Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is announcing his presidential campaign on Monday, is the first Black Republican senator from the South in more than a century and has been one of his party’s most prominent voices on matters of race, often navigating a political tightrope.
Here are five things to know about Mr. Scott.
A rapid rise
Mr. Scott was elected to Congress during the Tea Party wave of 2010 to represent South Carolina’s First District, which would flip to Democrats in 2018 and back to Republicans in 2020. He was previously an insurance agent and served on the Charleston County Council and in the South Carolina House.
Just two years after winning his U.S. House seat, he was appointed to the Senate to replace Jim DeMint, a conservative hard-liner who resigned to lead the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank.
The woman who appointed him was Nikki Haley, then the governor of South Carolina and now one of his opponents in the race for the Republican presidential…
This article was written by Maggie Astor and originally published on www.nytimes.com