MAKING HISTORY! BRUTHA IS THE 1ST TO REPRESENT HIS STATE IN THE SENATE
Scott’s appointment is historic: He is the first African American to represent South Carolina in the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.
DeMint is resigning in January to become president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. His replacement will serve until a special election is held in 2014.
Scott, 47, was elected in 2010 to represent a U.S. House district in the Charleston area. A former member of the South Carolina state Legislature, Scott quickly became a favorite of House Speaker John Boehner and GOP officials in Washington and served in a leadership position for the 2010 freshman class.
He has a compelling life story, according to his biography in the Almanac of American Politics. Scott and his siblings were raised by a single mother who worked as a nurse’s assistant. By his own account, Scott was on the brink of flunking out of high school when the owner of a Chick-fil-A franchise took him under his wing. He later earned a partial football scholarship to college, and ran an insurance company and owned part of a real-estate agency before entering politics.
State law gives Haley sole authority to appoint a replacement for DeMint, who was first elected in 2004 and is leaving before his second term ends in 2016. The appointment holds major political weight for Haley, who has low approval ratings and is up for re-election in 2014.
Haley reportedly had been considering five candidates: congressmen Scott and Trey Gowdy, both elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010; former first lady Jenny Sanford, former attorney general Henry McMaster and Catherine Templeton, head of the state Department of Health Environmental Control.
The appointment sets in motion a series of events, which will make 2014 a busy year for Palmetto State politics. Both Haley and Graham, the state’s senior U.S. senator, are on the ballot in 2014.
SOURCE: USATODAY
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