Tim Scott-aligned PAC promises to spend $14 million on outreach to voters of color

A super PAC affiliated with Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) launched an initiative Thursday with an ambitious goal of expanding the GOP coalition among voters of color. A move that comes as Scott, whose name has been floated for vice president, and other Republicans are touting those voters’ new openness to the GOP.

Great Opportunity PAC, which launched after Scott ended his presidential campaign, is prepared to spend $14 million between now and Election Day. The spending is directed toward efforts to sway low-propensity and Black voters, particularly in key swing states polling in recent months that have shown former President Donald Trump narrowly leading President Joe Biden.

The South Carolina senator is facing a monumental task: Democrats still hold a wide advantage with Black voters, but voters of color have shown signs of defecting to Trump at the margins. Scott told reporters in a briefing he sees a generational shift among working-class racial minorities toward the Republican Party, with Black men driving the change.

“I think there’s been seed in the soil that's been germinating,” Scott said of voters who have not backed Republicans in generations. “Now the question is, are there laborers available to take advantage of the harvest?”

The $14 million pledge is roughly equivalent to what the Biden campaign spent on a blitz in the month of May alone. The Scott-aligned super PAC doesn't plan to build out an outreach apparatus along the lines of a traditional campaign, like field offices or hiring an expansive staff — it is instead promising a combination of voter contact programs, survey and data analytics and paid media.

Scott’s own presidential bid was unable to make significant inroads with the voting blocs he is attempting to deliver to Trump in the fall. Even some Republicans are throwing cold water on the plan.

"It’s one thing to make appeals, but it has to be backed by substance and prolonged and continued engagement throughout the election," said Shermichael Singleton, a Republican strategist who worked on presidential campaigns for Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. "The aims here are great, but the lack of details gives me pause."

But Scott and his allies think it can work. They are pitching the North Charleston native as a uniquely qualified conduit for wooing Black men and other racial minorities. Organizers with the PAC say they have about $7 million cash on hand for the initiative, but plan to double that heading into the fall.

Advisers to Scott say the new organization will not focus on turning out traditional base Republican voters, a job best left to the Trump campaign, they say. Instead, the new super PAC will be hyper focused on whittling away at Democrats' advantage with Black and other minority voters.

“Trump entered public life by falsely accusing five Black men of murder and political life trying to delegitimize the first Black president as the architect of birtherism,” said Sarafina Chitika, senior spokesperson for the Biden campaign. “It’s why the first thing he did after taking over the RNC was shut down its minority outreach centers, and it’s why he’s now trotting out backbenchers and C-listers in a last-ditch effort to defend his racist agenda.”

When asked by POLITICO about how Trump's felony conviction by a Manhattan jury in a criminal hush money case involving falsifying records of payments to a porn star may affect his outreach efforts to Black communities, he railed against how the trial was conducted.

“The Black guys I'm talking to around South Carolina … are fed up with this two-tiered justice system," Scott said. "So much so that I would suggest that the number today is closer to … 45 to 50 percent of African American men who are open” to voting Republican.

Critics also point to the fact that since Trump’s replaced longtime traditional conservatives with loyalists at the Republican National Committee, the Republican campaign arm has shuttered minority outreach centers across the country. Trump officials claim they have left open strategic centers they believe are important for future outreach, but have yet to offer plans about how the remaining brick and mortar facilities will be used this cycle.

Those with longer memories also remember the RNC autopsy report following the party’s election loss in 2012. Back then, the RNC pledged some $10 million in outreach to minority communities. Then the party selected Trump as its nominee, who had a long history of making disparaging remarks about people of color.