Rep. Nancy Mace said Donald Trump’s endorsement of Pamela Evette has not locked up the South Carolina Republican governor’s race, calling the contest “a dog fight” days before the June 9 primary as early voting got underway.
Mace said the former president’s backing has done little to improve Evette’s standing with conservative voters and added that many grassroots Republicans are angry about the choice. She said Evette may have gained “maybe a five point bump,” but not much more. “It’s not going over well for her with the grassroots, which is why she didn’t get much of a bump,” Mace said, adding that Evette is headed for a runoff and that “all bets are off” if that happens.
The endorsement was meant to strengthen Evette in a crowded race for the GOP nomination, but Mace said it has not produced the sort of lift Trump often brings to his preferred candidates. Trump last week also backed South Carolina’s term-limited governor, Henry McMaster, in the Republican primary, and posted that he expected Evette to choose Henry McMaster Jr. as her lieutenant governor. In his endorsement, Trump called Evette a friend, fighter and winner, and said she would be a terrific governor who would never let voters down.
Mace’s comments also tie the race to her own break with Trump. She said she was not shocked when he declined to endorse her and connected that decision to her vote to release the Epstein files. Last year, she was one of four Republicans to sign a petition forcing a House vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which urged the Justice Department to publish its information on the probe into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. “I knew it was on the line when I voted to release the Epstein files, and I’m a survivor,” she said. “If the price to pay for an endorsement was to not release those files, I would never pay it.”
The June 9 primary will show whether Trump’s backing can still matter in South Carolina if the race reaches a runoff, but Mace said she is treating it as a fight to the end. “We’re in it and I’m gonna fight to the death,” she said.
