Tim Scott-Aligned PAC Budgets $14 Million in Minority-Voter Outreach for Trump and Down-Ballot Republicans

As Donald Trump nears this summer’s GOP convention in Milwaukee, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott is making it clear he’s eager to continue serving as a campaign surrogate for the presumptive GOP nominee through Election Day — preferably as his running mate.

The Scott-aligned Great Opportunity PAC is committing $14 million to help juice black and Hispanic turnout for the former president and down-ballot Republicans this cycle, the senator and his advisers told a group of reporters earlier this week. This is part of a concerted effort to win over minority voters as polls continue to suggest that historically Democratic-leaning black male voters are souring on President Joe Biden.

The group’s hefty financial commitment to the party’s black and Hispanic voter outreach this cycle includes $9 million in voter contact and $4.8 million in earned and paid media, as well as more than half a million dollars reserved for survey research, data analytics, and operations and legal expenditures, according to a memo shared with National Review and other reporters.

The Senate’s lone black Republican is pitching his initiative as a campaign-like effort that will target and persuade low-propensity minority voters in swing states through direct mail, digital and TV ads, and in-person events that will feature Scott as a surrogate for the party’s message.

The senator and his former presidential campaign manager Jennifer DeCasper recently met with Republican National Committee co-chairs Lara Trump and Michael Whatley to discuss coordinating their initiative with the national GOP’s minority-voter outreach throughout the cycle. As of this week, it was unclear exactly when this effort will kick off in earnest, when digital and TV ads will drop, and how long they will air. Great Opportunity PAC had roughly $23.6 million in the bank as of April 1, Federal Election Commission filings show.

In media interviews, Scott often discusses black GOP voter outreach using what he calls a “jobs and justice” lens.

“Contrast the Trump years versus the Biden years, the one thing you see very quickly is the bottom quintile grew faster than the top quintile under President Trump,” Scott told a group of reporters this week inside the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s Capitol Hill headquarters. “You don’t see that happening right now” under Biden, he said.

“On the justice issue,” Scott said in reference to Trump’s various legal troubles, “I think African American men, specifically, have experienced a lot with the justice system — not all of it good — and therefore, watching an injustice play out that is just so blatant, a lot of African American men have said, ‘You know what, I’m gonna take a closer look at the Republican Party and the GOP.’”

Trump is expected to pick his running mate around the GOP’s mid-July convention in Milwaukee, which will kick off four days after Trump is scheduled to receive sentencing in his New York hush-money case on July 11. Beyond Scott, vice presidential speculation has included senators Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and J.D. Vance (R., Ohio), Representatives Byron Donalds (R., Fla.) and Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.), former House and Development Secretary Ben Carson, and governor Doug Burgum (R., N.D.). All of those candidates have reportedly received vice presidential vetting paperwork from the Trump campaign, Politico reported Wednesday.