Will Republicans get behind Tim Scott?

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Last week, we said Ron DESantis was about to launch his official presidential campaign. It happened, but I don't think anyone expected it to go quite as badly as it did on Wednesday night.

Are you there?

Can you hear us? I think you broke the internet.

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I think you broke the internet.

I think you broke the internet. The plan was for the Florida governor to kick off his campaign in an hour-long interview with Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces. But after a multitude of technical issues, which crashed the audio live stream several times, his critics were quick to call the presidential hopeful. Ron disaster, Trump had the golden escalator. Ron DeSantis got the world's most embarrassing 404 error. The whole mess contrasted sharply with another presidential campaign launched this week from fellow Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.

I'm living proof that America is the land of opportunity and not a land of oppression.

Unlike DESantis, Scott spoke to a packed auditorium. It was in Charleston Southern University. He emphasized his Christian faith and presented an optimistic view of America. Quite the contrast with the other Republicans in the field, chief among them Donald Trump.

So I was listening and I was waiting for it to start and they had technical difficulties.

Joseph Bustos reports on politics for the State newspaper in South Carolina.

And their Elon Musk and his servers at Twitter, they kept crashing because a lot of people kept logging on, so they had to switch accounts. It's a different way of launching a campaign, essentially. I think one person even called it like a live podcast. Taping is what ended up being other than the traditional. Hey, let's have a rally with walk on music and everyone cheering, with signs waving in a stage and you give a speech.

I followed the announcement, I tried to listen to it.

Leah Wright-Rigueur is a political historian who teaches at Johns Hopkins University and the author of The Loneliness of the Black Republican, Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power.

The platform of Twitter as a digital space to make the announcement, I don't think is that surprising. What's surprising, though, is that that's not the kind of announcement. That's not the kind of campaign announcement that we're used to, and it is certainly not the kind of campaign announcement that makes positive waves, I think amongst the Republican base, it's especially unusual, given that DESantis is trying to position himself as an everyday man. And so to say, I'm going to do this launch on Twitter, where granted 500,000 people tuned in, but to do this on Twitter, which is essentially seen as this platform of elites. And we do know that it tends to be a space that is not necessarily reflective of the larger American population. Seems to be a bit backwards in the face of what Ron DESantis is trying to do.

Yeah, I mean, I found it baffling, partly just because people have said that. Ron DESantis problem is that he's not there as a kind of flesh and blood candidate in person, meeting people, working crowds. He's always mediated on screens and so on, and he absolutely played into that by. Well, he wasn't even seen, he was just heard via this social media platform. And I also do think it was funny that a campaign that fails to even get off the launchpad. Coming so soon after Elon Musk's space rocket exploded so soon after launch, he just brought a little bit more Musk magic to the campaign of Ron DeSantis.

Yeah, I think one of the key things about his biography is actually it starts with his grandfather.

Born in 1921 in Sallie, South Carolina, in the Deep South. By the time he was in the third grade, he was forced out of school, his education was over and he was forced to start picking cotton. But my grandfather lived long enough to watch his grandson pick out a seat in Congress.

Scott was raised by a single mom, his parents divorced, so Tim and his older brother, Ben, were raised by their mom here in South Carolina, and they were poor growing up.

We live in the land where it is absolutely possible for a kid raised in poverty in a single parent household, in a small apartment, to one day serve in the people's house.

Senator Scott talked about how he nearly failed out of high school, his freshman year. He got it turned around, eventually went to Charleston Southern University and then started his own insurance business. He was an all-state insurance salesman. He was elected to the Statehouse here in South Carolina, served one term as a state representative, and then he was elected to Congress.

Yeah, I heard even actually this week people who were involved in the Barack Obama presidential campaign, the first one in 2008, saying, You know, they recognize some echoes there of their candidate's story and even just some of his, you know, manner. But certainly what you've just told us through about being in local state politics. Obama was very brief period relatively in Congress before running for the big job of president. There is a sort of echo there and people are going to be drawing that parallel. I mean, he obviously hasn't been there very long in Washington in terms of passing legislation, but has he done anything that he's become associated with? Any kind of signature, bill or move or policy? People in South Carolina, they'll recognize his name, but what would they associate it with?

So his big accomplishment that he usually talks about is opportunity zones. It was this idea that he was able to get included in the Trump era. Tax cuts basically encourages private investment in low income or impoverished areas. He's always been a big advocate for school choice. I think his line is your Zip code should not determine where you go to school.

We wouldn't be here if it were not. As Senator Perdue alluded to the death of yet another African American man, George Floyd. His murder is why the country has given us the opportunity to lead.

As the Senate's only Black Republican, it's something that's personal to him, that he understands he's been pulled over for driving while Black. I think, even as a U..S. senator.

One of the reasons why I went to Senator McConnell and said, I want to lead this conversation. I'm the person in our conference who has experienced firsthand racial discrimination, racial profiling by law enforcement. And I'm still a fan because I believe that most law enforcement officers are good.

So he has tried to push for police reform. There was efforts with Cory Booker, a senator from New Jersey, to try to get comprehensive police reform, but that fell apart. In, I believe, in 2021. But it's something that he has worked on and they hope to probably get back to at some point.

LEah RYDERIGER Let's just pick up that point that Joseph just made there about this key fact about Tim Scott. Namely, that he is the only Black Republican senator, and, in fact, the first Black Republican elected to the House of Representatives from his state in over a century. And just what that means, this line. That was very arresting in his speech, where he talked about saying that he's less interested in grievance and more interested in greatness.

My mom said to me, son, you can be a victim or we can be victorious.

It sent a lot of signals at once. One of them was that, you know, he's going to be the sunny candidate, the happy warrior, the sunny optimist in his party. Given that grievance has been such a big part of Donald Trump and Ron DESantis, there was that bit of positioning, but I felt he was also saying something, perhaps to appeal to conservatives, which was. You're used to figures on the left constantly expressing grievance with the way society is, and maybe you're used to hearing that from Black politicians.

So when Tim Scott talks about grievance politics, he's using it in a dual way, so certainly he's talking about Donald Trump. But certainly, it's also an acknowledgement and a nod to Republican and conservative audiences. Who just by virtue of the fact that Tim Scott is a Black man, and the assumption there is that Black people are Democrats, is that. He's saying, I'm going to be a different kind of politician who happens to be Black. And unlike most people, I don't believe that Tim Scott is a token. Or, you know, just kind of standing there and smiling and chucking and jiving. Which is, I think, a derogatory way of thinking about him, but it's also a simplistic way of thinking about him. I think we're talking about somebody who is politically savvy enough to know that his audience will not support him if he portrays a vision of America. That suggests that racism is systemic or systematic, that it's institutional, that it is ingrained in the very fabric of the United States, which has been his experience.

That dual meaning and that sort of tightrope walk is fascinating. And he has said that he has experienced the pain of discrimination, and we heard from Joseph very directly how that's played out for him. But he does also say this thing, that America is not a racist country.

We are not defined by the color of our skin, we are defined by the content of our character. And if anyone tells you anything different, they're a lion.

And what I wondered hearing that was whether, in a way that is essential for a Black Republican. The sort of price of admission, as it were, is to say, look, mainly white party. You're OK, you've got nothing to apologize for, you don't have to feel guilty. I'm going to exempt you from that charge that he has to say that, otherwise he wouldn't get a hearing.

There is no reward for calling the party out on racism or bigotry. There's none for Black Republicans. In fact, we have documented evidence that, in fact, the Black Republicans who get support from within the party. And this is not just financial support, although that's critical, it's also support in terms of infrastructure, network, that kind of thing. The ones who get support are the ones who either support the party uncritically, who echo whatever the party standard bearer is saying. Or who find this space to carve out where they don't alienate their audience while also adhering to certain conservative principles. And the latter is where Tim Scott is.

And your book title is very striking, about the loneliness of a Black Republican. And we were out there. I was out for the midterm campaigns in Georgia, where Hershel Walker was running for the Senate seat, there. Black Republican in that seat. He didn't win it. But encountering Black Republicans and talking very much about this sort of tightrope walk that you're setting out for us there. Look, it used to be that there were hardly any Black politicians who sought the Republican nomination, and they were usually on the very fringes.

The irony here is that pollsters, in particular, would assume that the Republican Party would get zero Black support. That's never been the case, even when the Republican Party was at its lowest. And I would say that was 1964, with Barry Goldwater, or 2008, when Barack Obama ran for president. What we're seeing now, and what we saw in 2020 was a correction of the mean, so essentially, Black Republicans are coming home.

So Joseph, in South Carolina, you know? I'm sure that in his campaigning, and that you're going to see, Tim Scott is going to place either as much or perhaps more emphasis. Not on his race, but on his faith.

I heard the Lord speak to my heart and say, This is not about you. Don't confuse it, you're my vessel for this journey, but it's not about you.

He talked about God openly, unabashedly, in his announcement speech, very quick to emphasize that. But I know a lot of pundits are thinking well. The first big contest is Iowa, often a very religious and conservative body of voters there, deciding the Republican nomination. That is maybe his opening is to, and we've mentioned Obama a few times, it's what Obama did. In 2008, he unsettled the Clinton juggernaut by winning in Iowa.

I guess the slogan, I'm wondering if that's the best way to put it. Faith in America seems to be something that they are branding a lot with this campaign. Before he even launched the exploratory committee, he went on a Faith in America listening tour. And you look at that and you think about it. It's more faith, as in terms of religious, but it's also faith within the country to continue progressing forward. So I do think that might be a very key part of his campaign.

And maybe he's something he can do more authentically than some of his opponents. I mean, Donald Trump is hardly convincing as a man of God, although, interestingly, evangelicals, there's a base of support there for him. Similarly, I would say about Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, maybe. For religiously minded voters, Tim Scott will be a very natural magnet to attract that support. But there is this thing, and I've already noticed myself on social media, some rumblings from conservative pundits, those people who are in politics professionally are raising. The fact that Tim Scott is a bachelor, has never been married, no wife or children. And they have suggested that this is going to be a problem for him.

So he's got reelected to the Senate twice here in South Carolina, 2016 and 2022, and in the most recent election he carried 63 of the vote. So I don't think people pay too much attention to it. Family is important to him, it was once said that he has dinner or lunch with his mother every Sunday.

On a state level, I don't think it matters at all, but on a national level, it's everything. Particularly for a man who's running as a faith leader and a family values candidate. And part of that is, I think that the base of the Republican party simply will not put their faith in a man who is unmarried. Given how marriage plays such an important role in questions of religion, especially within the evangelical tradition. I would not be surprised if his other competitors bring up the fact that he is unmarried as a reason why. You can't trust somebody like this now, does that mean that it's impossible?

We should just talk a bit, Joseph, about the actual mechanics of the campaign. He has so far getting quite, you know, some big endorsements, not yet endorsements, but praise from people who are big in politics, who are thinking, maybe this is just the guy who could take on Donald Trump. And that has translated into some serious money, a war chest of, I think, $22 million or more at last count. While Nikki Haley, it's said, is struggling to get much beyond sort of $4 million or so. Not sure whether she's going to be able to keep funding her campaign into the autumn. What do we know about who is funding Tim Scott?

The $22 million that was carried over from Scott's 2022 re-election campaign, it was money he saved that he didn't need. He raised like $53.9 million during that campaign in a race where he won with 63 of the vote, so he didn't have to spend it. It gives him a head start on all other candidates to have that type of hard cash available to you.

And let's just talk about the man who is still on all the polls, the frontrunner, just before we close this out, and that is, of course, Donald Trump. Leah. It was striking that Donald Trump greeted warmly, welcomed Tim Scott to the race.

Donald Trump posted on True Social, wishing him good luck and even saying that he is a big step up from Ron. Desanctimonious, who is, quote, totally unelectable, went on to say Good luck, Tim.

Now we don't normally see this kind of magnanimity from Donald Trump. I mean, what's your read of why he's so warmly embracing the new entrant into the race?

So, first of all, it would look terrible for him to trash the only Black man in the Republican Party running for president, right? A serious contender for president. But the last thing, and I think this is really important, is you take all of that and you couple it with one distinct fact. Donald Trump does not see Tim Scott as a threat. He absolutely does not see him as a threat.

I think you're probably right about that. We will certainly revisit this before we let you go, though. Our tradition on this podcast is to ask our guests a what else? question. And so we want to talk about a different member of the United States Senate. And that is Dianne Feinstein of California, who is 89 years old, who has been absent from the Senate because of ill health. She made a recent return to Washington, D..C. and to Capitol Hill.

Yeah, I mean, South Carolina has a tradition of electing the same people over and over and over again. That's how they have this outsized influence in Congress. Jim Clyburn, the lone Democratic member of the South Carolina congressional delegation, is African-American. He rose up to leadership, so age doesn't matter to people here in South Carolina.

And Leah? To people from abroad and from outside, it can look pretty strange. The whole fate of the appointments that can be made to the United States judiciary in the hands of somebody 89 years old. And whether or not she is well enough to cast that vote.

It's despicable, actually, the circumstances that have produced this. She can't resign. Based on recent history, Republicans will not allow Democrats to fill that seat. And what happens? It holds everything up in the process. It's obstructionism that has become politically commonplace.

Leah Wright-Rigueur and Joseph Bustos, thanks so much both of you for joining me on Politics Weekly America.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And that is all from us for this week. Do make sure to listen back to Thursday's episode of our sister podcast. Today. In Focus as Nosheen Iqbal looks at the death of Jordan Neely, a homeless Michael Jackson impersonator, who died when a fellow passenger on the New York subway put him in a chokehold. With her guest, Nosheen examines what the killing and subsequent protests reveal about the city. The state of a crumbling U.S mental health system. And how just about anything can become a politically divisive issue in today's America. So make sure to search for that wherever you get your podcasts.

This is The Guardian.