Who’s Tim Scott? Republicans’ solely black senator launches 2024 presidential bid

The Republican Party’s solely black senator Tim Scott has launched his bid to turn out to be its candidate for the 2024 presidential election.

Mr Scott filed his candidacy for the GOP nomination on Friday however kicked off his marketing campaign formally with a speech to supporters in his hometown of North Charleston, South Carolina on Monday.

The 57-year-old South Carolina senator is the best profile Republican to formally tackle Donald Trump for the 2024 nomination thus far.

“Joe Biden and the radical left are attacking every rung of the ladder that helped me climb,” Scott mentioned. “And that is why I am announcing today that I am running for president of the United States of America.”

Only black politician to ever serve in each homes

Mr Scott’s political profession has seen him make historical past on varied counts.

Not solely is he the only real black Republican within the US Senate, he’s additionally the primary black particular person ever to serve in each chambers of Congress.

Only 11 black folks have ever served within the US Senate. Currently the opposite two are Democrats Cory Booker (New Jersey) and Raphael Warnock (Georgia).

He began off as a Democrat, nevertheless, when volunteering on the congressional marketing campaign path for Mark Sanford in South Carolina’s 1st district in 1994.

Inspired to run for a seat on Charleston’s County Council, he approached the native get together, however was advised to “get in line”, he revealed in an interview with Politico.

Instead he ran for the Republicans and in 1995 grew to become the primary black Republican to carry any political workplace in South Carolina since 1902.

He labored in insurance coverage and as a monetary adviser earlier than getting into politics full-time.

In 2009 he was elected to the South Carolina statehouse, two years earlier than getting a seat within the House of Representatives in 2011.

The following 12 months when South Carolina’s senator Jim DeMint retired, the then state governor Nikki Haley appointed him as his alternative.

Ms Haley is now Mr Scott’s rival for the 2024 nomination.

Campaign ‘by no means about race’

Mr Scott is presenting himself as an antidote to the normal rhetoric round race within the US.

He refused an invite to hitch the Congressional Black Caucus in 2010, saying: “My campaign was never about race.”

Instead he selected the Women’s Caucus as a result of he’s the “product of a powerful single mother”.

In a speech in 2021, he mentioned that whereas he has “experienced the pain of discrimination… America is not a racist country”.

At a Black History Month occasion in February, he mentioned: “I’m not here to suggest that things could not get better and I’m going to work every single day to make sure that all Americans play on a level playing field.

“But as we speak will not be 1865 … We have made super progress, and it is time that we as a folks have fun the progress we’re making.”

In his recent Politico interview he said he experienced “extra racism” at times from his black friends – for not “assembly the expectation of the groupthink” at school.

He also revealed he has been stopped by police officers guarding the Capitol who didn’t know who he was.

Taking on Trump

Mr Scott has joined Ms Haley, the woman who helped him get into the Senate, and Asa Hutchinson, Arkansas’ former governor, in the race to rival Joe Biden for the next election.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is likely to announce his candidacy in the coming days.

The South Carolina senator has averted being overly vital of his fundamental rival Donald Trump.

But after Trump’s feedback on the lethal 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville – that there have been “very fine people on both sides” – he mentioned the the -president had “compromised his moral authority to lead”.

Trump is forward within the polls, however Mr Scott is widespread with donors, together with billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison, and voters in South Carolina.