Doug Meadows voted for President Trump in 2024. As the father of a newborn, he trusted that the president could broadly steer the country in a better direction.
But he wasn’t swayed by the president’s endorsement of Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette for South Carolina governor. Mr. Meadows had met her before and said that he liked her, but added that he was disappointed by her all-Trump-all-the-time messaging in recent weeks.
“We voted for the president — he’s different,” said Mr. Meadows, 35, an Air Force veteran who’s supporting the state attorney general, Alan Wilson, in Tuesday’s primary election. He said that state leaders should carve their own path: “Don’t ride his coattails.”
Not long ago, a Trump endorsement in a solidly red state like South Carolina would have gone a long way toward helping Ms. Evette secure victory. But the president’s choice in the first wide-open governor’s race in almost two decades has not yet proved decisive — just as it did not prove decisive in Iowa’s primary for governor on Tuesday, when Mr. Trump’s pick lost to a political newcomer.
The candidates for governor in South Carolina went to extraordinary lengths to garner Mr. Trump’s endorsement, many of them repeatedly posting photos of themselves with the president as if his nod had been secured.
But in interviews, voters appeared to be more concerned about who could steer the state — the fastest-growing in the country — through its growing pains and infrastructure woes. And many, like Mr. Meadows, drew a distinction between state and federal leadership.
The Republican primary has attracted some characters: Aside from Ms. Evette, there’s Rom Reddy, a millionaire who has surged in recent weeks by declaring himself the outsider candidate; Mr. Wilson, the state attorney general who has focused his messaging on affordability; Representative Nancy Mace, whose political shape-shifting and dramatic tactics have made her a national figure in the Trump era; and Representative Ralph Norman, a staunch far-right conservative who offered a rare full-throated backing of former Gov. Nikki Haley in 2024.
But none of them have been able to break through ahead of the primary, and such a large field almost guarantees that the race will head to a runoff later this month. South Carolina has elected only Republican governors since 2003, so it is all but certain that the winner of the Republican primary will be the next governor.
“It touches different, it feels different,” Ms. Mace said in an interview, adding that some of the pushback she heard over Mr. Trump’s endorsement surprised her. She said it reminded her of 2016, where people “don’t trust the government, and they want a fighter.”
And the scramble to win those voters over and make it to the runoff, she said, “is a dog fight.”
In South Carolina, the strain on living costs, roads and traffic has weighed on new and veteran residents alike. At some campaign events, some attendees could be heard swapping stories about moving from Democratic-led states like New York — and bemoaning that more people might follow.
“The future looks pretty good for our economy, but it won’t last if we don’t have the right infrastructure to sustain it,” said Roger Markwald, 82, a longtime South Carolina resident who retired from teaching regenerative medicine and now lives in Summerville.
As of June 2, just over 207,000 people had voted, with Democratic votes nearly doubling the number of Republican votes. To energize their conservative base, candidates have barnstormed across the state, racking up hundreds of miles on bus tours and popping into barbecue joints and bars to shake hands and plead for support.
Ms. Evette, an Ohio-born businesswoman, has been the state’s lieutenant governor alongside Gov. Henry McMaster, the state’s longest-serving governor who is term-limited. Tying herself closely to Mr. Trump long before she secured his endorsement — a picture of the pair typically accompanies each campaign dispatch — Ms. Evette has sought to present herself as the obvious successor to help manage the state’s growth.
“I’m going to be bullish — I’ve got the president behind me, I’ve got the governor behind me,” Ms. Evette told a crowd gathered in a barbecue joint in Warrenville. “I’m going to wrap this thing up on June 9.”
Ms. Evette’s opponents acknowledged that the Trump endorsement could sway some undecided voters. But the expectation from Mr. Trump that she tap the governor’s son, Henry McMaster Jr., as her lieutenant governor has also given her challengers an opening to accuse her of negotiating a backroom deal befitting a political insider.
Ms. Evette has denied those claims and said she would not pick her running mate until after the primary. On Friday, the younger Mr. McMaster removed himself from consideration.
Mr. Wilson, who has a “Trump Tough” section on his campaign website, said in an interview after a rally in Myrtle Beach that while South Carolinians loved the president and his agenda, “they’re not going to vote for someone simply because they were able to orchestrate an endorsement based on a deal.”
Rom Reddy, the millionaire former Exxon and artificial turf executive, has swatted away accusations that he has tried to buy his way into office, instead framing his spending as a shield against influence from donors.
“You have an opportunity to throw a grenade in the swamp and see what crawls out,” Mr. Reddy, who first gained statewide attention for his battle over a private sea wall on his Isle of Palms beachfront property, told supporters this week.
At times, the crowded Republican field has turned ugly and personal, with salacious accusations and personal digs overshadowing similar-sounding plans to lower taxes, curb government spending and streamline the influx of traffic brought on by new residents. That has frustrated some voters, who say the lack of policy specifics has made them question how the candidates could deliver on their promises.
“The thing I’ve been most resistant to are promises with no possibility of backing it up,” said Jerry McKamy, 70, a retired nuclear physicist who moved to Summerville eight years ago. Speaking before a rally for Mr. Wilson held at a pickleball venue, he added, “How are you going to work with the South Carolina Senate and the South Carolina House to actually implement that?”
The recent debate in the state capital of Columbia over redistricting offered a reminder of how powerful both the governor and the State Legislature could be. After the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act in late April, some Republicans clamored for new district lines that would favor their party and eliminate the only majority Black district in the state, held by Representative James E. Clyburn, a Democrat.
But with early voting already underway, enough Republican senators joined Democrats in blocking the measure late last month. That infuriated voters like Joy Coffman, 47, who said her expectation was that representatives would “vote and act like we are a red state, because we are.”
The fact that Mr. Norman, a staunch member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, had been calling for redistricting long before the Supreme Court’s decision was enough to win Ms. Coffman’s support, she said.
“If you want to galvanize or to inspire a younger generation, you can’t just talk about something that you’re going to do — you need to do it,” she said. “We should vote for a government that understands what we want them to do, and they get it done.”
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Eduardo Medina is a Times reporter covering the South. An Alabama native, he is now based in Durham, N.C.
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