Tim Scott

In February 2019, Scott was one of sixteen senators to vote against legislation preventing a partial government shutdown and containing 1.375 billion for barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border that included 55 miles of fencing.

In January 2019, Scott was one of six senators to cosponsor the Health Insurance Tax Relief Act, delaying the Health Insurance Tax for two years.

In July 2018, Scott introduced a bipartisan bill, along with Democratic Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, to make lynching a federal hate crime.

In November 2018, Scott bucked his party in opposing Trump's nomination of Thomas A. Farr for a federal judgeship. Farr had been accused of voter suppression toward African-American voters. Scott cited Farr's involvement in the 1984 and 1990 Senate campaigns of Jesse Helms, which sought to suppress black voters, and a 1991 memo from the Department of Justice under the George H. W. Bush administration that stated that "Farr was the primary coordinator of the 1984 ‘ballot security’ program conducted by the NCGOP and 1984 Helms for Senate Committee. He coordinated several ‘ballot security’ activities in 1984, including a postcard mailing to voters in predominantly black precincts which was designed to serve as a basis to challenge voters on election day." Further explaining his vote, Scott said the Republican Party was "not doing a very good job of avoiding the obvious potholes on race in America." In an editorial, the Wall Street Journal criticized Scott, arguing that Democrats would see Farr's defeat as a "vindication of their most underhanded and inflammatory racial tactics." In a letter to the Wall Street Journal Scott said the publication was trying to “deflect concerns” about Farr’s nomination.

In January 2018, Scott was one of 36 Republican senators to sign a letter to Trump requesting he preserve the North American Free Trade Agreement by modernizing it for the economy of the 21st century.

Since January 2017, Scott has been one of three African-Americans in the U.S. Senate, and the first to serve in both chambers of Congress. He is the first African-American senator from the state of South Carolina, the first African-American senator to be elected from the southern United States since 1881 (four years after the end of the Reconstruction Era), and the first African-American Republican to serve in the U.S. Senate since Edward Brooke departed in 1979.

In 2017, Scott was one of 22 senators to sign a letter to President Donald Trump urging him to have the United States withdraw from the Paris Agreement. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Scott has received over $540,000 from oil, gas and coal interests since 2012.

In November 2017, in response to efforts by China to purchase tech companies based in the US, Scott was one of nine senators to cosponsor a bill that would broaden the federal government’s ability to prevent foreign purchases of U.S. firms through increasing the strength of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). The scope of the CFIUS would be expanded to allow it to review along with possibly decline smaller investments and add additional national security factors for CFIUS to consider including if information about Americans would be exposed as part of transactions or whether the deal would facilitate fraud.

Scott won reelection to a first full term in office in November 2016. He was endorsed by the Club for Growth.

Scott ran in November 2014 to serve the final two years of DeMint's term and won.

Because no candidate had received 50% or more of the vote, a runoff was held on June 22 between Scott and Thurmond. Scott was endorsed by the anti-tax Club for Growth, various Tea Party movement groups, former Alaska Governor and Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, Republican House Whip Eric Cantor, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, and the founder of the Minuteman Project. He defeated Thurmond 68%–32% and won every county in the congressional district.

According to the Associated Press, Scott "swamped his opponents in fundraising, spending almost $725,000 during the election cycle to less than $20,000 for his November opponents". He won the general election against Democrat Ben Frasier 65%–29%. With this election, Scott and Allen West of Florida became the first African-American Republicans in Congress since J. C. Watts retired in 2003. Scott also became the first African-American Republican elected to Congress from South Carolina in 114 years. From 1895 to after 1965, most African-Americans had been disenfranchised in the state, and they had comprised most of the Republican Party when they were excluded from the political system.

Scott was unopposed in the primary and won the general election against Democrat Bobbie Rose, 62%–36%.

During two periods, first from January 2, 2013 until February 1, 2013, and again from July 16, 2013 until October 31, 2013, Scott was the only African-American Senator. He and Cowan were the first black senators to serve alongside each other.

On December 17, 2012, South Carolina governor Nikki Haley announced she would appoint Scott to replace retiring Senator Jim DeMint, who had previously announced that he would retire from the Senate to become the President of The Heritage Foundation. Scott is the first African American to be a U.S. Senator from South Carolina. He was one of three black U.S. Senators in the 113th Congress, alongside Mo Cowan and later Cory Booker (and the first since Roland Burris retired in 2010 after succeeding Barack Obama). He is the first African American to be a U.S. Senator from the Southern United States since Reconstruction.

In March 2011, Scott co-sponsored a welfare reform bill that would deny food stamps to families whose incomes were lowered to the point of eligibility because a family member was participating in a labor strike. He introduced legislation in July 2011 to strip the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) of its power to prohibit employers from relocating to punish workers who join unions or strike. The rationale for the legislation is that government agencies should not be able to tell private employers where they can run a business. Scott described the legislation as a commonsense proposal that would fix a flaw in federal labor policy and benefit the national and local economies. The NLRB had recently opposed the relocation of a Boeing production facility from Washington state to South Carolina.

During the summer 2011 debate over raising the U.S. debt ceiling, Scott supported the inclusion of a balanced-budget Constitutional amendment in the debt ceiling bill, and opposed legislation that did not include the amendment. Before voting "no" on the final bill to raise the debt ceiling, Scott and other first-term conservatives prayed for guidance in a congressional chapel. Afterward, he said he had received divine inspiration regarding his vote, and joined the rest of the South Carolina congressional delegation in voting "no" on the measure.

In 2010, Scott was elected to the United States House of Representatives for South Carolina's 1st congressional district , where he served from 2011 to 2013. Previously, Scott served one term (from 2009 to 2011) in the South Carolina General Assembly and served on the Charleston County council from 1996 to 2008.

Scott finished first in the nine-candidate Republican primary of June 8, 2010, receiving a plurality of 32% of the vote. Fellow Charleston County Councilman Paul Thurmond, son of U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond, was second with 16%. Carroll A. Campbell III, the son of former Governor Carroll A. Campbell, Jr., was third with 14%. Charleston County School Board member Larry Kobrovsky ranked fourth with 11%. Five other candidates had single-digit percentages.

In South Carolina Club for Growth's 2009–10 scorecard, Scott earned a B and a score of 80 out of 100. He was praised by the South Carolina Association of Taxpayers for his "diligent, principled and courageous stands against higher taxes."

In 2008, incumbent Republican State Representative Tom Dantzler decided to retire. With support from advisors such as Nicolas Muzin, Scott decided to run for his seat in District 117 of the South Carolina House of Representatives and won the Republican primary with 53% of the vote, defeating Bill Crosby and Wheeler Tillman. He won the general election unopposed, becoming the first Republican African American State Representative in South Carolina in more than 100 years.

In January 2001, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Charleston County, South Carolina for racial discrimination under the Voting Rights Act, based on its having all its council seats elected by at-large districts. DOJ had attempted to negotiate with county officials on this issue in November 2000. Justice officials noted that at-large seats dilute the voting strength of the significant African-American minority in the county, who in 2000 made up 34.5% of the population. They have been unable to elect any "candidates of their choice" for years. Whites or European Americans are 61.9 percent of the county population. County officials noted that the majority of voters in 1989 had approved electing members by at-large seats in a popular referendum.

Scott won reelection to the County Council in 2000, again winning in white-majority districts. In 2004, he was reelected again with 61% of the vote, defeating Democrat Elliot Summey (son of Mayor Keith Summey).

In 1996, Scott challenged Democratic State Senator Robert Ford in South Carolina's 42nd Senate district, but lost 65%–35%.

Scott ran in a February 1995 special election to the Charleston County Council at-large seat vacated by Keith Summey, who resigned his seat after being elected as Mayor of North Charleston. Scott won the seat as a Republican, receiving nearly 80% of the vote in the white-majority district, which since the late 20th century has voted Republican. He became the first black Republican elected to any office in South Carolina since the late 19th century.

Scott was on the council from 1995 until 2008, becoming chairman in 2007. In 1997, he supported posting the Ten Commandments outside the council chambers, saying it would remind members of the absolute rules they should follow. The county council unanimously approved the display, and Scott nailed a King James version of the Commandments to the wall. Shortly thereafter, the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State challenged this in a federal suit. After an initial court ruling that the display was unconstitutional, the council settled out of court to avoid accruing more legal fees. Regarding the costs of the suit, Scott said, "Whatever it costs in the pursuit of this goal is worth it."

Scott did not support Trump's nominee, Oregon's Ryan Bounds, to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, effectively "derailing" the nomination. His decision was based on what he called Bounds's "bigoted statements he made as a Stanford student in the 1990s." Marco Rubio joined him in opposing the nomination shortly thereafter, prompting Mitch McConnell to withdraw the nomination altogether.

He graduated from R.B. Stall High School. Scott attended Presbyterian College from 1983 to 1984, on a partial football scholarship. He graduated from Charleston Southern University in 1988 with a Bachelor of Science in political science. Scott is also an alumnus of South Carolina's Palmetto Boys State program, an experience which he cites as an influential factor in his decision to enter public service.

Timothy Eugene Scott (born September 19, 1965) is an American Republican politician and businessman serving as the junior United States Senator for South Carolina since 2013. Appointed by Governor Nikki Haley, he won a special election in 2014 and was elected to a full term in 2016.

Scott was on the County Council for a time alongside Paul Thurmond, the son of the late Republican U.S. Senator, Strom Thurmond, who switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in 1964.