Tim Scott, a very conservative African-American member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, has won the GOP primary in South Carolina’s First Congressional District, which stretches from Charleston to Myrtle Beach. With three of five counties reporting, Scott has 74 percent of the vote. Scott has defeated Paul Thurmond, son of the late senator Strom Thurmond.
The district’s retiring Republican congressman, Henry Brown, only won the district with 52 percent of the vote in 2008, when John McCain garnered 56 percent of the vote in the presidential contest.
There has not been a Republican African-American member of Congress since J.C. Watts retired in 2003.
