McConnell Center to host U.S. Sen. Tim Scott

McConnell Center to host U.S. Sen. Tim Scott

Tim Scott, a conservative Republican U.S. senator from South Carolina, will speak Nov. 16 at the University of Louisville through the McConnell Center’s Distinguished Lecture Series. Tickets are free and required.

The free, public talk through the McConnell Center is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. in Bigelow Hall, located in the Miller Information Technology Center on UofL’s Belknap Campus.

Scott, 50, was appointed in 2013 to fill a vacant Senate seat in South Carolina and regained the seat last year in a special election. He sits on four Senate committees – Commerce, Science and Transportation; Energy and Natural Resources; Health, Education, Labor and Pensions; and Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

One of only two African Americans in the Senate, he is the first African American senator elected in his home state and the first senator elected in the U.S. South since 1881.

A Charleston, S.C.-native who has worked in the insurance and real estate industries, Scott favors repeal of the Affordable Health Care Act, supports a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget and is a staunch advocate of his state’s Right-to-Work laws.

From 2011 to 2013, he represented South Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he sat on the House Rules Committee. Before that, he served in South Carolina’s House of Representatives and on Charleston’s county council.

The non-partisan McConnell Center, created in 1991, prepares Kentucky’s top college students to become leaders and offers civic education for teachers, students and the public. Its Distinguished Lecture Series has brought 47 high-profile leaders to UofL’s campus.