South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace has lost her bid to become her home state’s next governor, finishing a lowly fifth in Tuesday’s primary and saying her call for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files cost her MAGA support.
The Palmetto State’s current lieutenant-governor, Pamela Evette, who was belatedly endorsed by President Donald Trump, and its attorney general, Alan Wilson, advance to the run-off ahead of November’s election, picking up 28.9 percent and 26.2 percent of the vote respectively. Mace won just 12.1 percent.
Conceding defeat in a post on X, the Republican firebrand, 48, wrote: “Serving South Carolina has been the greatest honor of my life. Every vote I cast, every hearing I called, every fight I picked – it was always for you.
“I’ve seen what happens when good people stay quiet. And I’ve seen what happens when they don’t. I would choose the latter every single time. I’ve taken on the rich and powerful in both parties because I stand with the people of South Carolina!
“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.
“I will always be grateful for the people of South Carolina who trusted me, fought with me, and refused to look the other way. This isn’t the end of the fight. It’s just the end of this chapter.”
Mace previously told Politico that she did not plan to mount a comeback to Congress, having given up her seat to try for the governor’s mansion, with the publication suggesting she may now “use her remaining months in the House to throw a retributive wrench in Trump’s legislative agenda”.
The first woman to graduate from the Corps of Cadets program at the Citadel Military College of South Carolina, Mace served for two years in her state’s House before arriving on Capitol Hill in 2020, where she initially attacked the president over his response to January 6 and took some unexpectedly liberal positions.
However, she lately became more attention-seeking and vehemently anti-trans, introducing a resolution to block transgender women from using the women’s bathrooms at the Capitol following the election of Delaware Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride, also using bigoted slurs in congressional hearings.
Over the course of a chaotic 2025 for her, she flew into a rage with police officers at Charleston Airport and was the subject of a damaging profile piece in New York Magazine, in which staff said they were scared of her and accused her of erratic and abusive behavior, which she denied.
She then broke with Trump by signing a discharge petition demanding the release of the Epstein files, completing the break this year by opposing his war with Iran.
Also last year, Mace used the protections of the House floor to deliver a shocking speech in which she accused her ex-fiance and other prominent South Carolina businessmen of sex crimes against women, claiming to have uncovered a cache of thousands of explicit photos and video of drugged victims, including herself.
Her accusations were emphatically denied by the men named and led to a retaliatory lawsuit.
During that address, she rebuked Wilson, subsequently her rival in the gubernatorial race, by saying: “Women who come forward in your system are treated like criminals under your leadership, in your system and on your watch, Attorney General Alan Wilson.”
In an astonishing about-turn, Mace endorsed his candidacy for governor on Tuesday night, telling him: “Go win this thing!”
