Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator who has built a national profile pushing a message of hope and unity in a divisive Republican Party, is taking his biggest step so far toward running for president in 2024, The Post and Courier has learned.
According to two sources with knowledge of his plans, Scott plans to launch a presidential exploratory committee on April 12 — the same day he plans to be in Iowa, the leadoff state in the presidential nominating process.
He will travel to New Hampshire the very next day before returning to South Carolina on April 14 to meet with voters in Goose Creek ahead of his Faith in America Summit in Charleston that night and the next day.
Scott, 57, is the first could-be 2024 Republican candidate to create a formal committee devoted to raising money to explore a presidential bid even as other GOP contenders have filed into the race.
The move acts as something of a soft launch for an all-but-certain Scott presidential campaign.
The exploratory committee allows Scott to raise money that could eventually be transferred to an official presidential campaign. In the meantime, it can also foot the bill for polling and cover costs for any travel Scott makes to key states as he weighs whether to make a candidacy official.
Other Republicans have taken the same path in past presidential contests, including Mitt Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008.
In a potential 2024 contest, Scott’s first — and perhaps greatest — challenge will be testing if Republican primary voters want the optimistic vision Scott is selling over the us-versus-them rhetoric coming from repeat favorite Donald Trump
For example, when speaking to voters, Scott will often refer to the GOP as "the great opportunity party." He tested some of those lines at a recent Charleston County Republican Party banquet honoring Black History Month.
"If you want to understand America, you need to start in Charleston; you need to understand and appreciate the devastation brought upon African Americans," Scott said in February. "But if you stop at our original sin, you have not started the story of America because the story of America is not defined by our original sin. The story of America is defined by our redemption."
Complicating his pitch to voters, particularly in his home state, is Nikki Haley: A declared 2024 GOP presidential candidate and fellow South Carolinian who has been hitting the stump since her campaign launch in mid-February.
If Scott enters the race, it will set him on a collision course with Haley, who appointed Scott to the Senate in 2012 when she was governor.
So far the field of declared candidates includes Trump, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Haley.
Like Haley, Scott also initially pledged to support Trump if he ran for reelection in 2024, saying “of course” he would support a Trump run when asked during the S.C. GOP’s “First In The South Republican Action Conference” in October 2021.
Already Scott has made a number of key hires lately for what has widely been seen as a campaign-in-waiting.
Most recently, a pro-Scott super PAC — Opportunity Matters Fund Action — hired two veteran campaign operatives in South Carolina, giving the political group key footing in the Palmetto State should Scott launch a White House bid.
In addition to his visits to early presidential primary states, Scott has been appearing regularly on national media and last summer released his third book, a political memoir that outlined his vision for America.
At his November 2022 election night victory party, Scott winked at a potential White House bid when he reflected on the life of his grandfather, Artis Ware, who he said had gone from picking cotton to helping him pick his seat in Congress after his election to the House in 2010.
"My grandfather voted for the first man of color to be reelected as president of the United States," Scott told the crowd after he was overwhelmingly reelected to a third term in the Senate. "I wish he lived long enough, long enough to see perhaps another man of color — and this time, vote for a Republican and not a Democrat."
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