Charleston-area Representative Nancy Mace (R., S.C.) announced on Monday she will run for governor of South Carolina in 2026, heating up a crowded Republican field in the deep-red state this midterm cycle. Two-term Republican governor Henry McMaster is barred from seeking another term.
“I didn’t come to join the club. They don’t want me, and I don’t want them,” Mace said in a speech at the Citadel in Charleston, S.C., where she became the first woman to graduate from the military academy’s Corps of Cadets program in 1999. “I came to hold the line. They said stay quiet; I spoke up. They said sit down; I stood up. They said play nice, and I fought back.”
Mace’s long-anticipated campaign will shake up a competitive GOP primary that already includes Attorney General Alan Wilson, Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette, Representative Ralph Norman, and state Senator Josh Kimbrell. President Trump has yet to endorse a candidate in the race.
Mace, a bombastic third-term Republican who has made a name for herself in the U.S. House as a critic of transgender activism, is expected to lean into culture war issues on the campaign trail. “We’re going to ban pronouns in the classroom,” Mace said in her launch speech on Monday.
“I don’t want to see any glitter parties. I want kids coming home with A’s and B’s, not they and them,” she added. “We will not fund any schools that allow biological men in women’s bathrooms or locker rooms, that allow men to compete in women’s sports, or schools that push gender ideology.”
She’s also expected to tack closely to President Trump, whom she sharply criticized after the U.S. Capitol riot in 2021, prompting him to endorse her Republican challenger in 2022. But Mace easily won reelection that cycle anyway and has spent recent years rebranding herself as a Trump loyalist.
Mace has garnered headlines in recent years for high staff turnover and media-hungry approach to politics, along with her moderate stance on abortion. The Charleston-area congresswoman raised eyebrows in Washington in 2023 when she joined a united Democratic caucus and a handful of Republicans in ousting Speaker Kevin McCarthy from his leadership post. A frustrated ex-Speaker McCarthy tried to unseat her in 2024, but she won reelection easily.
Earlier this year, Mace delivered a speech on the House floor accusing four men, including her ex-fiance, of rape, nonconsensual filming, and other sex-related crimes against her and other women, which all of the men have denied. Mace also alleged that Attorney General Alan Wilson, who is now competing against her in the gubernatorial primary, of failing prosecute the men based on evidence she claimed to have provided to his office. Wilson has called her accusation “categorically false” and said he did not become aware aware of her sexual assault allegations until her floor speech.