Nikki Haley's presidential run doesn't appear to be keeping her fellow South Carolinian, Sen. Tim Scott, from considering his own campaign for the GOP nomination in 2024.
"I bet there’s room for three or four. Certainly, there’s room for two," Scott said in a radio interview Thursday morning when host Joey Hudson on WGTK-FM asked whether there’s room for both Haley and Scott in a 2024 GOP presidential field.
Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate and a rising star in the GOP, spoke the morning after Haley — a former two-term Palmetto State governor who served as ambassador to the United Nations during former President Donald Trump’s administration — formally kicked off her presidential campaign.
"I have a particular message for my fellow Republicans. We've lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections. Our cause is right. But we have failed to win the confidence of a majority of Americans. Well, that ends today," Haley on Wednesday in front of a packed crowd in Charleston, South Carolina.
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"I wish Nikki well," Scott added on Thursday. "She is a smart and constructive individual. She our state and our nation well and I have nothing but good thoughts for her health and her success as she ties to communicate her message to the American people."
Scott will be in Charleston on Thursday to deliver a speech on Black History Month as he begins a listening tour, which was first reported by Fox News earlier this month. Next week he will head to Iowa — the state whose caucuses kick off the GOP’s presidential nominating calendar — to deliver an address on faith in America and to headline a fundraiser in West Des Moines for the Polk County GOP.
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"I believe as I continue my listening tour I will learn a lot about America. I will learn a lot about why more people just like me, Black folks, White folks, Hispanics, Asians, are all focused on the future of this nation, not the color," Scott said in his radio interview.
In another sign that will generate more buzz about an increasingly likely White House run, Scott will run digital ads in Iowa ahead of his visit, paid for by his 2022 Senate re-election campaign.
Haley and Scott will be in Iowa at the same time. Haley campaigns Thursday through Saturday in New Hampshire — which votes second in the GOP nominating calendar — before heading to the Hawkeye State next week.
Haley and Scott served together in the South Carolina state House. Haley won the governorship in 2010, the same year as Scott was elected to Congress. And three years later, Haley appointed Scott to fill an open Senate seat.
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Haley and Scott have moved in many of the same political circles, and have shared many of the same advisers and donors and count plenty of the same people as allies, which would complicate matters if the senator faces off against the governor in the 2024 Republican nomination fight.
Scott easily cruised to re-election in November to what he has said will be his final six-year term in the Senate. And Scott, a ferocious fundraiser, had more than $20 million in his campaign coffers at the beginning of the year, which could be transferred to a presidential campaign.
While Scott had repeatedly demurred when asked about 2024, he hinted in November at a possible future run during his re-election victory celebration by telling the story of how he took his grandfather to the polls in 2012, and that his grandfather proudly voted for him as well as for Democrat Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president.
"I wish he had lived long enough to see perhaps another man of color elected President of the United States," Scott said, before adding "but this time let it be a Republican."
Scott made multiple stops in Iowa and New Hampshire last year to help fundraise and campaign for Republicans running in the 2022 midterm elections. Scott and Haley’s home state of South Carolina votes third in the Republican primary schedule.
From starting to build up a political team to strengthening already existing aligned political groups, Scott’s making the moves one would make ahead of launching a presidential. But a source in Scott world told Fox News that the senator "will take the spring to hear what people say" before making a final decision.
