By Jessica Holdman
SCDailyGazette.com
The race to be South Carolina’s next governor has officially begun.
Two Republicans — Josh Kimbrell, a state senator from the Upstate; and Alan Wilson, South Carolina’s longtime attorney general — formally announced their bids Monday in what promises to be a crowded run for the Governor’s Mansion in 2026.
Hours before Wilson was scheduled to make his formal announcement at an event in his home county of Lexington, Kimbrell made his campaign official in an e-mail blast. The Boiling Springs Republican will follow up with a launch celebration Saturday.
The pair of announcements comes a little less than a year ahead of the GOP primary, in a state where Republicans occupy all statewide offices, six of seven U.S. House seats, and a supermajority in both chambers in the Legislature. It’s been almost 20 years since a Democrat won any statewide office in South Carolina: Jim Rex narrowly won his bid in 2006 to become state superintendent of education.
Filing for the June 2026 primaries is still nine months away.
At least four other Republicans could launch a bid for governor before then.
They include U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, of the coastal 1st District, who has been bashing her potential gubernatorial opponents for months, as well as Lt. Gov. Pam Evette, who is expected to make a decision within the next month, according to a consultant working with the Travelers Rest Republican.
Former state treasurer and reality TV star Thomas Ravenel announced a bid in early February but jumped back out four days later.
State Sen. Sean Bennett also continues to weigh a run. The Summerville Republican told the S.C. Daily Gazette he intends to evaluate the field of candidates “to see if the race needs me or if it doesn’t need me.” And U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman has told reporters he’ll make an announcement July 27.
Should Norman enter the governor’s race, state Sen. Wes Climer, R-Rock Hill, told the S.C. Daily Gazette he would consider a bid for to replace him in the 5th District, which includes the suburbs of Charlotte, N.C., and stretches from Spartanburg County southeast to Sumter County.
So far only one Democrat, state Rep. Jermaine Johnson, of Columbia, has said he is considering a run.
Who’s in
Of the two officially in the running, Wilson has spent that last 14½ years as South Carolina’s top prosecutor, making him the nation’s longest-serving attorney general.
When first elected to the job in November 2010, he replaced his former boss, then two-term Attorney General Henry McMaster, who made an unsuccessful bid for governor that year.
Supporters, including Lexington County politicians and several state legislators from across the Midlands, stomped the wooden floors of Hudson’s Smokehouse as Wilson took the platform with his family.
Addressing the crowd packed shoulder-to-shoulder inside the small Lexington County barbecue restaurant, he leaned into his military and law enforcement background, telling the group the story of a case involving abuse of a teenage girl he took on during his years as an assistant county prosecutor.
“I was able to be a voice for a person who had no voice,” he said. “This is the moment when I became committed to dedicating my life to public service. That same commitment to service is what led me to run for attorney general, and it’s what drives me today.”
During his tenure, the 51-year-old has challenged the Obama and Biden administrations in numerous federal lawsuits, to include multi-state actions in his twice-elected role as chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association. Those challenges have included vaccine mandates, environmental regulations, transgender issues, student loan cancellations, immigration and the Affordable Care Act.
At the state level, he has defended multiple challenges to the state’s six-week abortion ban. He pushed to create the state Human Trafficking Task Force, which he leads. And he has championed legislation criminalizing artificially generated child porn, which became law earlier this year, and sought protections for victims of sex crimes.
In 2013, Wilson launched an investigation into then-House Speaker Bobby Harrell but then handed the case to 1st District Solicitor David Pascoe in 2014, citing an unspecified conflict of interest, who later turned out to be his political consultant. Pascoe, who recently announced a party switch to Republican, expanded the case to other GOP legislators despite Wilson’s attempt to fire him.
If elected governor, Wilson promised to continue pushing for changes to the state’s judicial system and to advocate rolling back regulations on business.
“I’m so proud of what we’ve accomplished, the fights we’ve taken on and the results that we have delivered,” Wilson said. “But today marks the beginning of a new fight, a fight to lead South Carolina into the future with the energy of a new generation and unwavering respect for our South Carolina values.
“We have already delivered meaningful results for the hard-working people who power our state, but we cannot stop there,” he continued. “We have not come this far only to go this far.”
Wilson, the son of U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina’s 2nd District, lives in Lexington with his wife and two children. He has served for nearly three decades in the Army National Guard.
Kimbrell, who got his start as host of the conservative Christian talk show “Common Cents” on an Upstate radio station, has made his brand as a social conservative.
In 2020, he ousted state Sen. Glenn Reese, a Democrat who had held the seat for three decades.
In the Senate, he’s been a proponent of the state restrictions on abortion. He pushed to insert rules into the state budget banning books with sexual content from children’s sections in public libraries and withholding funding from the city of Columbia unless it repealed its law banning licensed therapists from offering so-called conversion therapy to LGBTQ+ minors.
He also authored the 2022 budget clause that banned the Medical University of South Carolina from providing gender-transitioning treatments for children under 16. The next year, he sponsored legislation to expand the ban statewide for anyone under 18.
The bill Kimbrell supported that became law last year has been blocked in court. It’s not yet clear whether that case will continue following last week’sU.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding a similar, but less expansive, law in Tennessee.
If elected governor, Kimbrell pledges to “champion policies that promote God, family, and faith, ensuring South Carolina remains a beacon of traditional values.”
Other priorities, according to his campaign website, include making K-12 scholarships for private tuition available to all children, prioritizing mental health care for veterans, and using artificial intelligence to sort through and sunset state regulations within 100 days.
The 40-year-old father of two easily won a second, four-year term in November.
He can run for governor without risking his spot in the Senate next year, since he doesn’t face re-election to the Statehouse seat until 2028.
Jessica Holdman writes about the economy, workforce and higher education. Before joining the S.C. Daily Gazette, she was a business reporter for The Post and Courier. S.C. Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
