| | | | |  | | By Brakkton Booker | With help from Rishika Dugyala, Jesse Naranjo and Teresa Wiltz
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GOP presidential candidate and Republican Sen. Tim Scott prepares to speak at the Family Leadership Summit, Friday, July 14, 2023, in Des Moines, Iowa. | POLITICO illustration/Photo via AP | What up, Recast family! Democrats brace for fallout after Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) refers to Israel as racist, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sits down for a CNN interview amid his presidential campaign woes and Alabama lawmakers propose a new redistricting map, prompting critics to vow legal action. First, though, we examine the dawn of Tim Scott’s moment. Republican Sen. Tim Scott posts some of the highest favorability ratings in the field, is well liked by donors and is a conservative media darling. With Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' stumbles out of the gate to take down GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, Scott appears to be on the cusp of a breakout moment. The South Carolina senator — perhaps the most viable of the traditionally credentialed longshots — reportedly raised a respectable fundraising haul of $5.8 million in the second quarter. These numbers were far shy of Trump’s or DeSantis' hauls, but they are big enough to be taken seriously. There's just one problem: So far, the GOP electorate just ain’t buying it. National polls have him hovering around 3 percent, according to the Real Clear Politics polling average. But that hasn’t deterred donors, who’re giving him another look, kicking the tires once again, as worries that DeSantis is not strong enough to take on Trump begin to calcify.
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“I don't think there's anybody who doesn’t think he’s a nice guy,” Ryan Rhodes, a Republican strategist in Iowa, says of Scott. “But I don't believe the primary electorate believes that we can just have somebody that's going to get along with the other side in Washington.”
Of the dozen strategists and pollsters interviewed by The Recast, terms like “affable,”and “optimistic” came up repeatedly. The word that did not come up often: "president."
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Scott jokes with a Trump supporter before walking in the July 4th parade in Merrimack, N.H. | Reba Saldanha/AP Photo | Rhodes, who served as Iowa campaign director for Ben Carson’s 2016 presidential run, says that for Scott to be seen as viable, his campaign will likely have to turn out some 5,000 or 10,000 new voters in the first-in-the-nation caucus state — and do so without alienating Trump or DeSantis voters. His strategy relies on his trademark upbeat campaign style and his message of unity. Using the cadence of a preacher, he leans heavily into his biography, reminding voters his family went from “cotton to Congress” in one lifetime to underscore his message that America is not a racist nation. And he often rails against what he sees as the “culture of grievance” by liberals and corporate America. “Along with a culture of grievance comes this drug of victimhood, the narcotic of despair that folks actually have figured out … that you can make a profit off of conflict,” Scott said Friday at the Family Leadership Summit, a conservative evangelical event that hosted several GOP candidates last week. Questions remain about Scott’s viability for sure. He’s been labeled a “happy warrior” on the trail. But can he ascend in the polls without going on the attack?
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Scott talks with an audience member during Sen. Joni Ernst's Roast and Ride, Saturday, June 3, 2023, in Des Moines, Iowa. | Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo | “Everybody at some point in time is going to have to, if not throw a punch, throw an elbow,” says Jeff Kaufmann, the Iowa Republican Party chair. “And they’re going to have to land.” Kaufmann, who is remaining neutral ahead of the first-in-the-nation caucuses set for Martin Luther King Jr. Day next year, adds it is a tactical decision by a campaign on when to go into attack mode. But he argues casting Scott off as someone incapable of mounting a fight for the Republican nomination is a miscalculation. “I think his warrior credentials are inherent in his life story,” he sys. Indeed, Scott managed to summon that combatant’s spirit when he picked a fight with the nation's first Black president. In an interview last month with conservative talk show host Mark Levin, Scott said of Barack Obama’s time in the White House: “America was hungry for bringing our country together. President Obama missed that opportunity.”
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That jab goaded Obama into responding. In a separate interview on David Axelrod’s “The Axe Files” podcast, Obama opined that voters should be “rightly skeptical” of Scott. The senator, he said, does not have a strategy to address “crippling generational poverty” that stems from centuries of racism in American society.
“There may come a time where there's somebody in the Republican Party that is more serious about actually addressing some of the deep inequality that still exists in our society that tracks race, and is a consequence of our racial history,” Obama said. “I think that would be fantastic. I haven't yet seen it.” Scott fired back a few days later in an interview with Fox News: “There's no higher compliment than to be attacked by President Obama." Scott’s inability to catch fire in this early stretch of the campaign is notable given that among the Black presidential candidates that have run in previous campaign cycles, Scott is the most accomplished politician of them all. | 
Scott speaks with hospitality industry leaders during a roundtable discussion at the Pizza King restaurant, June 2, 2023, in Council Bluffs, Iowa. | Scott Olson/Getty Images | He cruised to reelection in his Senate race last cycle by 26 points. He’s been in the Senate since 2013 and in his first House race, he defeated the son of Strom Thurmond, South Carolina’s longest-serving senator and its most famous segregationist. Scott holds town halls in New Hampshire tonight. We’ll keep tabs on whether his predicted rise in the GOP polls ever materializes. All the best,
The Recast Team
| | | ALABAMA REDISTRICTING LATEST
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Evan Milligan, plaintiff in the Alabama redistricting case, speaks with reporters following oral arguments Oct. 4, 2022, at the Supreme Court. | Patrick Semansky/AP Photo | | Alabama’s GOP-led Legislature convened a special session on Monday, under orders by the U.S. Supreme Court to redraw the state’s congressional map — which was widely seen as a mandate to create a second majority-Black district in the state. So far, the Legislature is ignoring that mandate. In a party-line, 14-6 vote, the Permanent Legislative Committee on Reapportionment approved a new map proposal that would boost the percentage of Black voters in the current 2nd Congressional District from 30 percent to 42.5 percent — instead of creating a second district that is majority-minority, as outlined by the high court. “The map passed out of committee today falls short,” the National Redistricting Foundation, a group that joined the lawsuit challenging the state’s current maps, said in a tweet Monday. The group vowed further legal action if the new map is adopted. “This map will be challenged in court if enacted,” it said. The deadline for the newly redrawn map is Friday. Last month, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court affirmed a three-judge panel’s ruling that found Alabama’s current congressional map likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by diluting the power of Black voters. Under the current map just one out of the state’s seven congressional districts, the 7th Congressional District represented by Rep. Terri Sewell, is majority Black, despite more than a quarter of the state’s population being African American. Speaking after the Supreme Court’s surprise ruling, Sewell told The Recast it was “a historic victory and a great victory for Alabama’s Black voters.”
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Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) arrives for a vote at the U.S. Capitol, July 10, 2023. | Francis Chung/POLITICO | Show Her the Money — With her Senate future still uncertain, Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema was outraised in the second quarter by her chief Democratic challenger, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who as POLITICO’s Ally Mutnick reports, nearly doubled Sinema’s fundraising haul. DeSantis Hit With Immigration Lawsuit — A group of liberal-leaning organizations slapped DeSantis with a suit over Florida’s controversial immigration law, FL SB 1718. As POLITICO’s Andrew Atterbury explains, the law allows authorities to bring human trafficking charges if someone knowingly transports undocumented migrants across state lines. Lee’s Super PAC Ignites — An outside group, She Speaks for Me, which is supporting Rep. Barbara Lee’s California Senate bid, is slated to report it raised $1.5 million in the second quarter, POLITICO’s Christopher Cadelago reports. Respectable, yes, “but it’s still orders of magnitude less than her Democratic rivals,” he writes. Jayapal’s Walk Back — Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, apologized for comments made over the weekend, saying she did not mean to call Israel a “racist” state. POLITICO’s David Cohen has more.
| | | THE RECAST RECOMMENDS Syrian author and poet Khaled Khalifa tells a story of life and death in Aleppo at the turn of the 20th century and lives forever changed after a flood in his new novel, “No One Prayed Over Their Graves.” It’s on sale today. Lola Tung reprises the role of Belly in the new season of romantic coming-of-age series “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” based on the novels by Jenny Han. It’s streaming on Prime Video now. “Stephen Curry: Underrated” chronicles the rise of the star basketball player from his beginnings and college career through the present. It drops Friday on Apple TV+. “They Cloned Tyrone,” a sci-fi comedy mystery about an unlikely trio that discovers a government cloning conspiracy, features a stacked cast headlined by John Boyega, Teyonah Parris and Jamie Foxx. It’s playing in some theaters and releasing Friday on Netflix.
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| Breakout Colombian star Karol G’s new song “S91” relays a message of spirituality, empowerment and personal growth, and might be a teaser for more work to come. She’s out with an accompanying music video shot in the California desert. South Korean pop group (G)I-DLE serves us some sci-fi-adjacent escapist vibes in the new visuals for their song, “I Do.”
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| TikTok of the Day: Let’s go!
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