South Carolina Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, who secured a late endorsement from President Donald Trump, and state Attorney General Alan Wilson advanced to a Republican primary runoff in the race to be the state’s next governor, NBC News projects.
The runoff will take place on June 23 after no candidate won more than 50% of vote in Tuesday’s contest. The eventual GOP nominee will be a heavy frontrunner to replace term-limited Gov. Henry McMaster in the solidly red state this fall.
From the start, the crowded primary race centered on an all-out battle from the top candidates to land Trump’s endorsement. Evette emerged with the nod in the closing weeks of the campaign, and has since repeatedly promoted it.
On Monday, her campaign blasted out a news release headlined “President Trump Doubles Down on his ‘Complete and Total Endorsement” of Evette, pointing to another Truth Social post in which Trump touted his support for the lieutenant governor. Trump also held a tele-rally Monday evening for Evette and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who is up for re-election.
Wilson, the son of Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., has served as the state’s attorney general for more than 15 years and has touted endorsements from local law enforcement as well as his service in the South Carolina National Guard.
“Tonight, South Carolina families sent a clear message: they want a Governor who will fight for their families, lower costs, keep communities safe, and put taxpayers first,” Wilson said in a statement. “Conservatives said this office must be earned, not arranged.”
Evette was joined in the contest by multiple high-ranking South Carolina elected Republicans, including Wilson and Reps. Nancy Mace and Rep. Ralph Norman. Self-funding businessman Rom Reddy also gained steam late in the race.
Earlier in the campaign, Mace looked like she may have an inside track to Trump’s endorsement, enjoying a close relationship with the president. Mace had worked for Trump’s 2016 campaign but after winning her seat in 2020, she turned sharply critical of him following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. But in the run-up to Trump’s 2024 re-election bid, Mace returned to the fold as a stalwart ally, boosting him in her state’s presidential primary against former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
“No one will work harder to earn his endorsement,” Mace said in a statement last fall.
But the relationship began to sour as Mace, along with other Republican women in Congress, championed the release of the federal government’s files on the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Mace lost one of her top advisers late last year, who said she “yet again decided to turn her back on MAGA.”
With roughly 50% of the total expected vote tallied on Tuesday, Mace found herself a distant fifth in the primary, placing third or fourth in the counties within the congressional district she represents, South Carolina’s 1st.
Mace said Tuesday she would throw her support behind Wilson after having made amends with the state attorney general she was previously deeply critical of.
“Serving South Carolina has been the greatest honor of my life,” she said in a statement, adding, “I voted to release the Epstein files and lost some support for that. 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.”
“I’m at peace with that,” she continued. “Because when a candidate is OK with corruption and cover-ups — something is broken. … This isn’t the end of the fight. It’s just the end of this chapter.”
Norman, meanwhile, was a long-shot for Trump’s endorsement from the get-go, given he was Haley’s lone congressional backer during her 2024 presidential run.
Reddy, a far lesser-known candidate, refused to take any campaign donations and expressed deep skepticism of building AI-powering data centers in the state, saying at an April gubernatorial debate that he is “dead opposed“ to their construction.
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