Tim Scott Weighs 2024 Run, Promoting Unity to a Celebration Longing for a Battle

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, brazenly eyeing a pathbreaking run for the Republican presidential nomination, got here house Thursday evening to the town that began the Civil Struggle to check out themes of unity and forgiveness aimed on the present struggle in his occasion — and the divisions roiling the nation at giant.

The final word query is whether or not Republican voters who embraced Donald J. Trump’s model of us-versus-them divisiveness are prepared for the themes that Mr. Scott is promoting.

His speech Thursday to the Charleston County Republican Celebration might have been the form of routine dinner tackle that every one elected officers give, this one honoring Black Historical past Month at a neighborhood faculty. However the tv crews and reporters piled on to the risers at The Citadel navy faculty’s alumni middle have been there to observe what amounted to a gentle opening for a White Home run by Mr. Scott, the one Black Republican within the Senate. And it got here solely a day after a festive kickoff occasion for the presidential marketing campaign of Mr. Scott’s good friend, political benefactor and fellow South Carolinian, Nikki Haley.

“If you wish to perceive America, you want to begin in Charleston; you want to perceive and admire the devastation introduced upon African People,” Mr. Scott recommended. “However should you cease at our authentic sin, you haven’t began the story of America, as a result of the story of America is just not outlined by our authentic sin. The story of America is outlined by our redemption.”

Mr. Scott has apparent political property to convey to a probably crowded area: a message of optimism, a disposition that has made him personally common even along with his political opponents, and the historic nature of his potential nomination.

However these property might show to be a legal responsibility in in the present day’s Republican main surroundings, the place voters rail towards what they see as unfair favoritism towards folks of coloration and the place activists could also be extra excited by anger than optimism. Even in his house state, the third within the Republican nomination course of, it isn’t clear that his political method is preferable to these of the 2 pugnacious Floridians anticipated to compete for the occasion’s commonplace, Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“I don’t see a path for Tim,” mentioned Chip Felkel, a longtime Republican guide in South Carolina and a critic of Mr. Trump. He mentioned of the temper within the occasion, “We don’t have a variety of Republicans able to sing ‘Kumbaya.’”

Mr. Scott seems to know that race is a significant political concern at this fraught second when the loudest voices in his occasion are disputing how Black historical past is taught, race consciousness and the as soon as broadly accepted notion that range ought to be a aim, not simply happenstance. His personal Senate file contains laws to make lynching a federal hate crime and a significant push for police reforms within the wake of George Floyd’s homicide.

So Mr. Scott has been approaching the difficulty from each side, acknowledging the racism that confined his grandparents to the impoverished corners of the Jim Crow South and that also sends him routinely to the shoulders of the highway for site visitors stops. However he additionally says, invariably with a smile, that the nation is just not racist.

“There’s a approach for us to unify this nation round primary ideas that lead us ahead and never backward, however we now have to give up shopping for the lie that that is the worst time in American historical past,” he mentioned on Thursday. “Provided that American historical past began in the present day can that be true.”

There is no such thing as a query that Mr. Scott, whose speech was introduced with the fanfare of a State of the Union tackle, is critically contemplating a run for president. He has a struggle chest exceeding $22 million, and can journey on Feb. 22 to Iowa, the primary nominating state. Two heavy hitters, former Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado and Rob Collins, a former chief of the Nationwide Republican Senatorial Committee, signed on this month to steer a brand new tremendous PAC backing him.

Some see Mr. Scott as an ideal working mate for the 2 early front-runners for the nomination, Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis, each of whom have picked fights over race from their seats of energy. As president, Mr. Trump praised protesters and counterprotesters “on each side” of a white supremacist march and informed 4 liberal girls of coloration within the Home that they need to “return” to the international locations they got here from, falsely suggesting that they have been all born overseas.

Mr. DeSantis is in the midst of a battle in Florida over the way forward for the Superior Placement course on African American research, which he argues strays far to the left of ordinary historical past, and has repeatedly taken purpose at range efforts in his state, together with halting funding for range, fairness and inclusion coaching at state faculties.

Aides to Mr. Scott adamantly denied that he was working for vice chairman. He’s a confirmed powerhouse for fund-raising with a message for Republican voters that electability should take precedent after three straight disappointing elections.

Ms. Haley, nevertheless, is an issue for Mr. Scott. She declared her presidential candidacy on Tuesday, pitching an analogous message that it’s time for a change of their occasion. As governor, Ms. Haley appointed Mr. Scott to the Senate in 2013, and so they stay intertwined.

Like Mr. Scott, Ms. Haley is working as an outsider in her white-dominated occasion, the kid of Indian immigrants who sees tolerance in America, not bigotry, and campaigns with a smile, not a scowl.

However Mr. Scott, 57, and Ms. Haley, 51, could also be fishing in the identical pond for Republican voters who desire a much less confrontational standard-bearer.

“They’re each simply very likable folks,” mentioned Maureen McGuinness, a retiree who attended Ms. Haley’s rally on Wednesday. “I’d vote for both of them.” Pressed to decide on, she couldn’t.

Katon Dawson, a former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Celebration and a spokesman for Ms. Haley, conceded the issue. He mentioned Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott wouldn’t assault one another; they’re too shut. She has run harder races than he has, Mr. Dawson mentioned, and is extra examined as a politician, a governor and a overseas coverage determine.

However, Mr. Dawson added, “it would trigger some confusion” with voters.

Ms. Haley might have a stronger résumé, however Mr. Scott’s unceasing affability has an influence all its personal. On Thursday evening, he labored the room with a straightforward allure, extending his hand to the 10-year-old Black woman who had given him a prolonged introduction and saying, “I’m Tim Scott.”

He left the rostrum to debate the biblical story of Joseph with a white Citadel cadet and member of the Younger Republicans, who mentioned earlier in this system that when he mirrored on Black historical past, he remembered how Joseph forgave the brothers who offered him into bondage.

That statement might have rankled some, because the story seemingly has nothing to do with African American historical past, however Mr. Scott picked up the theme.

“Essentially the most pure factor to do in life, it appears like, is the intuition we now have to pay it again,” he mentioned. “However the story of Joseph is extra highly effective than merely getting even. The story of Joseph is about getting forward.”

Chad Connelly, one other former chairman of the state Republican Celebration, mentioned voters — even Republican voters — have been “screaming for somebody to return in and unify us.”

However for Mr. Scott, the primary Black Republican senator from the South since Reconstruction, race is at all times going to be a difficulty. Black leaders are significantly delicate to his occasion’s castigation of African American historical past classes that concentrate on Black experiences with slavery and oppression.

That’s very true right here in Charleston, the place colonial riches have been constructed on the rice grown by enslaved folks; the place till lately, the outdated marketplace for chattel slavery was a vacationer attraction; and the place in 2015, a white supremacist slaughtered 9 Black parishioners on the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

“Historical past at instances could be very messy, and it might make folks really feel a sure form of approach,” mentioned the Rev. Eric Manning, the church’s pastor.

“However that’s historical past,” he mentioned. “We made errors. It’s important to personal the errors. It’s important to acknowledge the errors after which study from the previous. My concern is that we’re not studying from our previous. We’re simply making an attempt to cowl it up.”

Shortly after the capturing, Mr. Scott informed The New York Occasions that the bloodbath “has grow to be a blunt pressure for change in my priorities and duties.” He pressed for tax breaks for companies that spend money on distressed “alternative zones,” a measure included within the enormous tax cuts that handed in 2017. In 2018, he torpedoed the judicial nomination of Thomas A. Farr, a lawyer who defended a North Carolina voter identification regulation and a partisan gerrymander {that a} federal courtroom mentioned was drafted to suppress Black votes “with surgical precision.”

In 2020, after George Floyd’s homicide, Mr. Scott brokered a Republican police reform invoice that may have inspired police departments to limit the usage of chokeholds and penalized departments that didn’t require physique cameras, amongst different measures.

However Democrats needed much more, and the hassle led to 2021.

Final yr, President Biden signed laws championed for almost a decade by Mr. Scott that made lynching a federal hate crime.

However Mr. Scott, over his prolonged political profession, has dwelled much more on his personal bootstrap story. He has spoken about his mom extricating herself from an abusive marriage, and his grandparents instructing the teachings of perseverance realized within the cotton fields and hardships of the segregated South.

For some Republicans, these themes are a salve after almost a decade of Trumpism.

“There’s a necessity for his message,” mentioned Mark Sanford, the previous South Carolina governor whose political comeback crashed after he broke publicly with Mr. Trump. “Whether or not or not it’s one which’s going be acquired on this political second, I actually don’t know.”