From 30-year-old virgin to 57-year-old optimist: How Tim Scott is a different kind of 2024 candidate

Senator Tim Scott wants you to know that he’s not like the other candidates for the Republican presidential nomination.

As his recent memoir, “America: A Redemption Story,” makes clear, the 57-year-old is an optimist who wants us all to get along better instead of throwing cultural war bombs, and he’s someone who stood up to Donald Trump when he was in office.

He is also black. And, perhaps most problematic for the Republican Party, he’s single.

When he first campaigned in South Carolina, he made it a selling point, running like a proud 30-year-old virgin and emphasizing his evangelical Christian faith and his commitment to the Ten Commandments.

That did not survive his transition into political life. After winning a seat in the U.S. House, he admitted at age 46 that he hadn’t been very good at keeping his pledge of abstinence.

“Yeah… Not as good as back then,” Scott told the National Journal from his office on Capitol Hill.

“The Bible is right. You better wait. I wish we all had more patience.’

That is still the case when it comes to family. While political mailings for other candidates routinely picture smiling nuclear families, Scott never married.

It makes him an outlier among the presidential candidates. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has not even indicated his candidacy, and his wife Casey has already been the subject of countless profiles describing her cunning political skills and her ability to soften the edges of her bomb-throwing husband .

Only two unmarried candidates have ever been elected to the White House.

The most recent was Grover Cleveland in 1884. He married while in office.

Before that was James Buchanan who took office in 1857 and historians still debate his sexuality.

When Senator Lindsey Graham ran in 2016, he got caught up in questions about who would organize the flowers for state dinners and decorate the White House for Christmas if there was no first lady. “I have a lot of friends,” he said at one point. “We’ll have a rotating first lady.”

According to conservative commentator Matt K. Lewis, times have changed since the days when that mattered. Unless Scott looks like he could actually win.

Scott will receive the Senate oath of office in January 2017 with his mother Frances

Scott attributes his marital status to a troubled childhood and an adulthood in which he put his mother first. She fled his heavy-drinking father when young Scott was seven, and he grew up in his grandparents’ two-bedroom house

Scott excelled at football and went on to win a partial scholarship to Presbyterian College. A car accident destroyed his NFL dream

“I don’t think it all matters,” he said. “But if Tim Scott were gaining momentum, and if he was going to be a threat to Donald Trump, that’s something Trump would invoke. And then it can matter.’

Scott attributes his marital status to a troubled childhood and an adulthood in which he put his mother first. She fled his heavy-drinking father when young Scott was seven, and he grew up in his grandparents’ two-bedroom home.

He has described how his mother sometimes worked 16 hours a day to keep food on the table.

“As a poor child growing up, the most important thing for me was to take care of my mother. And until I achieved that, starting a new family just wasn’t an option for me,” he told Politico in 2020.

He credits a mentor, a Chick-Fil-A franchisee, who helped him find focus and encouraged him to work hard in school and in football. He went on to win a partial scholarship to Presbyterian College.

A car accident destroyed his NFL dreams. Instead, he began selling insurance after college and eventually owned his own franchise, while seeking political opportunities that would allow him to put his evangelical background into practice.

Perhaps he had become a Democrat. But when he visited the local Democratic Party headquarters, they told him to “wait my turn and go to the back of the line,” he recalled in his memoir. The next day, a local Republican told him that no black Republican had ever been elected to the district council and that he should get to work.

He served on the council for 13 years. But he later said it all took a toll on his personal life as he tried to take care of his mother and build a political career.

“As a poor child growing up, the most important thing for me was to take care of my mother,” he said. “And until I achieved that, starting a new family just wasn’t an option for me.”

This family photo from the 1960s shows Scott as a child with an unknown aunt

Just when it could have been, when a relationship got serious in his 40s, the South Carolina 1st District seat opened. And again he followed his career.

And in 2013, he became the first black Republican senator since 1979, making him another outlier among the 2024 candidates.

As Matthew Continetti, a U.S. right-wing chronicler, recently pointed out in the Washington Post, he will probably be one of the few runners who doesn’t owe his position to Trump.

“DeSantis won election to Congress in 2012, but his rise to prominence was overshadowed by Trump, as Trump likes to remind voters,” he wrote.

Only two unmarried candidates have ever been elected to the White House. The most recent was Grover Cleveland in 1884 (above)

“Nikki Haley, Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo are capable politicians, but they owe their high status to the former president.”

In fact, Scott has at times been one of the few leading Republicans willing to call out Trump even while in office.

He publicly chided the then-President when Trump said “there were fine people on both sides” after a racist march turned violent in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“I believe the president has compromised his moral authority to lead,” Scott told CBS News shortly afterwards. “Looking to the future, it will be very difficult for this president to lead if indeed his moral authority continues to be compromised.”

An invitation to the Oval Office followed, where Scott writes that he spent 20 minutes explaining to Trump why so many people were hurt by his words.

When Trump asked how he could help, Scott said he was ready with an answer, selling his idea of ​​”opportunity zones” — a program of tax incentives to encourage investment in low-income communities — which later became a flagship policy. became of Trump.

Now he wants to bring that positive message to a wider audience.

“I’ve noticed that people are hungry for hope,” he told Fox and Friends last month when announcing an exploratory commission. “They crave an optimistic, positive message anchored in conservative values.”

Scott (pictured in a high school textbook photo) credits a mentor, a Chick-Fil-A franchisee, for helping him find focus and encouraging him to work hard in school

He starts his campaign with a healthy war chest. of more than $20 million. And while he is an outsider to Trump and DeSantis, he will be one of the most well-funded candidates.

His faith means that he will have a ready-made foundation.

And for Lewis, he is one of the few Republicans who got through Trump’s “trouble,” as he calls them, without being humiliated.

“I think it’s unlikely he’ll ever be the nominee this time around, but if running somehow makes him Trump’s running mate, or a frontrunner in 2028, I’d see that, all things considered a positive development,” he said. .

“And I think he’s really the only person who represents a positive kind of conservatism that’s actually up for election in 2024.”