Trump endorses Katie Arrington over Nancy Mace in SC GOP congressional primary race
Former President Donald Trump endorsed Republican Katie Arrington on Wednesday, formally pledging his “complete and total” support to the two-time South Carolina congressional candidate who lost in the 2018 general election, rather than backing incumbent U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, who won the seat back for the GOP in 2020 and worked as one of Trump’s own presidential campaign staffers in 2016.
Trump made his public pick Wednesday evening through his political action committee one day after Arrington announced her candidacy in a 2-minute online video on Tuesday.
His statement spent almost as much time heaping praise on Arrington as it did criticizing Mace.
“Katie Arrington is running against an absolutely terrible candidate, Congresswoman Nancy Mace, whose remarks and attitude have been devastating for her community, and not at all representative of the Republican Party to which she has been very disloyal,” Trump said in explaining why he won’t support Mace, despite endorsing her in 2020. “Katie Arrington, on the other hand, is liked and respected and a true Republican.”
Trump’s statement continued, mentioning Arrington’s resilience during the 2018 congressional Republican primary that she won against then-U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford, a former South Carolina governor.
Ten days after she defeated Sanford, handing him his first-ever electoral defeat, Arrington was critically injured in a head-on collision when a car going the wrong way smashed into the vehicle she was riding in as a passenger.
The driver of the other car died.
“Her automobile accident a number of years ago was devastating, and made it very difficult for her to campaign after having won the primary against another terrible candidate, ‘Mr. Argentina,’” Trump said, referring to Sanford with a dig about his 2009 extramarital affair with an Argentine journalist while he was governor.
Despite her Republican primary victory, which carried national implications in how it revealed Trump’s influence over the Republican Party, Arrington went on to lose her general election race to Democrat Joe Cunningham.
Still, Trump applauded Arrington for being strong on a range of issues, including military, veterans and law enforcement, along with border security. He said she will “fight very hard” for Second Amendment rights and lower taxes.
“Katie is a wonderful woman and has my Complete and Total Endorsement!” Trump concluded.
In a tweet minutes after securing Trump’s endorsement, Arrington said she was “honored” to receive the support of the former president.
“Under his leadership, our country was on a pathway to unparalleled success,” Arrington wrote. “His America First agenda uplifted families across the Lowcountry & our Nation. I’m proud to have worked closely with him on Operation Warp Speed.”
Since Arrington launched her campaign in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, she has positioned herself as a loyal pro-Trump Republican who will push for his “America First” agenda if elected to represent Charleston’s seat in Congress.
In a statement texted to The State newspaper on Wednesday night, Mace said she has supported Trump’s America First agenda and fiscally conservative policies since day one, and will continue to do so.
“I have my opponent partially to thank for that, since she lost the seat in a midterm when she had her shot at it the first time,” Mace said. “I plan to win and continue to serve the First District. It’s the honor of my lifetime to serve the Lowcountry in Congress.”
By endorsing Arrington, Trump is also making good on a promise.
In November, Trump called for “good and SMART America First Republican Patriots” to run primary campaigns against Mace and other Republicans who he said have not been completely loyal to him, including U.S. Rep. Tom Rice, R-Myrtle Beach, who voted to impeach Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
If they did, Trump promised them, “You will have my backing!”
On Wednesday, four sources with direct knowledge of Trump’s plans told The State newspaper that Trump is planning to hold a rally in South Carolina as early as this month or this spring. That event would allow Trump to champion two Republican congressional candidates, including Arrington, while also making a visit to an early presidential primary voting state.
Arrington, in her launch video, called Mace “a sellout” who is more interested in fame than doing the job she was elected to do.
Arrington, a Summerville Republican, has also falsely claimed Trump won the 2020 presidential election, a message that the former president has made a litmus test in which candidates earn his support in the 2022 election cycle. She also suggested that Mace was partially to blame for what happened in the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 because she voted to certify the results of the election rather than sending them back to the states for an additional audit.
“Not only did she sell us out, but she relied on President Trump to get to DC and turned her back on him the first opportunity she had,” Arrington said in a statement after she received Trump’s endorsement.
Trump again bets on Arrington
This is not the first time Arrington has snagged a Trump endorsement.
In June 2018, on a rainy primary election day, Trump gave Arrington his endorsement just three hours before polls closed in the Republican match-up between Arrington and Mark Sanford, a former South Carolina governor who later confessed he lost that race because he “wasn’t Trump enough in the age of Trump.”
Despite her Republican primary victory, Arrington lost her general election race.
It was the first time in nearly 40 years that the reliably Republican district elected a Democrat. When Arrington conceded, she blamed Sanford and his supporters for not unifying behind her.
In 2020, with the weight of national Republican leadership behind her, Mace easily won her Republican primary. During that contest, Mace highlighted the time she spent working to elect Trump in 2016 alongside her historic claim to fame as the first woman to graduate from The Citadel Corps of Cadets in 1999.
Mace worked as a coalitions director and field director for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign from September 2015 until August 2016. Federal documents show she earned $43,000 for the work she did across California, Indiana, Texas, Nebraska, Ohio, Wisconsin and South Carolina.
The day after she won her primary, Trump congratulated her on Twitter and then gave her his endorsement, writing, “Keep up the great work so we can #MAGA! We need you in Washington fast.”
Mace promised voters that a vote for her was a vote to give Trump “an ally in Congress.”
She went on to narrowly defeat Cunningham, who is now running for the Democratic nomination for governor.
But just days after Mace was sworn into office, she found herself barricading herself in her office and hiding from a mob as they stormed the U.S. Capitol. The next day, she said she no longer believed in Trump, the man she helped elect.
“I can’t condone the rhetoric from yesterday, where people died and all the violence. These were not protests. This was anarchy,” she told The State at the time.
In her first floor speech as an elected member of Congress, 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.”
Since then, Mace has again returned to praising Trump’s accomplishments during his time in office. She has also drawn a trio of Republican challengers for her upcoming primary that now include Arrington, Lynz Piper-Loomis and Ingrid Centurion.
Trump endorsements in SC
This is the fourth endorsement Trump has given a South Carolina Republican ahead of the Palmetto State’s 2022 Republican primary elections.
The former president gave an early nod to U.S. Sen. Tim Scott in his own 2022 re-election bid on March 2, 2021, and three days later Trump gave his “complete and total endorsement” to South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster.
Last week, Trump turned his focus to the South Carolina coast, where a high-profile Congressional Republican primary is unfolding in the Myrtle Beach area.
Incumbent U.S. Rep. Tom Rice shocked the nation and his coastal district last year when he voted to impeach Trump for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Rice now faces numerous GOP challengers. In that race, Trump has thrown his weight behind South Carolina state Rep. Russell Fry and, in a statement, said Rice should be “thrown out of office ASAP.”
Yet Trump’s endorsement of Arrington could be more explosive than any other that he has made in the Palmetto State so far.
Not only did the former president pick a favorite in a race that could shape up to be a unique battle of Trump loyalists, his endorsement now puts Trump at odds with a rumored 2024 presidential candidate who worked in his administration.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who served as Trump’s U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 2017 to 2019, endorsed Mace in the congressional GOP primary contest on Monday.
In her endorsement, Haley called Mace “the conservative voice the Lowcountry needs in Washington.”
Whether Republican voters in this coastal South Carolina district agree with Haley or not in the June primary could once again show what role Trump will play in the Republican Party moving forward.
This story was originally published February 9, 2022 at 7:14 PM.
