SC Congressional candidate Katie Arrington falsely claims Trump won the 2020 election
Hours after launching her congressional campaign, South Carolina Republican Katie Arrington falsely claimed Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, echoing the baseless claims of the former president who has been making the false declaration of his victory the ultimate litmus test for Republicans seeking federal office in 2022.
In a 15-minute interview with The State newspaper Tuesday morning, the Summerville Republican, who is challenging incumbent U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace in Charleston’s congressional GOP primary race, did not hesitate when asked if she thought Trump won the 2020 presidential election against President Joe Biden.
“Yes, I do. I think Trump won the 2020 election,” Arrington said. “I think there’s too many voting irregularities.”
Arrington then cited Biden’s anemic approval ratings as an example of the mismatch she sees between his election to the White House and voter sentiment.
“But is President Biden, you know, duly elected? Yeah, he’s legally the President of the United States because people like Nancy Mace didn’t have a backbone, and they certified the election,” Arrington said.
Despite Trump’s repeated claims that he was robbed of a second term, there has been no evidence of widespread voter fraud affecting the election’s outcome, nor has there been any evidence to show the election was stolen.
Former attorney general William Barr, who himself was a Trump appointee, has also said the Justice Department uncovered no evidence of widespread fraud related to the 2020 election.
Biden earned 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, the same margin that Trump had when he beat Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 — a win that he repeatedly described as a “landslide.”
Arrington launched her congressional campaign for the South Carolina Lowcountry U.S. House seat Tuesday morning in a 2-minute video released online, in which she introduced herself as “a servant conservative with one mission, and that is to prioritize the people of South Carolina’s Lowcountry by advancing President Trump’s America First agenda.”
The video took sharp aim at Mace, calling the incumbent (who was also Arrington’s former state House colleague) a “sellout” who is more interested in being on TV and taking selfies than doing the job she was elected to do.
In the phone interview, Arrington said Mace has a fundamental misunderstanding about what matters to the coastal district she represents.
Arrington criticized Mace for the first speech she gave as an elected member of Congress. In those remarks, Mace criticized Trump for the events of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and said, “I hold him accountable for the events that transpired.”
Arrington disagreed.
“I was up on the Hill that day; I will be honest, I worked up there, you know, that was my job,” Arrington said, referring to her job working for the U.S. Department of Defense. “And I can tell you a lot of the people that were up there were not Trump supporters. I don’t condone violence in any regard. I think that what happened over the summer with all the violence from Minneapolis to Portland was reprehensible. But I don’t think that we can take the actions of a few and lump them on everyone. There are radicals on, you know, both sides.”
Then, Arrington turned her focus back to Mace.
“You know, Jan. 6 never should have happened in the violent matter by any stretch of the imagination. But then again, if, you know, people like Nancy Mace didn’t vote to certify the elections and they had sent them back to the states to be audited, we wouldn’t have had a Jan. 6,” Arrington said. “So it’s things like that where Mace is missing the point and not prioritizing what’s important to the district.”
After the Capitol riot, Mace joined U.S. Sens. Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham in voting to uphold the election results from Arizona and Pennsylvania — two battleground states that voted for President Joe Biden.
South Carolina’s remaining Republican congressional leaders — U.S. Reps. Jeff Duncan, Ralph Norman, Tom Rice, William Timmons and Joe Wilson — all voted to throw out those two states’ electoral votes.
Arrington clarified that it was not solely Mace’s response to Jan. 6 that inspired her to jump into the race again in South Carolina’s coastal 1st Congressional District. Arrington previously ran for this same congressional seat in 2018.
In addition to Mace’s comments about Jan. 6, Arrington said she was dismayed by Mace’s decision to join Democrats in voting to hold former White House aide Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress for his refusal to cooperate with its investigation into the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
She also pointed to the latest piece of legislation filed by Mace.
“Why would you write legislation to protect panda bears when you have people in the 1st Congressional District who are having a hard time putting food on their table? That to me is not what servant leadership is about,” Arrington said.
Seeking Trump’s endorsement
Arrington’s entrance in the crowded GOP primary came one day after Mace, a Daniel Island Republican, was endorsed by former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who also served as then-President Donald Trump’s U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
With Arrington now in the race, Mace faces a trio of challengers that also include Lynz Piper-Loomis and Ingrid Centurion, whose campaigns have, so far, been unable to post major fundraising totals.
Arrington made political waves in 2018 when she ousted incumbent U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford in a head-to-head Republican primary, delivering a stunning loss to a former governor who had never lost a political race in his career.
She ultimately lost in the general election to Democrat Joe Cunningham. After serving one term in Congress, Cunningham was unseated by Mace in 2020 and he is now seeking the Democratic nomination for governor.
In that contest, Arrington secured an endorsement from Trump on the day of the GOP primary election and also saw members of Trump’s family come down and campaign in the district on her behalf.
There are signs that Trump could be eager to endorse her again.
Three months ago, Trump called for “good and SMART America First Republican Patriots” to run primary campaigns against Mace and other Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Tom Rice, R-Myrtle Beach.
If they did, Trump promised in a statement at the time, “You will have my backing!”
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, who traveled to Mar-a-Lago last week to meet with the former president, did not answer directly when asked Tuesday whether he planned to endorse any candidate in either the 1st Congressional District race or the 7th Congressional District.
“I’m for Republicans,” McMaster said, declining to elaborate.
Arrington said it was an honor to receive Trump’s endorsement in 2018 and to serve in the Department of Defense during the final years of the Trump administration.
“I hope that the president looks at everything that I did over that time,” Arrington said. “I’m a pro-Trump, America First agenda candidate, and I hope that he sees that and that I earn the endorsement.”
“But that’s for the president to decide,” Arrington added.
Maayan Schechter contributed to this story with reporting from Columbia, S.C.
This story was originally published February 8, 2022 at 1:11 PM.
