By Shaun Chornobroff
SCDailyGazette.com
COLUMBIA— U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace has yet to publicly announce she’s running for governor, but she’s already taking jabs at potential GOP opponents.
South Carolina’s First District congresswoman criticized Lt. Gov Pam Evette and Attorney General Alan Wilson while speaking to primary voters last week during the Richland County Republican Party meeting.
The appearance in Columbia is one of many she plans on making around the state as she mulls a run for governor in 2026. The 47-year-old single mom plans to make a decision in the next month or two, she told reporters.
Gov. Henry McMaster, who is already the state’s longest-serving elected governor in state history, is ineligible to run for a third term, leaving a wide-open field to replace him.
No one has formally announced for the primaries that are still 18 months away. Candidates can’t officially file for the race until mid-March 2026.
But a de facto race is already heating up.
Mace alluded to her impending governor’s bid during another trip through Columbia last Friday.
“Just see that big beautiful dome, capitol of South Carolina. I could get used to that,” Mace said on X, formerly Twitter, in a video from in front of the Statehouse.
Wilson, who’s in his fourth term as South Carolina’s top prosecutor, has been the primary focus of Mace’s criticism, both on social media and in front of voters. That suggests she knows he’s her biggest competitor — at least, among expected opponents.
And on Monday, Wilson was on Mace’s home turf, telling the Beaufort County Republican Party that he’s considering a run, The (Hilton Head) Island Packet reported.
Mace has been condemning Wilson in a barrage of recent posts on X. She continued her scathing remarks Monday, calling Wilson one of the nation’s worst attorneys general.
“He has no business even thinking about running for governor, and I will take him out,” Mace said. “I will personally make sure that he is never governor of South Carolina.”
She also referred to Wilson, who’s had two stints as chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association, as a “do-nothing attorney general.”
She implied she’d do a better job as governor prosecuting crime, though she is not an attorney, and that’s not the governor’s or lieutenant governor’s job.
“I know what the system is like, and I know why it’s so important to have a governor, a lieutenant governor and an attorney general who will actually prosecute child trafficking,” she said.
Evette declined to comment for this article. Wilson defended himself in a statement to the S.C. Daily Gazette.
Spokeswoman Jacqueline Lane noted it was Wilson who pushed to create the state Human Trafficking Task Force, which he leads. She also said he was prosecuting child sex crimes as an assistant attorney general — when McMaster was attorney general — even before he was elected to the post.
Last year, he pushed for legislation criminalizing artificially-generated child pornography, but the legislation died with the end of session. He also asked legislators last year for $10 million to open more shelters for children and teens freed from human trafficking. The Legislature approved $6.6 million in the state budget.
“Any statements that he hasn’t protected children or victims of sex crimes is blatantly false,” Lane said in the statement.
Mace, the first woman to graduate from The Citadel, first won elected office in a January 2018 special election to the South Carolina House representing parts of Charleston and Berkeley counties. She replaced a GOP legislator who resigned amid a years-long Statehouse corruption investigation started by Wilson, who handed the case to a Democratic solicitor he later unsuccessfully tried to fire.
In 2020, Mace ousted one-term Democrat Joe Cunningham to flip the coastal congressional district back into Republican control.
After that close election, the district was redrawn as part of the Legislature’s decennial redistricting process to favor a Republican. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the map last May. She easily won re-election in November with more than 58% of the vote despite never debating and barely recognizing her Democrat challenger.
She won last year’s GOP primary with the endorsement of President Donald Trump, two years after winning her GOP primary against a Trump-backed challenger.
On Monday, she said she wants Trump to weigh in on her potential run before she makes a decision. That conversation will be a crucial factor, she told reporters.
“I think that anyone that wants to run statewide or any election, really, in 2026 or 2028 beyond, will need the President’s support,” Mace said.
Early in her congressional tenure, the two had a rocky relationship. Mace condemned Trump in her first speech in the House following the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. And Trump blasted her after she was among House Republicans who voted in the aftermath to impeach him.
But she’s since become one of Trump’s most fervent allies. In July, she spoke at the Republican National Convention.
And, after angering many Republicans for joining with the hard-right House Freedom Caucus to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy in fall 2023, she helped his successor, Mike Johnson, hang on to the speaker’s job earlier this month.
According to the Washington Post, it was Mace who got Trump on the phone with Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina’s Fifth District, who flipped his vote to support Johnson after the call.
On Monday, she told voters the nation needs more bold leaders like Trump and ones “who will him implement his agenda.”
Wilson, who’s spent much of his own tenure fighting the Obama and Biden administrations in court, said he intends to do just that. “It’s nice to have a partner in the White House,” his spokeswoman said.
As for the Jan. 6, 2021, riot she once condemned, Mace said she supported Trump’s decision to pardon nearly 1,600 people charged in the mayhem.
“The folks who were at (the Capitol on Jan. 6) have served their time for the crimes they’ve did,” she said. “They’ve done that, and I support President Trump.”
Shaun Chornobroff covers the state legislature for the S.C. Daily Gazette, part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
