It was late October and Tim Scott’s marketing campaign supervisor, Jennifer DeCasper, was attempting to rally the troops on an all-staff name, saying that they’d quickly relocate to Iowa in a last-ditch transfer to salvage his floundering presidential bid. She broke the information from the again seat of an Uber, based on 4 folks acquainted with the decision.
Because the automotive bumped via the streets of Chicago after a Scott speech had run lengthy, Ms. DeCasper insisted, “We’re not failing.”
However by then, even lots of these round Mr. Scott believed his candidacy had already run its course.
His debate performances had been flat. His tv advertisements weren’t working. His operation was burning via far extra cash than it was elevating. And his tremendous PAC had canceled its personal tv advertisements days earlier than Ms. DeCasper’s employees name.
There was one different element that had been intently guarded: The person lengthy anticipated to be the tremendous PAC’s greatest donor, the billionaire Larry Ellison, wound up not giving something to the group after Mr. Scott entered the race, based on 4 folks conscious of the group’s funds. From 2020 to 2022, Mr. Ellison donated $35 million to Scott-aligned teams, and an enormous test had appeared a foregone conclusion when Mr. Ellison showed up at the Scott kickoff and acquired a shout-out from the stage.
Earlier than his run, Mr. Scott telegraphed to allies that he had anticipated a major sum to stream into his tremendous PAC, based on three of the folks acquainted with the discussions and planning, and the tremendous PAC wrote a funds for roughly half the quantity that Mr. Scott had predicted. However donations fell effectively wanting even that smaller sum.
By early November, Mr. Scott had sunk so low in polls that he barely certified for the third presidential debate in Miami. Then, on an evening final week when he knew he wanted a efficiency that might reinvigorate his flagging candidacy, the most important splash he made in Miami was the general public debut of his girlfriend.
Days later, he give up the race on Fox Information in an announcement that stunned a lot of his employees.
For a senator from South Carolina who had entered the race with excessive hopes because the Republican Get together’s highest-ranking Black elected official, Mr. Scott, 58, was unable to transform his compelling life story — and extra marketing campaign money on the outset than another candidate — into concrete assist.
Externally, Mr. Scott’s model of relentless optimism by no means discovered traction in a contest that has been dominated by the darkish and fear-laden marketing campaign of former President Donald J. Trump.
“Generally the message and the tone don’t align with the second,” mentioned Rob Godfrey, a veteran South Carolina Republican political strategist who has adopted Mr. Scott’s profession for years. “It could be that the potential wasn’t realized on this marketing campaign as a result of there’s such anger and polarization within the voters.”
Internally, the marketing campaign was stricken by miscommunications, missed alternatives and distrust. Allies questioned the candidate’s devotion to the race and his determination to lean on a senior group, led by Ms. DeCasper, with so little presidential expertise. Mr. Scott himself raised issues to at least one particular person near him about how the almost $22 million he introduced into the race from his Senate re-election was being spent by others, which additional narrowed his circle of belief.
“It’s exhausting for any presidential candidate to encompass themselves with folks they don’t know and ask them to be loyal to the trigger,” Ms. DeCasper, who has labored with Mr. Scott for greater than a decade, mentioned in an interview. “I used to be his longstanding protector and no one might have finished that apart from me.”
Ms. DeCasper mentioned those that doubted Mr. Scott’s dedication to the trigger had been misinterpreting his core values.
“He made a promise to his mom that he would take her to church each Sunday,” Ms. DeCasper mentioned. It was a promise, she added, Mr. Scott hardly ever broke. “Folks with out context would see it as a scarcity of dedication to a presidential marketing campaign,” she mentioned. “However in actuality he was committing to being a great senator in addition to a great Christian in addition to a great son.”
In some methods, the debates had been the undoing of Mr. Scott. He had entered the primary one, in August, primed for a second as Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida had light and he had ticked up within the polls in Iowa. However Mr. Scott was largely absent that night and by no means absolutely recovered. Donors and voters as an alternative gave a contemporary look to his fellow South Carolinian, former Gov. Nikki Haley, who had first appointed Mr. Scott to the Senate a decade in the past and who supplanted him as Mr. DeSantis’s chief rival for a Trump different.
The fourth debate in December, with its greater polling requirement, had threatened to unceremoniously finish the Scott marketing campaign and so, after weekend occasions in Iowa had been canceled due to what his marketing campaign mentioned was a case of the flu, Mr. Scott bowed on Sunday night time to the truth that the race was over.
His announcement on Fox Information on Sunday blindsided most of Mr. Scott’s personal aides and supporters, with among the many few to know being Ms. DeCasper and Nathan Model, his communications director.
The shock issue was the newest and closing signal of a marketing campaign that some criticized as insular on the high. Fund-raising pleas had gone out lower than an hour earlier than he had introduced his departure. And the suspension of his marketing campaign was not posted on his personal account on X, the platform previously generally known as Twitter, for nearly three hours.
Privately, allies and advisers to Mr. Scott had questioned his dedication to the competition, pointing to a marketing campaign schedule that was much less strong than his main non-Trump rivals. According to a calendar tracked by The Des Moines Register, Vivek Ramaswamy held greater than twice as many occasions as he did in Iowa this 12 months, whereas Mr. DeSantis had 50 p.c extra occasions and even Ms. Haley, who has made Iowa far much less central to her candidacy, almost matched Mr. Scott’s whole. (Not like Ms. Haley and Mr. Ramaswamy, Mr. Scott has a full-time job as a senator.)
Questions on Mr. Scott’s future had accelerated after his tremendous PAC pulled its promoting plug, after working about $12 million of the $40 million in advertisements it had introduced reserving over the summer time. “We aren’t going to waste our cash when the voters isn’t centered or prepared for a Trump different,” Rob Collins, the tremendous PAC’s co-chairman, wrote in a blunt memo to donors.
Katon Dawson, a former South Carolina Republican Get together chairman who’s supporting Ms. Haley, referred to as the memo unhelpful. “That was the very first thing that sucked the oxygen out,” Mr. Dawson mentioned.
However Mr. Scott himself quickly echoed that message on CNBC, a comparatively uncommon interview past the pleasant confines of Fox Information.
“One of many issues that we’ve realized all through the final a number of days is breaking via in any of the media with any marketing campaign materials is simply ineffective,” Mr. Scott mentioned. “Why waste these sources when it can save you them for the top of the marketing campaign when you should have the chance to interrupt via.”
That chance by no means got here.
Regardless of a Black Republican surging to the highest of the polls in every of the final two open Republican primaries (Ben Carson in 2016, and Herman Cain in 2012), Mr. Scott by no means had a breakout second in 2023, whilst polls present he remained effectively preferred by voters.
In the long run, the social gathering as an alternative appeared happy to have Mr. Scott keep within the Senate. The dearth of cash from Mr. Ellison was symptomatic of a broader pattern of donor reluctance.
Within the first half of 2021, when Mr. Scott delivered the Republican rebuttal to President Biden’s first tackle to a joint session of Congress, Mr. Scott had almost 247,000 on-line donations. This 12 months, when working for president, he had far fewer: below 109,000 on-line contributions, based on federal data knowledge for WinRed, the corporate that processes almost all on-line Republican marketing campaign contributions.
Although Mr. Scott has repeatedly downplayed any curiosity within the vice presidency, his lack of frontal criticisms of Mr. Trump — and Mr. Trump’s lack of assaults on him — has fueled repeated questions on them as potential working mates.
However Mr. Scott, who has beforehand indicated that he won’t search one other U.S. Senate time period in 2028, didn’t foreclose a distinct political future on Sunday, saying he was listening to the voters in his interview with Trey Gowdy.
“They’re telling me, ‘Not now, Tim,’” he mentioned. “I don’t suppose they’re saying, Trey, ‘No,’ however I do suppose they’re saying, ‘Not now.’”
