Why Tim Scott’s surprise announcement may have been timed just right

Sen. Tim Scott‘s (R-SC) surprising Sunday night announcement that he was suspending his 2024 presidential campaign marked an inevitable end for a candidate who faced long-shot odds of capturing the GOP nomination as former President Donald Trump continues his dominance of the primary field.

Scott subtly acknowledged this when he explained his reasoning for ending his campaign. “I love America more today than I did on May 22,” Scott said on Fox News’s Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy. “But when I go back to Iowa, it will not be as a presidential candidate. I am suspending my campaign.”

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“I think the voters, who are the most remarkable people on the planet, have been really clear that they’re telling me, ‘Not now, Tim,'” he said.

Gowdy, a longtime friend of Scott and a fellow South Carolinian, appeared surprised by the announcement, raising his eyebrows as the South Carolina senator spoke. “You’re spending your presidential campaign? You have plenty of money. You have the highest approval numbers of any candidate that is running,” Gowdy said in response to the news. “I’m trying to process this information, and I’m trying to do it on live television, so forgive me.”

He wasn’t the only person stunned by the news.

A source close to the campaign confirmed to the Washington Examiner that Scott’s campaign staff did not know he would quit the race during his appearance on Fox News. Less than 20 minutes before his announcement, his campaign sent a fundraising email with the subject line “One last chance.” Scott canceled an Iowa campaign swing over the weekend, which his campaign attributed to him recovering from the flu, but it had said he was looking forward to returning to Iowa, and he was expected to participate in Bob Vander Plaats’s Family Leader Thanksgiving Forum on Friday.

Scott’s decision to end his campaign also came just four days after the third GOP primary debate on Wednesday, when he debuted his girlfriend Mindy Noce, a Charleston-area interior designer and mother of three. He had barely qualified to participate in the debate held in Miami last week, and it was unclear if he would have met the more stringent qualifications for the fourth debate next month in Alabama.

“A lot of people were surprised because he made a point of bringing up his girlfriend onstage right at the end of the last debate,” Scott Huffmon, a political scientist and the founder of the Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at Winthrop University, told the Washington Examiner. “And so a lot of folks were thinking, well, he was trying to erase a talking point that was distracting from his campaign, and this will allow him to focus more on his campaign.”

But not even his sweetheart could erase the problems Scott faced.

In Iowa, voters have signaled that it is Trump, not Scott and his happy warrior energy, that they want as the next GOP standard-bearer. Trump steamrolled his GOP rivals in a recent Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa poll, garnering 43% of support from Republican caucusgoers, a 27-percentage-point advantage over both Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and former Ambassador of the United Nations Nikki Haley, who were tied at 16%. Scott polled at a paltry 7%.

Scott fared worse nationally. A RealClearPolitics poll average showed Scott polling at 2.5% — far below Trump, who polls at 58.5%, DeSantis at 14.4%, and Haley at 9%. But as Scott shifted his campaign staff and resources to focus on winning the Iowa caucuses, he faced an important setback when Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA) endorsed DeSantis, who also is doubling down on winning Iowa in his attempt to dethrone Trump.

Scott’s campaign said there was an open evangelical lane for him to win, but between Trump and DeSantis’s popularity, he never quite gained the traction he needed. Trust in the Mission PAC, the super PAC supporting Scott, canceled a $40 million ad reservation it made for the fall in one of the major warning signs for the senator’s campaign. “We aren’t going to waste our money when the electorate isn’t focused or ready for a Trump alternative,” co-Chairman Rob Collins wrote in a memo to donors.

As Scott was preparing to enter the 2024 race, he had a massive war chest of nearly $22 million that was meant to boost the senator over his rivals. But in August, there were signs of fundraising problems as his campaign spent more than it raised. During third-quarter campaign filings, Scott brought in $6 million — far below Trump’s $45.5 million, DeSantis’s $15 million, and Haley’s $11 million.

Political experts said that Scott dropping out before the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses likely saved him from a disappointing finish that could threaten his future political ambitions.

“If he could not gain traction and he was losing the ability to raise money before the Iowa caucuses, it was definitely a good choice,” Huffmon said. “He prevents himself from any seriously bad, potentially embarrassing showings. And so as he thinks about his future, whether it’s for the veepstakes or whether it’s for running for governor in South Carolina or maintaining his current spot in the Senate, none of those would be helped by an embarrassing showing the early presidential contest.”

“It’s a good decision for Tim Scott. He was going nowhere, and he clearly recognized that,” the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics Director Larry Sabato told CNN. “He had no chance of being the nominee, and he has very little support, really. I don’t know how you divide up his several percent of the vote, but I doubt it makes much difference.”

Mack Shelley, a political scientist at Iowa State University, told the Washington Examiner that a disappointing finish in Iowa would have only hurt Scott as he headed to a faceoff with Haley, another South Carolinian, in their home state’s primary.

“Another consideration on his part might have been trying to figure out if there was enough strength that he would have left by the time South Carolina happens to do halfway decently compared to Haley,” Shelley said. “I imagine looking down the road a little bit, Scott might have figured out that the handwriting was on the wall, and he probably wouldn’t even do well in his own state. And that’s exceedingly embarrassing for a politician.”

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Notably, Trump has not attacked Scott at the same level of intensity he has shown DeSantis and Haley, a sign that there may be a window for the senator to work with the former president in the future.

Scott did not endorse a candidate when he ended his bid, nor did former Vice President Mike Pence, who dropped out of the race late last month. Scott also seemed to reject a future possible vice presidential role for the eventual GOP nominee. But as a younger, fresh-faced politician and one of the few high-profile black Republicans in the nation, Scott’s political future is likely undiminished.