By Mike McCombs
The Island News
Despite a pretty big target on her back among both Republicans and Democrats, alike, Republican Nancy Mace, the incumbent in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, moved a step closer to a third term Tuesday night, winning the GOP primary handily over challengers Catherine Templeton and Bill Young.
Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, as of late Tuesday night, Robert Smalls’ great-great-great grandson Michael B. Moore edged out Mac Deford by fewer than 700 votes for the right to run against Mace in the Nov. 5 General Election.
In downtown Port Royal on Tuesday, where Mayor Kevin Phillips had endorsed her a week earlier, Mace greeted voters and implied this is just a start, saying she was “cautiously optimistic” about the primary’s outcome.
“The only election that really matters is in November,” Mace said.
In between stops in Beaufort County on Tuesday, a New York Times photographer snapped a shot of Mace and a Beaufort Waffle House ordering hash browns “scattered, diced, capped and peppered,” though, according to the Times’ reporter, she barely touched them.
Templeton, whom the Mace campaign accused of consistently bending the truth about things such as laws she claims to have written and her immigration record, had been highly critical of Mace, mostly for her role in removing Rep. Kevin McCarthy from his role as Speaker of the House, leaving the Congress paralyzed and Republicans the butt of jokes.
Templeton, who ran for Governor of S.C. in 2018 and finished fifth in the Republican primary, was loud and clear at an April candidate’s forum hosted by the Beaufort Tea Party about why she was running for Mace’s seat.
“Because I’m a conservative,” she said. “The person I’m running against voted with the Democrats 36 times. What good does it do to preserve our majority in the House if you’re just going to give it away.”
Nonetheless, it wasn’t enough. Mace claimed 56.78 percent of the vote to Templeton’s 29.79 percent. Young managed 13.43 percent. It was closer in Beaufort County, where Mace won with 50.08 percent to Templeton’s 38.25 percent and Young’s 11.68 percent.
On the Democratic side, the vote was much closer. With all of the counties reporting, Moore sneaked past Deford, 51.61 percent to 48.39 percent – a difference of 679 votes, 10,880 to 10,201.
These were the vote tallies as of press time. They are not official, but unlikely to change enough for the outcome to change.
Both Democratic candidates spent a lot of time in Beaufort, with Moore officially kicking off his campaign right beside the historic Tabernacle Baptist Church, whose pastor Rev. Kenneth Hodges endorsed him, and the bust of his great-great-great grandfather.
Deford held meet-and-greets at Gilligan’s seafood restaurant and Port Royal’s Shellring Ale House in just the past week.
Mike McCombs is the Editor of The Island News and can be reached at TheIslandNews@gmailc.com.
