and co-authored a book about the strong influence of South Carolina’s presidential primary for Republicans and Democrats, said the recent fundraising letter raises questions about whether Scott’s 2022 race is also a dress rehearsal for a future run for higher office.
“You know, we always think about Nikki Haley as being the South Carolinian most likely to run for president next, but Tim Scott,” Knotts said. “I mean, looking at this letter, this is something that speaks to a Republican primary electorate and very well speaks to a Republican presidential primary electorate.”
Scott, meanwhile, has repeatedly insisted that he is squarely focused on his 2022 reelection campaign.
But when asked what changed to make Scott more comfortable in leading with his racial identity in a direct fundraising appeal to supporters, his campaign suggested it’s unavoidable.
“The issue of race is absolutely front and center in America and most certainly in politics,” Sam Oh, Scott’s campaign consultant, said in an emailed statement.
However, in a 2020 interview with The Washington Post, Scott also bemoaned the role that was frequently thrust upon him during the Trump era, during which he was often asked to respond to the latest problematic or racially insensitive comment made by the president at the time.
“Of all the issues that are going on, I know the racial ones are the most provocative,” Scott told The Washington Post. “But I’m not the only person that people can talk to about it. I don’t want to be racially profiled into a position where I only get to talk about what the president does.”
Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta who has written extensively about racial politics, said Scott’s language in the fundraising letter reflects more than the rightward shift of the Republican Party.
Gillespie said Scott appears to be trying to do two things in his messaging: Align himself with Trump without fully embracing him, and also chart a future for a more diverse Republican Party.
“I think about his speech before the Republican National Convention. You know, his speech was kind of that classic what I think of when I think about Tim Scott, somebody who was trying to be positive. And, you know, his speech totally sounded different from what other people were saying during the convention that night. He stood apart. So I think he wants that to be his political capital, but he’s also going to be Trump adjacent,” she said. “The big question now is whether he can have it both ways.”
But there was something else she noticed in the letter, too.
“It does seem personal, just from reading it,” Gillespie said.
Can he do both?
Scott’s letter began with the declaration that he is a free man, who is free to think for himself, free to associate with the party of his choosing and to free to advocate for ending poverty through self-reliance and hard work.
Gillespie said that Scott appeared to be responding to the ways he’s been publicly ridiculed by members of the Black community for his own political identity.
Recent presidential elections show Black voters still overwhelmingly pull the lever for Democrats, but there are signs that the GOP’s message is resonating more with minority voters.
In 2016, just 8% of Black voters supported President Trump, according to CNN exit polls. In 2020, that figure rose to 12%. And last week in Virginia, Republicans cheered two historic firsts for the GOP in the commonwealth when a Black woman won the race for lieutenant governor and voters picked a Latino man to become the state’s next attorney general.
Though Scott has long advocated for a more diverse Republican Party and is now on an advisory council for the Right Leaders Network to both grow and diversify the GOP, Gillespie said the letter represents a subtle shift in how Scott is speaking about race now to a largely Trump-aligned voting base.
“Sen. Scott has always been somebody who has been willing to talk about race. Before, he was the one who was willing to, in his mild-mannered way, speak truth to power to his Republican colleagues about here’s what it’s actually like to be an African American,” Gillespie said, citing the series of speeches Scott gave on the Senate floor in 2016 when he spoke about the reality of being stopped by police officers because of the color of his skin.
By contrast, the tone of the fundraising letter is akin to the more strident language used by the late Herman Cain, who in 2012 said that Black voters were “brainwashed” into voting for Democrats.
“There’s a longstanding tradition of Black Republicans trying to set themselves apart from the Black masses and saying, ‘I’m free thinking’ and am basically smarter than the 90% of Black people who vote Democrat,” said Gillespie, who is Black.
She said Scott faces some questions moving forward about how he wants to be seen within his party.
“He has to ask himself whether or not he wants to set himself up as being exceptional, and whether or not he wants to put himself in a position where he could be used as cover for Republicans to not meaningfully address racism within the party,” Gillespie said.
Already there are signs that Scott has found a way navigate that precarious balancing act, according to Thigpen, the retired Francis Marion political scientist and longtime watcher of Republican contests in South Carolina.
He pointed to Scott’s official Republican response to Biden’s first joint address to Congress.
“When he said the United States is not a racist country, coming from a Black guy, that endeared him to probably every white Republican voter in the nation, not just in South Carolina,” Thigpen said.
Glenn McCall, the national committeeman of the Republican Party of South Carolina, said he believes Scott can lead on diversifying the GOP and align with Trump at the same time.
After the Republican Party lost a second time to Barack Obama in the 2012 elections, McCall was one of the five authors who helped produce a 100-page document in 2013 that called for a more inclusive and diverse Republican Party if the GOP wants to win elections in the future.
“If we want ethnic minority voters to support Republicans, we have to engage them and show our sincerity,” the autopsy said.
Asked if he believes the party can still do that despite Trump’s 2016 campaign that ran counter to the recommendations of the report, McCalls said yes.
“Where some folks didn’t care for his tweets and his tweeting, his policies were right on, and he appointed a number of firsts,” McCall said.
He also said Scott is the right person to help lead the effort now.
“You have to start somewhere. He has that mantle, and (Scott is) doing an excellent job carrying that,” said McCall, who is Black. “He has to share that Black experience with them (Senate Republicans) to help educate them about our culture, for example, and what’s seen to be appropriate to do and say and what’s not and why.”
Race already a factor
Scott’s campaign did not answer a question from The State newspaper about how Scott envisions himself leading and creating a more diverse GOP while still aligning himself with former President Trump.
Instead, in an emailed statement, Scott’s campaign strategist appeared to reference one way that Scott’s racial identity has already been questioned in the 2022 campaign.
In September, a Black Democratic state lawmaker wanting to secure her party’s nomination to run against Scott in next year’s election, referred to Scott in a fundraising email as “Uncle Scott,” a term that is an echo of the racist slur “Uncle Tom.”
Krystle Matthews, the candidate and lawmaker, later apologized for the email that also had the subject line “Bought and Paid for: Tim Scott.”
“When people call the Senator ‘Uncle Tim, Uncle Tom, or Uncle Scott’ they invoke race into the Senator’s narrative and it should not be shocking we respond accordingly to racist attacks,” Oh said. “Senator Scott is fighting everyday for underserved communities, many of which are communities of color, and is proud to defend the promise of America to all Americans.”
Though Scott has yet to draw a major primary challenger, according to federal election filings one Republican, Timothy Swain of Walterboro, has stepped forward to take on Scott in the primary.
Swain describes himself as an “America First” candidate on his campaign website. His campaign also appears to question Scott’s loyalty to Trump. Swain falsely claims on his campaign website that Trump won the last presidential election.
The Electoral College decisively confirmed Biden as the nation’s president, with results showing Biden won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. Multiple legal challenges and audits have failed to prove any irregularities of a scale that would have changed the outcome.
For Republicans like Thigpen, who soured on Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, he said that while he may not agree with Scott’s clear alignment with Trump, he understands why he has to do it.
Earlier this week, in one of the strongest cues yet that South Carolina Republicans are fiercely sticking with Trump, the Greenville Republican Party — under new leadership at odds with the state GOP — added Trump’s iconic golden coif to its logo.
Thigpen again brought up the photo of Trump and Scott shaking hands.
“I’m offended by that picture. But what do I do? What do I do? Am I going to vote against this fellow who I think by and large is pretty good and has been a pretty decent senator? And you know,” Thigpen said, “it is nice to be able to say we’ve got a Black guy in the Republican Party in a deep South state, in modern times.”
This story was originally published November 8, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
