South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott had more to say about his mystery girlfriend last week. While at an Iowa campaign stop, Scott fielded a question from Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird about whether he has a “special lady” in his life”...other than his mom.
Scott told Bird that he was dating a “lovely Christian girl,” but once again declined to share her name,
At this point, you might be asking why we’re writing about a 57-year-old man’s relationship status. Well, apparently, some donors care about that sort of thing. Last month, Axios spoke to “top GOP donors” who were reportedly in a tizzy over his unmarried status. And last week, the Washington Post released their interview with Scott — delving into his relationship status
Scott said he has a girlfriend (which he’s said before) but refuses to name her and open her up to press scrutiny. The Washington Post spoke to several of Scott’s friends, who said that they had no idea he was seeing someone. However, his campaign manager told the Post that she had hung out with his girlfriend at the zoo.
The story will likely do little to squash questions about why he’s a bachelor at fifty-seven. But as Scott himself points out, that kind of feels like no one’s business.
“The fact that half of America’s adult population is single for the first time, to suggest that somehow being married or not married is going to be the determining factor of whether you’re a good president or not — it sounds like we’re living in 1963 and not 2023,” Scott told Axios in May.
The American public hasn’t elected an unmarried man as President in the last 139 years. And for someone like Scott, whose favorite talking points are old-school conservative values and his family, it seems like this has become something of a sticking point.
It’s also possible, that people don’t want to say why they’re pulling back from Scott — i.e., that he’s just not landing with voters.
Scott made the opposite of a splash in his first primary debate. He got barely more speaking time than Governor Doug Burgum and Asa Hutchinson, and everyone on stage more or less ignored him. And he was noticeably absent from any post-debate coverage, except for people remarking on how little they noticed him on stage. There’s also the undeniable fact that the Republican party has a race problem.
So maybe Republican donors are scared of a bachelor President, or maybe they just aren’t that interested in Tim Scott. Either way, the world isn’t really any closer to cracking the mystery of Scott’s love life, and honestly, that seems fine.