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"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
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[Tim Scott:] Making History by Running Away From It
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| Parent(s) |
Candidate
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| Contributor | Monsieur |
| Last Edited | Monsieur Jun 30, 2010 02:16pm |
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| Category | Profile |
| Author | Ben Adler |
| Media | Magazine - Newsweek |
| News Date | Wednesday, June 30, 2010 08:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | If Tim Scott, the Republican nominee in South Carolina's first congressional district, wins election in November, he will become the first African-American Republican to be elected to Congress from the former Confederacy since Reconstruction. Scott faces only token Democratic opposition in the heavily Republican district. In fact, his opponent, Ben Frasier Jr., is a perennial losing candidate—he has unsuccessfully run for office 18 times—who Democratic House Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and other local Democrats have suggested might be a Republican plant.
Scott doesn't have much in common with the last Republican congressman from the South, George Henry White, who served two terms from North Carolina, ending in 1901—nor does he ever invoke White's legacy, as President Obama did in an address to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation last year. White, an attorney, was known for advocating civil-rights causes such as anti-lynching legislation and increased spending on African-American education. Scott, by contrast, wants to introduce all federal social programs, including the Department of Education, to "zero-based budgeting," meaning they would start every year's budget with no funding and have to prove the need for every dollar they are allocated that year.
Scott presents himself as a fairly typical aspiring Republican congressman, and on paper that is what he is: he grew up in the state, he opened a small business, and he serves in the state legislature. He is staunchly conservative on every issue: hawkish on national security, committed to keeping out illegal immigrants at all costs, and in favor of repealing health-care reform, cutting taxes, and defending "traditional marriage" by keeping the institution off limits to gays and lesbians. |
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