The Iowa split-screen featuring the two South Carolinians amounted to the opening round of an frenetic competition within the 2024 primary.
Hours after announcing his new presidential exploratory committee Wednesday, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) gathered a group of homeschool parents at a library in Marion, Iowa — weaving scripture and his life story into a discussion about education policy as he presented himself as a next-generation GOP leader who could forge a new image for the Republican Party.
In remarks to reporters that spanned less than two minutes on the way in, Scott, the only Black Republican senator, said his background growing up “in an impoverished neighborhood in a single-parent household, attending four different elementary schools by the 4th grade” had given him a unique perspective to address the importance of a quality education and expanding school choice.
Nearly 300 miles across the state, Nikki Haley made a similar appeal this week, leaning into her biography as the daughter of Indian immigrants who rose to become the first female governor of South Carolina. She portrayed herself as the most electable general election candidate — one who could revive the Republican Party’s prospects across the country following a string of popular vote losses.
“Don’t complain about what you get in the general if you don’t play in the primary, because we have to win in November,” she told Iowans at a town hall in Salix on Monday. “No one can afford it. We’ve got to see past the trees, and that means you have to have a new generation of leaders, you’ve got to leave the drama and the status quo and the baggage behind.”
The Iowa split-screen featuring the two South Carolinians amounted to the opening round of a frenetic competition within the 2024 GOP primary. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is slipping in the polls even before he enters the race and doubt is emerging about whether he is the strongest alternative to former president Donald Trump, who is in growing legal peril. In that moment of uncertainty, Haley and Scott are each trying to position themselves as the GOP’s heir apparent: more youthful contenders who can lure back voters who were repelled by Trump’s polarizing style and penchant for chaos.
“He really wants to listen and get things right,” said Amy Lovseth, 39, a homeschool mom and former public school teacher who joined Scott’s private roundtable at the library with her 11-year-old twins. “I hope he would bring respect back to the party.”
Both Haley and Scott are polling in the single digits, well behind Trump and DeSantis. They are widely seen as significant underdog candidates who need to find ways to break through in a Republican Party where Trump has retained a loyal national following and DeSantis has quickly built one.
Scott and Haley are not only on a collision course when it comes to their messaging. The two South Carolina natives are also competing in overlapping donor networks and among a limited pool of voters — even as they adopt different strategies for facing off against Trump.
Scott on Wednesday avoided even uttering the former president’s name during his brief media appearances and in the biographical video he released outlining his White House ambitions.
Instead, he grounded his move toward a candidacy in his personal story of climbing America’s ladder of opportunity with the help of faith and determination. That experience, he argued, could make him a powerful messenger to “disrupt” what he describes as the Democrats’ narrative that America is a “land of oppression,” rather than a “land of opportunity.” Haley has been more pointed — though still cautious — as she contrasts her record against that of both Trump and DeSantis.
The political lives of Scott and Haley, longtime allies who still call one another friends, have been intertwined for many years in the Palmetto State. It was Haley, as governor, who appointed Scott to the Senate seat that was being vacated by Republican Jim DeMint more than a decade ago. At that time, she said it was important to her as “a minority female” that Scott, a then-Congressman, had “earned this seat with the results he has shown.”
Now, when their allies are asked to outline their respective paths for clinching the nomination, confidants to both Scott and Haley envision an intensive courtship of voters and activists over the many months ahead in the early states while Trump and DeSantis — who has made moves toward entering the race — battle for the top spot in what is expected to be an ugly and protracted battle.
The against-the-odds hope of both Haley and Scott backers is that GOP voters will tire of the combative approach adopted by Trump and DeSantis and give them a second look at the key moment when voters in Iowa and New Hampshire are making their final decisions, boosting them to a strong finish in both states with a slingshot of momentum that carries one of them to victory in South Carolina.
