Presidential candidate Tim Scott speaking during the Politics and Eggs event on Sept. 20 at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. Courtesy photo/The New England Council

MANCHESTER – Having grown up in working-class poverty in North Charleston, S.C., presidential candidate Tim Scott maintains that he knows how to be successful in the American marketplace.

“If we are going to create opportunities, then we have to protect the goose that lays the golden eggs and that goose is America’s Free Enterprise System,” Scott said during the Sept. 20 Politics and Eggs event at Saint Anselm College.

Scott, a U.S. senator since 2013, said his parents divorced when he was seven years old, leaving his mother Frances to care for him and his older brother.

“I understand the transient nature of poverty,” said Scott, adding that by fourth grade, he had attended four different elementary schools.

He said his mother worked 16 hours a day as a nursing assistant for “slightly more than minimum wage.” Yet, she still taught him that people choose to “be a victim or to become victorious.”

When he was 15 years old, Scott went to work for John Moniz, the owner of a local Chick-fil-A.

“One of the most important lessons he taught me was that because you won the lottery of citizenship, as an American, all things are possible,” said Scott. “Seventeen years later, I opened my first business and I learned John Moniz was 100 percent right.”

Scott also called attention to the 100,000 manufacturing plants that have closed and moved overseas during the past 25 years.

“We can bring those back to our nation by following my Made In America Plan that would lower taxes, it would allow for immediate expensing and depreciation,” he said, adding that those factories would be offered a 30 percent tax break to return to the States. “We need to build as Americans, not borrow as Americans.”

Regarding border patrol, Scott said the southern border must be closed.

“We need to stop the flow of more than six million illegal immigrants to our country,” he said. “Perhaps the strongest national security risk we have today is an open southern border.”

Scott said Mexican drug cartels can easily slip across the border into California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. As a result, he said 70,000 Americans died from fentanyl during the past 12 months.

In addition, Scott said he has been a leading Republican in the Senate to negotiate police reform.

“The results of our negotiations was to increase police grants by over 400 percent so that the best want to wear the badge,” adding that it is important to “back the blue.”

However, one out of five positions in municipal police departments still go unfilled.

“You can’t demonize and defund local police and not expect chaos in the streets of America,” he said.

As of Sept. 18, the national polls from Emerson College show Scott with two percent of the vote in the Republican Primary. He is currently in sixth place behind former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has three percent. Former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are tied for fourth place with five percent, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is in third place with seven percent, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is in second place with 12 percent while former President Donald Trump remains in front with 59 percent.