State Rep. Nancy Mace, who won the GOP primary for South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District Tuesday night, has a lot in common with the last Republican to hold the seat. Like former Rep. Mark Sanford, she’s a fiscal conservative who has been known to overlap with the libertarian wing of the party on war-making and federal wiretapping. But one key difference could help her: She embraces President Trump.
“She helped elect President Trump,” said the narrator of a 30-second Mace advertisement, referring to her roles as coalitions director and field director for the Trump 2016 campaign. “In Congress, Nancy Mace will help President Trump take care of our veterans.” The spot concludes with a shout-out from Vice President Mike Pence, who called the 42-year-old “an American with an extraordinary lifetime of accomplishments.”
Trump continues to hold sway with GOP voters down-ballot, despite the coronavirus, a recession, and riots. “Last night’s primaries were an emphatic reminder of the enthusiasm for President Trump’s agenda that is sweeping the nation,” a Republican National Committee spokesman boasted on Wednesday. “President Trump added to his undefeated 73-0 record of candidate endorsements in congressional primary and special elections this cycle.”
“She’s, of course, proud of her experience working for President Trump,” said Mace campaign manager Mara Mellstrom, adding that it enhanced her understanding of campaigning and public service.
Trump may not have intended to return the favor, but he’s a big reason the Charleston-area congressional seat is available to Mace in the first place. He endorsed against Sanford in the Republican primary during the 2018 midterm elections, weighing in with a last-minute primary Election Day tweet against the congressman and former governor with whom he often feuded.
“Mark Sanford has been very unhelpful to me in my campaign to MAGA,” Trump posted as he endorsed his primary challenger Katie Arrington. In an example of Trump’s power with GOP voters, Arrington toppled Sanford and won the nomination, though she went on to lose in November. Sanford then ran a short-lived Never Trump campaign for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination, dropping out before the first votes were cast, telling the Washington Examiner that in the current Trump-dominated GOP, “It was a waste of time.”
Mace hopes to remain part of Trump’s winning streak. “I’ve busted through barriers and glass ceilings all my life, and I plan to do it again this year in winning the First Congressional District,” Mace said in a statement after the National Republican Congressional Committee labeled her a “contender” in its Young Guns program for favored candidates. “I want to go to Washington to represent the Lowcountry and the people I’ve known my entire life. Nobody will outwork me. Not now. Not ever.”
That will require her to counteract the other side to Trump’s intervention in the district’s 2018 primary: Later that year, it became one of the normally Republican seats Democrats flipped en route to retaking the House majority and making Nancy Pelosi speaker again. Mace will face off against incumbent Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham — whom she calls “a nice guy, but not the right guy” — in the fall.
“I can’t tell you how often Nancy Pelosi and Joe Cunningham’s names are linked,” Mellstrom said. “Joe Cunningham does not represent the Lowcountry.”
In 1999, Mace became the first woman to graduate from The Citadel, a prestigious formerly all-male military academy in Charleston. She’s long been active in Republican politics in the state. Before winning a seat in the state legislature unsuccessfully, in a 2014 primary, she challenged Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has also learned the value of being in Trump’s good graces as he won renomination Tuesday night. Mace won the 2019 Taxpayer Hero Award from the Club for Growth and can count on support from conservative groups this fall.
Although Trump has been trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in recent national polls, he easily carried the 1st District in 2016, and few analysts think Cunningham’s election two years later suggests any slippage. Cunningham will now have to defend his seat with Trump on the ballot at the top of the GOP ticket.
