Rep. Nancy Mace finished a distant fifth in South Carolina’s Republican primary for governor, leaving her next steps uncertain after a campaign marked by sharp reversals and high-voltage rhetoric. In a concession statement, she pointed to her fights over the J
COLUMBIA, S.C. — For a decade, Rep. Nancy Mace has treated politics like a moving target, whipping through alliances and accusations at a pace that kept both critics and supporters scrambling. On Tuesday night, that unpredictability met its bluntest result yet.
Mace finished a distant fifth in South Carolina’s Republican primary for governor, a result that leaves her political future hanging in the balance.
Her campaign mirrored the shape of her career. Mace courted support from President Donald Trump after previously harshly criticizing him over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. She also made releasing files from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation a central focus. framing it as one of her fights inside Congress even as it cost her support.
In the final days before the primary. she pushed for a law to bar anyone not born in the U.S. from holding political office or serving as a judge. She suggested that Rom Reddy. another candidate for governor. wasn’t qualified because he was a naturalized citizen—her criticism centered on his family origins. with his mother from India and his father from Italy.
During an appearance in Greenville County this month, Mace delivered a pointed response to that line of attack.
“I didn’t come out of a slum in India,” Mace said. “I am born and made here in America.”
By the end, her campaign had narrowed into something harder to sustain: sporadic public appearances, difficulty raising money, and no real presence on television. She relied heavily on social media, a channel she has used to advantage since first being elected to the South Carolina House in 2017.
In a lengthy statement posted after her loss, Mace recounted what she said were her achievements in the U.S. House. She wrote that she had “taken on the rich and powerful in both parties” and that she had “voted to release the Epstein files and lost some support for that.”
The push for those files had begun with a group of four congressional Republicans, part of the initial effort to use a discharge petition to force release. Mace and Rep. Thomas Massie lost their races, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned in January.
Mace did not lay out her next plans during her concession speech Tuesday night. But she did make one move clear: she is backing Alan Wilson in the runoff for governor.
That endorsement comes with a sharp reminder of how quickly she can reset the terms of her own political story. Last year, Mace accused Wilson of protecting child sex abuse defendants. In her concession remarks Tuesday night, she returned to that theme.
“When children needed him to act, Wilson looked the other way,” she said.
Wilson will face Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette in the runoff on June 23. Evette received Trump’s endorsement, and Mace responded with a burst of anger on social media.
“Pamela Evette is NOT ENDORSED by DONALD TRUMP,” Mace wrote, incorrectly. She also posted an AI-generated image of herself posing with Trump.
The setbacks were not the only reason her campaign felt like a test of endurance. Mace’s biography, steeped in personal reinvention and outspoken political identity, has long been part of her brand. She dropped out of high school and worked as a server at the Waffle House before getting her diploma. She later attended The Citadel and became the first woman to graduate from the state’s military academy.
In recent years, she has talked about defending victims of sexual assault and shared stories of being raped as a teen.
Her early political rise also showed a knack for winning over attention in a state known for its intensity. After her political career began in the South Carolina House. Mace won wide praise from Republicans in 2020 for taking back a U.S. House seat around Charleston that had flipped to Democrats for one term.
“For those folks that are out there today that maybe weren’t with us yesterday, I’m asking for a chance — a chance to prove to you that I will be a compassionate leader, a good listener, an independent thinker,” Mace said then.
Now, with a fifth-place finish and no stated next chapter, the question is no longer whether she can spark attention—it’s whether the state and the party will follow her there.
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Kinnard reported from Washington. Bill Barrow contributed from Atlanta.
Nancy Mace South Carolina Republican primary governor runoff Jeffrey Epstein files Alan Wilson Pamela Evette Rom Reddy Donald Trump