With help from Ella Creamer, Rishika Dugyala, Jesse Naranjo and Teresa Wiltz

What up, Recast family! Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Congress is lurching ever closer to a government shutdown as the current continuing resolution expires at the end of the week. And President Joe Biden is set to have a high stakes face-to-face meeting with China’s Xi Jinping in California on Wednesday. First, though, a look back at why Tim Scott never could catch fire.

Many Black Republicans were filled with optimism when Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) launched his presidential run: At long last, they believed, an accomplished and well-respected senator like Scott would serve as a shining example of the party’s growing inclusivity. They were convinced Scott had the potential to go further than any previous African American presidential candidate ever had within the GOP. Maybe he couldn’t ultimately topple Donald Trump, they figured, but he had what it took to make a credible run for the White House.

Given the tremendous deference and respect he commands within the party, Scott’s lackluster performance, particularly in the three primetime debates he appeared in, is all the more shocking.

While prominent Black figures have run for the Republican nomination in recent presidential election cycles, Scott entered this campaign as the most accomplished Black politician ever to do so. That is what is so vexing to many in the party, particularly Black Republicans, who had soaring expectations only to witness his campaign’s failure to launch.

But by the time it all came crashing down, some of those same Republicans had emerged as Scott’s harshest critics.

Their interpretations about why his candidacy floundered are varied. Some accuse him of not weighing in on issues of race, when he’s uniquely positioned to do so. Others fault him for choosing to project optimism when the base was looking for a fighter. And others argue he missed a chance to use his strong Christian faith to differentiate himself from other candidates, in particular, the undisputed front-runner, Trump.

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Despite being a sitting senator from the Palmetto State and winning reelection there by roughly 26 points last year, Scott still trailed Trump, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in South Carolina primary polling.

So Scott, who his rivals hailed as “a good man” and a “leader in our party for years to come,” dropped out of the presidential contest.

His decision, which he announced on Sunday in a Fox News interview with Trey Gowdy, left many Black Republicans wondering what might have been.

Scott came off like “an old boring politician,” says a Black Republican who has experience in presidential politics and was granted anonymity to speak candidly about Scott’s campaign. This person suggests Scott didn’t stand out enough in the field even when he had something unique to offer.

Another GOP campaign veteran, Deana Bass Williams, says, “he did not lean into being a Black man.” Williams, a Republican strategist who worked on Ben Carson’s 2016 presidential campaign, argues Scott never managed to create a big thematic moment for himself as a candidate.

“I always see the need to aggressively engage Black audiences, period,” Williams says, pointing to the steady stream of polling that indicates Black voters are cooling on Democrats. Such voters might naturally gravitate toward a candidate if they had a sharper message.

But instead, she says, Scott played it safe, not wanting to “freak out” a largely white Republican base that may balk at identity politics.

It’s not that he’s never leaned into race.

In 2016, Scott stood in the well of the Senate, sharing vivid details about his experiences as an elected official. Over the course of a year, he said, he was pulled over seven times by police officers “for nothing more than driving a new car in the wrong neighborhood or some other reason just as trivial.” Then again, in 2021, during his rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s joint address to Congress, he appeared to contradict his own experiences, proclaiming, “America is not a racist country.”

But on the campaign trail, whenever Scott did talk about race, it was usually for the purpose of criticizing Democrats. In particular, he decried former President Barack Obama’s handling of the nation’s race relations, arguing during an interview with conservative talk show host Mark Levin that Obama “missed that opportunity” to bring the country together. He also jabbed at Obama for his nuanced take on the Israel-Hamas conflict, saying the former president was “dead wrong and he has a legacy of aiding those who support terrorism.” (During Obama’s presidency, the U.S. government killed Osama bin Laden.)

Shermichael Singleton, a Black Republican strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, says Scott’s bowing out of the race was inevitable.

By doing so before the next debate, set for Dec. 6 in Alabama, Singleton says, Scott saves himself from the lingering embarrassment of placing far behind other candidates. But quitting while he still enjoys the respect of his party puts him in a position of strength in the future.

“There are some benefits to having run: increased name ID,” Singleton says. “Generally speaking, most people often say, ‘I don’t have anything negative to say about Tim Scott.’”

Another benefit: Scott’s got a robust email list that he can leverage for future endeavors.

At 58, Scott is relatively young for a politician and once the coulda-woulda-shoulda’s of his campaign fades, there’s another contest that could be tailor-made for Scott.

In 2026, voters will have to replace Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, who is term-limited.

Should Scott want that role, says Alex Stroman, a former executive director for the South Carolina GOP, “he would walk into the governor’s mansion. He’s quite possibly the most popular political official in the state of South Carolina. And I think he’d be an incredible governor.”

We’ll certainly keep tabs on this and see what the future holds for Scott.

All the best,
The Recast Team

THE FORGOTTEN SWING STATE

In the not-so-distant past, the Tar Heel State was considered a key battleground, with both Democratic and Republican nominees duking it out in close presidential elections. Recent cycles in North Carolina have proven something different: Democratic White House hopefuls can’t win there anymore.

But new polling from Meredith College suggests those tides might be turning. The poll, which gauges the attitudes of registered voters in North Carolina, finds Democrats are leading in both races — including in a hypothetical matchup between Biden and Trump.

The survey also shows a potential gubernatorial nail-biter between leading Democratic candidate Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general, and Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s Republican lieutenant governor. They’re both vying to succeed Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who is term-limited.

“It’s interesting how people have written off North Carolina. I mean, since 2008, we’ve had extraordinarily close elections, including 2020,” David McLennen, director of the Meredith Poll, tells The Recast. “It just shows how close, both the presidential and gubernatorial level, the races actually are.”

Robinson looks to make history

Robinson is attempting to make history as the state’s first Black governor and the nation’s fourth elected Black governor behind Douglas Wilder of Virginia, Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and current Maryland Gov. Wes Moore. Robinson holds a commanding lead over his fellow GOP primary rivals, notching in 41 percent where no other Republican candidate tops double digits.

However, a combined 48 percent of respondents who said they most likely vote in a Republican primary said they either don’t know who they are voting for or said they would vote for a list of five declared candidates.

By contrast, Stein, who is white, pulled in 38 percent of respondents who said they would likely vote in a Democratic primary. Stein’s most serious challenge for the nomination, retired state Supreme Court Justice Mike Morgan, who is Black, is polling at 11 percent. However, roughly half of respondents, 51 percent, said they don’t know who they’ll vote for or said they’d likely vote for someone else.

Head-to-head, Stein beats Robinson narrowly, 38-36 percent. But with a full quarter of all respondents saying they would likely vote for someone else or aren’t sure how they will vote at this time, that matchup remains — for now — a what-if.

In the GOP contest for the presidential nomination, Trump mops the field, with 51 percent of the primary voters supporting the 45th president. DeSantis is the only other candidate in double digits at 14 percent, while Haley and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy are at 9 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

Biden tops Trump head-to-head

In a Biden-Trump rematch, as with North Carolina’s gubernatorial race, the contest remains within the survey’s 3.5 percentage point margin of error.

Biden and Trump are statistically tied, with Biden narrowly beating Trump, 40 percent to 39 percent. More than 1 in 5 respondents (22 percent) say they don’t know who they will support or say they prefer someone else altogether.

North Carolina has lost some of its standing as a key swing state in recent presidential elections.

The most recent example of this: The state was excluded from The New York Times and Siena College poll this month that showed Trump topping Biden in four of six battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania. In Michigan, Trump and Biden were tied, while Wisconsin was the only state where Biden led, albeit by just 1 percentage point.

Democrats have not carried North Carolina in a presidential contest since Barack Obama narrowly flipped the state in 2008 by roughly 13,000 votes, or less than a half of a percentage point. While contests there have remained tight in subsequent presidential years, Republicans have won three straight, with the largest margin of victory being in 2016 when Trump defeated Hillary Clinton there by 3.7 percentage points.

ICYMI @ POLITICO

New Georgia Project’s Financial Woes — Check out POLITICO’s Brittany Gibson’s eye-opening, six-month investigation of the New Georgia Project, the voting rights advocacy group founded by Democratic star Stacey Abrams. NGP, which is now being overseen by Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), is beset by allegations of financial misuse and irregularities.

New Supreme Court Ethics Code — POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein tracks why the high court’s newly adopted ethics code is likely to be less transformational than some court watchers were hoping.

Andy Kim Takes His Message to the People — Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) formally launched his Senate bid, telling some 250 people gathered in South Jersey he is a battle-tested public servant who isn’t looking to use the perch for personal gain. POLITICO’s Dustin Racioppi has more.

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