Representative Nancy Mace, once a moderate Republican who made a full-bore turn to Trumpism, announced on Monday that she would enter the crowded 2026 contest for governor of South Carolina.
Ms. Mace, 47, is one of the highest-profile Republicans to join the race. Still, the candidate pool is already filled with big names in the state, including Alan Wilson, South Carolina’s longtime attorney general; Pamela Evette, the state’s lieutenant governor; and Representative Ralph Norman, one of the most conservative members of the U.S. House. The incumbent governor is barred from seeking another term.
Ms. Mace has hinted about running for the office for some time. She made her decision public on social media. She has been keeping the White House informed of her plans, though it was not clear whether President Trump would endorse her.
Ms. Mace said in an interview Sunday afternoon that she was prepared to be a “super MAGA governor,” referring to the pro-Trump Make American Great Again movement. “It’ll be Trump in high heels,” she said.
South Carolina’s electorate is one of the most conservative in the country, so whoever wins the Republican primary next spring will probably win the general election as well.
South Carolina gave Mr. Trump his first primary victory in 2016, helping propel him to the presidency. Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican who was lieutenant governor at the time, was one of the first state politicians in the country to endorse Mr. Trump. And Mr. Trump has easily won the state, one of the fastest growing in the country, three times.
However, midterm election years usually don’t favor the party of the incumbent president. That raises questions about whether there could be opportunities for Republicans to begin to break away from Mr. Trump. Ms. Mace is making the calculation that tying herself to the president is the clearest path to victory. The primary could also provide a window into what a post-Trump Republican Party looks like in the South.
“We’ll be seeing the end of Trump as a politician in sight, so what effect does that have?” said Gibbs Knotts, a professor of political science at Coastal Carolina University. “Is there an heir apparent, and does that open it up for a different type of Republican? I still think he’s going to have a big influence, but it’ll be interesting to see.”
Recent polls have indicated that Ms. Mace may enter the primary race with a slight edge over the rest of the field, but there doesn’t appear to be a clear front-runner yet.
Ms. Mace, a high school dropout and former Waffle House waitress who later became the first woman to graduate from the Citadel, the state’s military academy, attracted national attention when she criticized Mr. Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. In response, Mr. Trump called Ms. Mace disloyal and supported her primary opponent in 2022, when she ran for re-election to her current seat.
Ms. Mace won the race anyway, and in 2023, after briefly trying to navigate an independent path as a moderate, she tacked to the right, made peace with Mr. Trump and became a hard-line MAGA Republican in the House. On Capitol Hill, Ms. Mace has cultivated few allies, even in her own party. She was one of eight Republicans who voted in 2023 to oust former Kevin McCarthy from the House speakership, and Mr. McCarthy subsequently went to war against her, trying and failing to unseat her. Numerous members of her staff have quit and turned against her, often anonymously sharing unflattering stories about their erratic former boss, with the goal of tarnishing her reputation.
Many of her colleagues in the House prefer to keep their distance, and privately express alarm over some of her behavior, including her public claims of harassment. Mr. McCarthy, for instance, never liked to meet alone with her and preferred to have a female lawyer in the room as well.
Representing Charleston and the Lowcountry along South Carolina’s coast, Ms. Mace once leaned toward the center on some social issues, though her voting record made her a reliable Republican foot soldier.
Recently, however, she has made a campaign out of her measure to bar transgender people from using restrooms and changing rooms in the Capitol complex that align with their gender identity. Her campaign for governor will not just be about culture wars, she said.
“I want a bona fide high school degree program for vocations,” Ms. Mace said in the interview on Sunday, ticking through her policy agenda. “I want to restore law and order in my state.” But it was clear where the fire and the passion lay as she promised to go after transgender and “woke ideology.”
Jordan Ragusa, a political science professor at the College of Charleston, said that even though Mr. Wilson and Ms. Evette might seem to have less name recognition than Ms. Mace, they have already proved their appeal statewide. And Mr. Norman, the other House member in the primary, is arguably the one who is most aligned with Mr. Trump “from an ideological and an anti-establishment standpoint,” Dr. Ragusa said.
“A lot will be decided on the campaign trail in the coming year,” Dr. Ragusa said. “All in all, this is a very competitive race, even though Mace is the presumed front-runner. I think every candidate has a good shot of winning.”
Eduardo Medina is a Times reporter covering the South. An Alabama native, he is now based in Durham, N.C.
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times. She writes features and profiles, with a recent focus on House Republican leadership.
The post Nancy Mace Announces Run for Governor of South Carolina appeared first on New York Times.
