'He may be our guy’: Tim Scott meets with Iowa voters after launching presidential exploratory committee

MARION — In a divided country desperate for unity, Marion parent Amy Lovseth sees South Carolina Republican U.S. Sen. Tim Scott as the GOP’s answer to polarizing front-runners like former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“I think he would be a better choice than Republicans have put up lately,” Lovseth said, adding she’s not a fan of Trump.

“And so I feel like if the Republicans really want to win the presidency, they need to put up somebody who is pretty solid — a good listener and who is more focused on bringing everybody together than polarizing people,” she said.

Despite how politically divided the country has become, Lovseth said she thinks most Americans “are really somewhere in the middle.”

“He may be our guy,” she said. “We need somebody who focuses more on what we have in common than we disagree on, and brings us together, because that’s what we need.”

Scott announced Wednesday he has formed a exploratory committee, which moves him closer to a formal campaign for the White House.

Scott stopped Wednesday at the Marion Public Library, where he met with Lovseth and other local parents who home-school their children. He was joined by Iowa Republican U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson of Marion. The pair talked about the need to empower parents and expand educational opportunities for students.

Scott, who last year headlined Hinson’s annual BBQ Bash fundraiser, praised Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds for signing a bill that allows families to use taxpayer money to pay for private school tuition.

He continued to push a message of “American exceptionalism” and hope and unity that he’s touted in previous visits to the early nominating state as part of his “Faith in America” listening tour. He planned to meet with a group of pastors before speaking before a group of about 100 mainly Republican women at the Cedar Rapids Country Club on Wednesday evening.

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Asked what he has left to explore, Scott said he wants to make sure he’s listening to voters — including in Iowa — and making sure his “optimistic, positive message anchored in conservatism actually resonates.”

“So far so good,” he said.

Campaign points

Scott talked about his faith and his biography as a Black man raised by a single mother who overcame poverty. He shared how his family went from "cotton to Congress" in a generation. He dropped out of school in ninth grade only to return to complete his education. Scott's grandfather was forced to leave school in third grade to pick cotton.

“We have too many false prophets talking about how we are condemned eternally for the original sin,” Scott said, speaking to the Five Seasons Republican Women's Group. “I believe that our nation is a story of redemption.”

Scott, in a video announcing his exploratory committee, talks of the “unwavering belief” he and his family had “that we too could live the American dream," and that ”it pains my soul to see the Biden liberals attacking every rung of the ladder that helped me climb.”

“We are indeed the land of opportunity and not a land of oppression,” Scott said. “There’s this new concept being spread by the far-left, and it’s like a drug of victimhood and the narcotic of despair — that somehow, someway we as Americans are all victims.

“I grew up understanding the power of individual responsibility and the importance of taking responsibility for how your life turns out.”

Scott, addressing the group of Linn County Republicans, said he sees “an administration that has lost its way. If you wanted to create a blueprint for how to ruin America you would do what President Biden and radical left have been doing.”

He went on to say that “it is time for American to have a change in leadership” — one that "understands that China is our adversary," secures the Southern border by building a wall, goes after Mexican cartels smuggling deadly fentanyl into the country, and pursues pro-growth policies like the 2017 Trump tax cuts Scott helped write.

Scott also talked about his outreach to Iowa’s influential evangelical conservatives. He’ll be back in Iowa later this month to address the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition at its April 22 event in Clive, joining a slew of declared and potential presidential candidates.

He said faith has played an important role in the nation’s history and will go forward “as a powerful weapon for good.”

Abortion

Scott, in his video, also said he “will protect our most fundamental right, the right to life itself” but would not say if he supports a national ban on abortion. Instead, he said he supports “a robust debate,” centered on support by the “far-left” for late-term abortions.

Democrats scored a landslide victory in last week's Wisconsin Supreme Court race, a campaign that focused squarely on abortion rights, and backlash has erupted after a federal judge in Texas suspended federal approval of the abortion pill mifepristone.

A majority of Iowans continue to support legal abortion. A new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll last month found 61 percent of Iowa adults say abortion should be legal in most or all cases, while 35 percent say the procedure should be illegal in most or all cases.

Asked whether the party has gone too far on the issue of abortion, Scott ducked the question, stating he’s “ardently pro-life” and reiterated a need for robust debate.

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Should he run, Scott would join a field that includes fellow South Carolina Republican Nikki Haley, former governor of the first-in-the-South GOP primary state, as well as former President Donald Trump, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and “anti-woke” biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

Others, including DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence, are considering launching campaigns in the coming months.

Scott, the only Black Republican senator, would be the nation’s first Black Republican president if elected.

National polling shows Trump as the early favorite in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, and many Iowa Republicans remain committed to the former president, including an evangelical community grateful for his judicial appointments.

That base seems to be unswayed by the 34-count felony indictment handed down against Trump last week, stemming from a hush money payment made to porn actor Stormy Daniels, who alleged having a sexual encounter with Trump.

Asked about the indictment, Scott suggested the issue is a distraction, saying politicians should spend more time focusing on the voters they serve. He also suggested the indictment against Trump was politically motivated and brings into question the “weaponizing of the law against political enemies.”

Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, another South Carolinian, in a statement said Scott seeks “to govern from the far, conservative right,” as someone who embraced Trump’s “Make America Great Again” agenda, and who served as an “architect” of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts that Democrats argue largely benefited the highest-income Americans and corporations.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

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