Okay, I’m poking fun at Sen. Scott a bit with my headline but only because that’s sort of the tone of this Washington Post piece titled “Tim Scott’s girlfriend.” It’s written in a pretty distinct narrative style as if it’s the story of a great quest, maybe the search for the Loch Ness Monster. It opens with a phone call from someone working for one of Scott’s opponents.

In June, as Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) began to get a little momentum in the presidential primary, a person working on behalf of one of Scott’s Republican opponents messaged me, asking to chat.

“Have you seen the video,” he asked over the phone, conspiratorially, “where he says he has a girlfriend?”…

The Republican operative who called me wasn’t sure said girlfriend existed. He suggested I look into it. He followed up on our conversation with an email that included a dossier of Scott’s known personal relationships. “No fingerprints,” he said.

The author keeps returning to this GOP operative who seems to be hinting that maybe Scott is lying about having a girlfriend. The author and the operative both claim they aren’t trying to insinuate Scott is gay but it’s not clear what skeletons the operative is hoping the Post will turn up. Maybe it’s just that Scott doesn’t really have a girlfriend? Does he?

Reading through the story, the one thing that does come across is that Scott probably doesn’t share much of his personal life with anyone, even people who know him well. People close to him don’t seem to really know much of anything about his romantic life over the years. For instance, in 2017 Scott told CNN’s Dana Bash he’d once been engaged.

Apparently nobody told Brian Moniz, the childhood friend.

“No, I don’t think he’s ever been engaged,” he said when I spoke to him in August.

That’s a pretty big thing for a close friend not to know about. On the other hand, it’s not clear that regular people care very much:

“What matters to me is that he’s in favor of putting the family unit back together,” said Brian Heck, 60. “I’d be more worried about him having a bunch of illegitimate kids than having no kids.”…

“I think it will just be less distracting,” said Greg Pollak, a pastor from Altoona, noting the drama that has lately swirled around presidential offspring. “It seems like the family have been a problem these past several years. I could even see it being an advantage.”

My own feelings are probably similar to those. I generally like Sen. Scott and wish him well on the campaign trail and in his private life. As long as there’s no hidden scandal there, which there doesn’t seem to be, I don’t really care who he is dating. It’s probably a very small factor for me in casting a vote in just one sense. I’d be aware he doesn’t have kids and in my view that’s an important, perspective changing part of adult life. So I’d be curious about how he feels about kids. But other than that his being single doesn’t matter.

In any case, by the end of the story Sen. Scott has agreed to meet with the author to clarify once and for all that, yes, he does indeed have a girlfriend.

For months, Scott explained, a friend from church had been trying to set him up with a woman the friend knew. Scott had told him that he wasn’t ready for a relationship. Then, late last year, the friend texted Scott the woman’s photo.

“You know what?” Scott recalled telling his friend after seeing the picture. “I’ve prayed on it. Tell me about her again?”

He got the woman’s number. They started talking, hitting it off with discussions about God and using a phone app to do a Bible study together. Scott said he loved her laugh.

The author of the piece says he half expected a door to open at the end of the interview and Scott’s girlfriend would walk out and introduce herself. But that didn’t happen. Scott wouldn’t even give the author her name. He is a pretty private person.

Sen. Scott wrapped up the interview by saying he couldn’t imagine dragging said girlfriend onto the campaign trail, not unless he was prepared to marry her. “I hope that happens, to be honest with you,” he said. Then he paused and added, “I guess I should be careful about how I say that.”

Yes, indeed. I don’t know how many girlfriend’s Scott has had but I’m guessing none of them want to have a semi-marriage proposal first appear in the pages of the Washington Post.