New SC State House member made history even before election win

Nancy Mace won a Lowcountry special election Tuesday for the S.C. House.

Mace, a Republican, took 56 percent of the vote in the House District 99 race, defeating Democratic candidate Cindy Boatwright, who won 43 percent, in the GOP-leaning district.

Mace is best known for being the first woman to graduate from The Citadel after South Carolina’s public military college admitted female cadets for the first time in 1995.

“I look at this as a win for Berkeley and Charleston counties, for the Lowcountry and for the taxpayers of South Carolina,” Mace said in a statement. “More importantly, it’s a win for substantive solutions aimed at fixing our most pressing issues – infrastructure, the nuclear power plant mess, education, and the sustainability and safety of our communities.”

Mace succeeds Republican Jim Merrill, the former House majority leader who resigned in September after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of misconduct in office. Merrill is one of a half-dozen legislators to have been swept up thus far in an ongoing State House corruption probe.

Mace will be joined in the S.C. House by another new member, Upstate Republican Ashley Trantham, who ran unopposed in a special election in District 28 in Greenville County.

This story was originally published January 17, 2018 at 7:49 AM with the headline "New SC State House member made history even before election win."