Rep. Nancy Mace conceded the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary Tuesday less than two hours after polls closed, finishing a distant fifth with just 11.3% of the vote in a race that exposed the cost of crossing the party's most powerful endorser.
Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, who secured President Trump's backing on May 29, led the field with roughly 29% of the vote. State Attorney General Alan Wilson trailed her at about 26%. The two will face each other in a June 23 runoff to succeed term-limited Gov. Henry McMaster, the New York Post reported.
The winner of that runoff will be heavily favored in November. South Carolina voters have not sent a Democrat to the governor's mansion since 1998.
Shortly after conceding, Mace posted on X:
"Serving South Carolina has been the greatest honor of my life. Every vote I cast, every hearing I called, every fight I picked, it was always for you."
She then turned to what she described as the reason voters never got behind her candidacy. Mace cast her defeat as the direct consequence of her advocacy for sexual assault survivors, her vote to release the Epstein files, and her push to expose secret congressional sexual harassment settlements funded by taxpayers.
"As a survivor, I chose to stand on principle and stand against the Epstein cover-up. I chose to expose the names hidden in the sexual harassment slush fund. I chose to expose DEI judges. I chose to expose the abusers of children. And apparently, I chose wrong if the goal was winning an election."
It was a striking concession, a sitting congresswoman telling voters that transparency had been her undoing. Whether that account holds up is another matter.
Mace's troubles in the race accelerated on May 29, when Trump endorsed Evette on Truth Social. The president praised the lieutenant governor in unambiguous terms:
"Highly Respected and very popular Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina, Pam Evette, is an America First Patriot who has been with me from the very beginning. She never wavered, never let me down, and was the only South Carolina Gubernatorial Candidate to Endorse me as soon as I launched my 2024 Presidential Campaign."
The endorsement landed as a direct blow to Mace and the rest of the primary field, which also included Rep. Ralph Norman and businessman Rom Reddy. But the timing made it especially awkward for Mace. That same day, before Trump's announcement dropped, she had posted on X: "Pamela Evette is NOT ENDORSED by DONALD TRUMP. Do not believe her LIES."
Hours later, Trump proved her wrong. Evette had been the front-runner in polling even before the endorsement, and the president's backing only widened the gap. On election eve, Trump stumped for Evette during a tele-rally, praising her for endorsing him "right from the beginning" and dismissing the rest of the field as "not serious."
For her part, Mace refused to back down on the Epstein files fight even after the endorsement went to her rival. She wrote on X:
"I know I put the likelihood of an endorsement on the line when I demanded transparency on the Epstein files. I demanded it because you deserved the truth, ALL OF IT, and as a survivor of a corrupt and broken court system, I will always pursue justice for those who deserve it. If sacrificing my values is the price of an endorsement, I will never pay it."
Evette ran squarely on her alignment with Trump. Last August, in her first campaign ad of the cycle, she declared: "It's good to have President Trump's back. I've backed him from Day One." During the tele-rally, Evette told Trump directly that the rest of the GOP primary field had been trying to "take credit for being one of your favorites."
The strategy worked. In a state where Trump's endorsement carries enormous weight, consistent with the pattern of Trump-backed candidates dominating Republican primaries this cycle, Evette's early and visible loyalty gave her a lane that Mace simply could not match, especially after the endorsement made the contrast official.
Mace, the first woman to graduate the Citadel's Corps of Cadets, was elected to the House in 2020. She built a reputation as an unpredictable figure willing to pick fights within her own party. She voted to oust former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. She gave an explosive House floor speech leveling sexual abuse allegations against four men, including her ex-fiancé.
She publicly accused Wilson, the attorney general, of ignoring those allegations. Wilson called that claim "categorically false." By Tuesday night, Mace said she and Wilson had "buried the hatchet", and endorsed him in the runoff against Evette.
That endorsement itself was a notable turn. Mace went from accusing Wilson of ignoring her abuse claims to backing him for governor in the span of the same campaign cycle. She framed it as pragmatism. Others might call it a sign of how thoroughly Trump's endorsement had reshuffled the field.
Mace's tenure in Congress also included episodes that undercut her self-styled image as a principled crusader. She identified six former lawmakers she said used taxpayer funds to cover up sex scandals, a move that drew both praise and skepticism. And a past incident at the Charleston airport, where she launched into a profanity-laced tirade when police were late to escort her through the terminal, offered critics a ready-made contrast to the principled-fighter narrative.
Mace's insistence that her push for Epstein-related transparency cost her Trump's endorsement raises a question the primary results alone cannot answer. She attributed the snub directly to her demand for the release of government documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But Trump's endorsement statement made no mention of the Epstein files. It focused entirely on Evette's early and sustained loyalty to his campaigns.
The gap between Mace's explanation and Trump's stated reasoning is worth noting. Mace may believe the Epstein files fight was the deciding factor. Trump's own words suggest he was rewarding a supporter who never wavered, and that other candidates in the field simply did not measure up on that score.
The broader issue Mace raised, the secrecy surrounding taxpayer-funded congressional settlements and the Epstein files, is not going away because she lost a primary. Those are legitimate transparency questions that deserve answers regardless of who wins the South Carolina governor's mansion.
The June 23 runoff between Evette and Wilson will determine who carries the Republican banner into November. Evette enters with Trump's endorsement, the top vote share from the primary, and a clear loyalty narrative. Wilson brings statewide name recognition as attorney general and now Mace's endorsement, for whatever that is worth after a fifth-place finish.
Mace herself acknowledged the finality of the moment. "This isn't the end of the fight," she wrote, "but it is the end of a chapter."
She still holds her congressional seat. Whether she continues to push controversial proposals from that perch, or recalibrates after a humbling defeat, will say more about her political future than anything she posted on Tuesday night.
In Republican primaries, loyalty to Trump is not the only thing that matters. But in South Carolina in 2026, it mattered more than anything Nancy Mace was selling.
