Mindy Noce and Sen. Tim Scott at the third GOP debate Photo: MSNBC screenshot
In a surprising move, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina has dropped out of the 2024 presidential campaign as a GOP hopeful. During an interview with Fox News on Nov. 12, Scott revealed he would not be returning to Iowa as a presidential candidate. This decision, while unexpected, he was facing a number of challenges breaking through in the crowded GOP field and the public’s perception of him as well as his policies.
“I love America more today than I did on May 22. But when I go back to Iowa, it will not be as a presidential candidate. I am suspending my campaign,” he said.
Scott also stated that he would not be endorsing another Republican candidate and that he has no intention of accepting a vice-presidential nomination.
“I ran for president to be president,” he said. “I think I was called to run. I was not called to win, but I certainly was called to run. … Being vice president has never been on my to-do list for this campaign, and it’s certainly not there now.”
Scott, who holds one of the most conservative voting records in Congress, had also faced criticism from some quarters for his opposition to LGBTQ+ rights, including same-sex marriage and protections for transgender students. However, he had attempted to appeal to evangelical voters, a significant bloc in the Iowa caucuses, by emphasizing his Christian faith and pro-life stance.
But Scott, 58, was also often plagued by questions of his sexual preference as the never-married senator once boasted about being an adult virgin at 30. He also failed to lure in Black voters as he downplayed racism in America, again using his childhood as an example of going from nothing to being a successful politician.
Amid gay rumors, Scott debuted his mystery girlfriend at the third GOP debate on Nov. 8. After several questions about his love life, last month revealed he was dating a Christian woman. People didn’t find out who she was until this month. Her name: Mindy Noce. Noce is a design and renovations manager for a real estate company in Charleston, South Carolina, LGBTQ Nation reported. According to Scott, the two have been seeing each other for “about a year or so.”
Scott, who launched his campaign in May, used his personal story a central narrative of his campaign. He’d often talk about growing up in poverty in South Carolina and being raised by a single mother. “The truth of my life disrupts their lies,” he said often at campaign events.
At the second Republican primary debate in California, Scott said he believed that the country has transcended the history of slavery and Jim Crow-era segregation.
“Black families survived slavery. We survived poll taxes and literacy tests. We survived discrimination being woven into the laws of our country. What was hard to survive was [President Lyndon] Johnson’s Great Society, where they decided to … take the Black father out of the household to get a check in the mail, and you can now measure that in unemployment, in crime, in devastation,” Scott said during the debate.
Then came the money problem. The super PAC backing Scott pulled its slate of television ads in October, and, following the third GOP presidential debate, the PAC decided not to make a new investment, CNN reported.
Mindy Noce and Sen. Tim Scott at the third GOP debate Photo: MSNBC screenshot
