The unmarried Republican presidential candidate doesn’t like talking about his new relationship very much. But he is talking about it.
In June, as Sen. Tim Scott began to get a little momentum in the presidential primary, a person working on behalf of one of Scott’s Republican opponents messaged me, asking to chat.
“He has staked so much on his personal story, character and faith,” said the operative, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity because, well, that’s how people kick dirt around in this business. “He’s running as America’s pastor, so to speak, as he courts evangelicals in Iowa, and I think a lot of folks may wonder about his lack of a family.”
There is a legitimate public interest in the partner of any would-be president. A first lady in waiting is typically a close confidante whose values reflect on, and influence, a potential leader of the free world. If Scott and his mystery woman were still in the get-to-know-you phase, voters might feel the right to get to know her, too. Plus, a
had told me last year that, yes, there were times in his career when Scott had fretted about “the optics” of not having a spouse. More recently, however, she had told her boss not to worry about it. “Honey, it’s two-thousand-whatever, you’re fine,” she recalled saying to Scott. She had told me something similar last fall: “That’s old-school,” she’d said about needing a spouse to run for president. “We don’t operate that way anymore.
Fast-forward to two-thousand-whatever. Despite an evolving understanding of gender — or, more likely, because of it — Republicans have made defining “masculinity” a part of their political playbook. This includes promoting some pretty old-school ideas about marriage. At the same time, Scott does not believe there is systemic racism in America today, and lately he has been talking a lot about “backing the blue,” locking up violent criminals, securing the southern border and implementing a federal ban on abortions after the 15th week of a pregnancy, “at a minimum.”
“Not as well as I did then,” he said, adding that he still believed sex before marriage was a “sin” and that he wished “we all had more patience.” Bobby Harrell, who has been friends with Scott since the two served together in the South Carolina State House, told me that Scott talked often about how much he admired Harrell’s 44-year marriage and “wished for something like it someday.” In 2018, Scott told Politico that he wanted to have six children once he found “Mrs. Right.”
And so, two weeks ago, I flew to South Carolina to ask a 57-year-old presidential candidate whether he had a girlfriend.We were sitting at a conference table at the DoubleTree hotel in North Charleston. Scott was looking sharp in a blue suit with no tie. His head was freshly shaved. A security guard stood sentry outside the door, and Scott was flanked by three different spokespeople. The whole thing felt a little like a one-man news conference, or perhaps a deposition.
He got the woman’s number. They started talking, hitting it off with discussions about God and using a phone app to do a Bible study together. Scott said he loved her laugh. They had dinner at a downtown Charleston restaurant. She got the steak, he got the swordfish, and they shared even though, as Scott would later learn, she didn’t care for swordfish. They played pickleball, and Scott was embarrassed to find out that he was the “weak man on the court.
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