Tim Scott

Timothy Eugene Scott (born September 19, 1965) is an American politician and businessman serving as the junior United States Senator from South Carolina since 2013. Appointed by Governor Nikki Haley to replace the retiring Jim DeMint, he later won a special election in 2014 and was elected to a full term in 2016. A member of the Republican Party, Scott was endorsed for the Senate by Tea Party groups. In 2010, Scott was elected to the United States House of Representatives for South Carolina's 1st congressional district, where he served from 2011 to 2013. Previously, Scott served one term (from 2009 to 2011) in the South Carolina General Assembly and served on the Charleston County council from 1996 to 2008. Since January 2017, Scott has been one of three African-Americans in the U.S. Senate, and the first to serve in both chambers of Congress. He is the first African-American senator from the state of South Carolina, the first African-American senator to be elected from the southern United States since 1881 (four years after the end of the Reconstruction Era), and the first African-American Republican to serve in the U.S. Senate since Edward Brooke departed in 1979.