‘I’m gonna win without him.’ Why SC’s Nancy Mace says she can overcome the Trump factor
Tonight Nancy Mace is not on TV.
The South Carolina congresswoman is back home, sitting on the gray plush sectional in her living room, sipping Trader Joe’s sparkling red wine from a simple stemless glass. Her long brown hair, which normally cascades down her back, is instead pulled up into a high, messy bun.
Tonight she must reckon with her new political reality.
It’s a Tuesday evening, and exactly one week ago the dynamics in her Republican congressional primary contest made a sudden, tectonic shift.
Katie Arrington, a challenger with a perfect track record of knocking off GOP incumbents with the help of Donald Trump, had entered the race and soon had the backing of the former president. By Thursday morning, Mace was a Republican incumbent, standing outside Trump Tower, asking voters to support her. Arrington was calling her a “sellout.”
Mace took another sip of wine.
“I’m gonna win without him,” Mace said.
As the intensity of the Republican primary in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District starts to come into focus, one major question is already looming over the entire race. How much will Trump matter?
In 2018, Trump’s influence in this suburban district blindsided Mark Sanford in his Republican primary, delivering a stunning defeat to a former governor who had never lost a political race in his life.
In a Republican district that has shown signs of trending purple in recent election cycles, especially after voters here elected a Democrat for the first time in nearly 40 years in 2018, what kind of impact does a Trump endorsement have in a South Carolina GOP primary in a suburban district such as this? Will a Nikki Haley endorsement matter more?
The answer could determine Mace’s political fate, but it could also show whether Trump’s influence over the Republican Party is here to stay.
Mace and Trump at odds
When Mace ran for South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District in 2020, she didn’t have Trump’s backing in the Republican primary.
Instead, Mace earned his endorsement 24 hours after voters overwhelmingly picked her to be their GOP nominee to take on Democrat Joe Cunningham.
In a tweet at the time, Trump congratulated Mace on her “BIG WIN” in the four-person primary, where she won about 58% of the vote share. Trump encouraged her, “Keep up the great work so we can #MAGA! We need you in Washington fast.”
But 2022 is a different story, and Trump wants Mace out.
Asked what changed between them, especially given that Mace worked as a coalitions director and field director for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, Mace scoffed.
“I don’t know,” she said. “You’ll need to ask him.”
One chapter of their political fallout is abundantly clear.
In the immediate aftermath of the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Mace became one of Trump’s most vocal and prolific critics within the Republican Party.
She told CNN that Trump’s “entire legacy was wiped out” by what happened that day. She told The State newspaper she no longer believed in Trump. And when she was asked whether she believed Trump has a future in the Republican Party, Mace told Fox News, “I do not.”
Her early actions in Congress would also reflect this bold vision for a post-Trump GOP.
In one of her first votes, Mace stood alone as the only Republican House member in South Carolina’s Washington delegation who voted to certify the results of the 2020 election.
She also signed onto a letter with three Republican congressmen — Chip Roy and Dan Crenshaw of Texas, and Utah’s John Curtis — in condemning Trump directly for “the words and actions” that contributed to the attack on Jan. 6.
Though Mace stopped short of voting to impeach Trump, it didn’t matter. The political damage was done. The Berkeley County Republican Party sent Mace a letter of reprimand over her comments. And last year, Trump called on “good and SMART America First Republican Patriots” to challenge Mace.
She’s not Trump’s only target in South Carolina this cycle.
U.S. Rep. Tom Rice, R-Myrtle Beach, is also facing a Trump-backed challenger in his GOP primary.
Rice was one of 10 Republican members who voted to impeach Trump on charges that he incited the deadly Jan. 6 attack. Trump has since endorsed state Rep. Russell Fry as his preferred candidate in that GOP primary which is playing out in another part of the South Carolina coast.
But while Rice defended his decision to impeach Trump for his role in Jan. 6 and later expressed regret for his vote to not certify the 2020 presidential election results, Mace took another tack.
The congresswoman who had cast herself as “a new voice for the Republican Party” suddenly stopped criticizing Trump and appeared to recalibrate her messaging.
She voted against creating a congressional commission to investigate Jan. 6 but called for Congress to look into Antifa’s role in 2020 riots. Four months after Mace said she believed Republican U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming would survive a leadership challenge, Mace wound up joining the majority of her Republican colleagues in ousting Cheney from her No. 3 leadership spot for denouncing Trump and his lies about the 2020 presidential election.
Mace and her sudden shift back in line after her vocal calls for a new Republican Party became the subject of numerous articles published by national news outlets in the last year, including one piece in The Atlantic called “How a Rising Trump Critic Lost Her Nerve.”
So when Trump endorsed Arrington over Mace last week, Trump said Arrington was “a true Republican” and he eviscerated Mace by calling her “an absolutely terrible candidate.”
Trump continued to criticize the incumbent who as recently as 2020 was touting her ties to him, saying Mace’s “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.”
So after all that, why then did Mace stand outside Trump Tower in Manhattan one day after Trump endorsed one of her GOP challengers?
“If you call it groveling, I would say you didn’t watch the video,” Mace said. “I think it’s important to know what I said, but also what I didn’t say — present tense versus past tense.”
In that video, which took Mace six takes to get exactly right, she said she supports Trump’s policies.
Present tense.
Mace also said she supported Trump.
Past tense.
But those subtle distinctions are not standing out to Republicans in the 1st District. When asked what she thought of Mace’s video, Berkeley County Republican Party Chairwoman Victoria Cowart put it plainly.
“If you want to do a mea culpa, I’ll listen to you. If you want to say, ‘I stand by what I did,’ then I don’t think you show up at Trump Tower like that. And that’s as far as I’ll go on that,” Cowart said.
Already, Arrington is making loyalty to Trump a core part of her pitch to voters.
When she had three minutes to address the Charleston County Republican Party last Monday night, Arrington said Mace had failed her and the entire district.
“She sold out President Trump. She sold out this district. She sold me out. I voted for her,” Arrington said. “And I sent her to Washington because she was going to be a pro-Trump conservative, because that’s what we need.”
Trump is reportedly planning to hold a rally in South Carolina, where he can champion his congressional primary candidates.
But political watchers and recent polling in the 1st District suggest that Trump may not be the all-powerful political force he once was for Republican primary voters.
Is the Trump factor fading?
A recent poll of 400 likely GOP primary voters in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District showed Mace with a double-digit lead over her primary challengers — even in a head-to-head contest with a Trump-endorsed Arrington.
The poll’s findings were shared exclusively with The State newspaper along with its methodology. It was conducted Feb. 9-10, during the first 48 hours of Arrington’s campaign. It was also when Arrington secured Trump’s endorsement in the race.
The poll carries a margin of error of plus or minus 4.7%, and was conducted using a combination of text messaging and automated phone calls that used prerecorded questions. It was not commissioned by any candidate running in the 1st District.
According to the poll, the early sentiment among GOP primary voters shows Mace is the candidate to beat, with 46% of the vote to 31% of a Trump-endorsed Arrington. Without the endorsement, Arrington’s polling dips just shy of 25% and Mace’s inches up to 54% in a head-to-head contest.
“I just don’t think that Trump’s endorsement is, you know, is the be-all and end-all of the race,” said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “It’s still a suburban kind of scene there. I’m sure that Trump is well-liked among the Republican electorate there, but there’s probably Trumpier primary electorates around the country.”
But if Trump is well-liked by voters here, this recent poll suggests that former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley isn’t just well-liked. She’s beloved.
In the poll, Haley’s net favorability was at +62 among those 400 likely GOP primary voters. Haley endorsed Mace in the primary race just days before Trump backed Arrington.
The poll did not quantify what impact, if any, Haley’s endorsement had on the contest.
However, the poll found 65% of voters here want a candidate that promotes conservative values. Opposition to Biden and an endorsement by Trump are not what voters are looking for this go-round.
Jordan Ragusa, a political scientist at the College of Charleston, wonders whether Republicans who supported Trump in 2016 and 2020 will opt for Mace over Arrington because of what happened here in 2018.
After Arrington stunned the nation when she defeated Sanford in the GOP primary, she went on to lose to Democrat Joe Cunningham in the general election. It was the first time in nearly 40 years that the seat slipped out of Republican control.
“For that reason, they may support Mace over Arrington,” said Ragusa, who predicts the Republican contest will be driven by one question more than any other: What does the party need to do to make sure the GOP holds onto this seat in the general election?
“Arrington’s entrance into this race makes it big stakes. It makes it a big stakes primary, especially in terms of the internal divisions within the Republican Party that people, myself included, have been talking about for years,” Ragusa said.
Those possible divisions and their potential impact in a general election are already top of mind for Charleston County Republican Party Chairman Maurice Washington.
“We’re looking for candidates who are going to bring a healing message that unites rather than further divides us at the end of the day. And we as Republicans have to be careful,” Washington said. “Because if the Dems field a very likable, moderate kind of candidate, it may be met with potential Republican crossover votes in a general election.”
“And that’s a real scenario,” Washington continued. “And that keeps me up at night.”
Whoever wins the GOP primary will probably face Annie Andrews, a Charleston pediatrician whose campaign has raised more than $500,000 since she first announced her candidacy in November.
Two other Democrats — Dorchester County Democratic Party Chairman Timothy Lewis and former Statehouse candidate Rebecca Niess Cingolani — are also vying for the nomination.
So far, Mace has drawn at least three Republican challengers, all of whom identify as “America First” candidates: Arrington, North Charleston military wife Lynz Piper-Loomis and Ingrid Centurion, a veteran and author.
“I will spend every dime. I will break every record,” Mace said, when asked how she plans to win her Republican primary without Trump.
But being the target of Trump’s wrath in a GOP primary still carries political risk. And Sanford, a former South Carolina congressman, may know that better than anyone.
What goes unsaid
In 2018, five days after he lost his Republican congressional race in South Carolina’s 1st District against Arrington, Sanford explained his first-ever electoral defeat in one sentence: “I wasn’t Trump enough in the age of Trump.”
Sanford saw his congressional career come to a sudden end in June 2018, after Trump endorsed Arrington in a late-afternoon tweet on a rainy primary election day.
Later, the Arrington campaign would credit that endorsement with helping Arrington get past the 50% mark she needed to overcome so that she could avoid a runoff.
Sanford’s loss became one in a long line of political casualties among Republicans who would lose their races when they failed to overcome the perception that they were either disloyal or unhelpful to then-President Trump and his agenda.
Asked if he thought Mace was being naive about the realities of running in a Republican primary where Trump gunning for her to lose, Sanford spoke from his own experience.
“Unfortunately, no one should take Trump’s electoral prowess lightly,” Sanford said. “He has had a major impact in the party, and continues to have a major impact in the party. Directionally, it’s not something I believe in, but it is what it is and it’s where we are these days.”
Sanford, who is a 1st District voter, said he would like to see a Republican primary that’s rich with ideas, not insults. But when Sanford learned about Mace’s video in front of Trump Tower, it gave him pause.
“My view in politics is pick a side. The Bible says be hot, be cold, but don’t be lukewarm. Just be where you are,” Sanford said. “The idea of trying to appease Trump, I think, is probably a mistake. I don’t think he’s appeasable. I don’t think tyrants are appeasable.”
Back in her living room that Tuesday night, Mace got up from the couch.
She walked over to her purse on the kitchen island and rummaged around inside her bag. She returned to the living room holding up a pocket-sized copy of the U.S. Constitution — something Sanford was known for handing out to both constituents and trick-or-treaters.
“This district is unique in South Carolina. We march to the beat of our own drum. We respect people that have an independent voice. We respect it when you don’t tow the party line 100% of the time,” Mace said.
Asked what her vision for the Republican Party would be moving forward, Mace zeroed in on ideas that began to sound a whole lot like the ideas that Sanford was once selling: Solutions, bold pragmatic voices, fiscal conservatism, protecting freedoms, not adding to the national debt, stopping the intraparty fighting, focusing on kitchen-table issues, not raising taxes.
And in Mace’s vision for the future of the Republican Party, there was one notable omission.
She never mentioned Trump.
This story was originally published February 20, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
