NEW YORK CITY - As efforts to draw Hispanic and Black into the voting booths continue, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott— the only Black Republican in the Senate— is seeking to help his party (and his hopes of being the party's vice presidential candidate) with a $14 million outreach effort to reach these demographics in battleground states.
The outreach campaign from the Great Opportunity PAC, a conservative super PAC that was formed in December 2023, will target Black and Hispanic communities in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in an effort to sway the vote to Donald Trump ahead of the November elections.
In the initiative's announcement, Scott portrayed himself as one of the best spokesmen to achieve a goal that has long proved difficult to the Republican Party. But, according to The New York Times, the message was also aimed at Trump, for whom the Senator is a potential running mate.
The South Carolina politician also said he was an adequate candidate to help with the outreach project due to his rapport with minorities, including increasing funding for historically Black colleges and universities and backing new criminal justice laws aimed at reducing recidivism rates among federal prisoners and expanding early-release programs.
Scott promised the initiative would be backed by $14 million, but the PAC has only about $50,000 in its bank account, according to its most recent FEC filing.
The super PAC has yet to disclose the source of its new $14 million expected to flow into, which is required by law. So far, a large share of the $50,000 the group currently holds came from another super PAC that used to support Scott's now-suspended presidential campaign, Trust in the Mission PAC, ABC News reports. During that campaign, the pro-Scott super PAC raised more than $21 million from major GOP donors.
During a briefing on the initiative on Tuesday, Scott told reporters that Black and Hispanic voters "are wide open for a political shift." Because of this, he and other elected officials will help promote the effort.
"There was always an undercurrent of conservatism in the Black community obviously, in the social and faith spaces that we felt the most and so we knew that there was potential there for us to spread the message about conservatism," a source familiar with Scott's plan told ABC News.
Historically, Latino and Black voters have voted Democrat, but growing literature shows these communities identifying less with that party than in other election cycles, leaving parties scrambling to gain their support as the November contest seems as close as ever.
In fact, both Democrats and Republicans have upended their efforts at appealing to these audiences in recent months.
The Biden campaign has invested more than $30 million in a spring media buy, using a mix of Spanish-language accents as well as Spanglish, which tends to resonate with young Latino voters. Among other things, they have also launched the Latinos con Biden-Harris effort, which seeks to encourage Latinos to head to the polls in November.
The Trump campaign, on the other hand, has received criticisms for its promises at outreach efforts, but a lack of action. The campaign, for example, has closed down minority outreach offices across the country and replaced it with other businesses such as a check-cashing store, an ice cream shop and more.
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