Part of: 2026 Governor Campaign
Mace vows to be 'more of a menace than ever' after the primary loss
Days after her fifth-place finish in the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary, Nancy Mace struck a defiant tone, signaling she would stay politically active and saying she intends to be 'more of a menace than ever' as her House term winds down.
Following her loss in the June 2026 South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary, Rep. Nancy Mace signaled she has no plans to step back. As reported by The Hill, Mace struck a defiant tone and said she intends to be:
"more of a menace than ever"
as her House term winds down. The vow is consistent with her framing of the defeat as a deliberate trade-off rather than a setback, see her statement that "I chose wrong if the goal was winning an election".
Sources & related coverage. The Hill (June 11, 2026) · catalog entry: In the Media → The Hill
Read next
June 10, 2026 · Dispatch'I chose wrong if the goal was winning an election': Mace blames her Epstein-files vote for the loss
After her fifth-place finish in the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary, Nancy Mace attributed her defeat to her vote to release the unredacted Epstein files over President Trump's objections, and marked the loss with a baked-beans photo on X, a callback to a viral 2024 meme.
June 9, 2026 · Dispatch'My time is up at the end of this year': Mace confirms she's leaving Congress
In her concession after the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary, Nancy Mace confirmed she will not seek re-election to the U.S. House: 'my time is up at the end of this year.' Her House term ends in January 2027. She has described the exit as keeping a three-term pledge she says she made in 2020, a characterization examined below.
June 19, 2026 · DispatchTrump endorses both SC runoff candidates: 'These were the two that I was hoping would get into a Runoff'
On June 19, 2026, four days before the June 23 South Carolina Republican gubernatorial runoff, President Trump posted on Truth Social that rather than choose between the two candidates still standing, Lt. Gov. Pam Evette and Attorney General Alan Wilson, he would endorse both. He wrote that 'these were the two that I was hoping would get into a Runoff, and they did.' Neither is Nancy Mace, who finished fifth (about 12.1 percent) in the June 9 primary and has said her vote to release the Epstein files cost her Trump's support. The Washington Post had reported on June 16 that Trump was weighing exactly this dual endorsement. Post & Courier reporter Caitlin Byrd surfaced the post.
June 10, 2026 · Dispatch‘You tanked yourself’: in a viral Facebook reel captioned ‘Called it,’ Michelle Shara narrates Mace's fall from ‘leading the race’ to ‘bringing up the rear’
A Facebook reel by Michelle Shara, viewed more than 358,000 times, pairs footage of Nancy Mace addressing a Greenville County Republican Party meeting with Shara's own deadpan voiceover. Over the clip, Shara needles Mace about collapsing from an early front-runner to a fifth-place finish in the June 9, 2026 South Carolina GOP gubernatorial primary: ‘last time we saw each other, you were leading the race. How have you managed to tank your campaign so badly that you were just bringing up the rear?’ The one-word caption, ‘Called it,’ frames it as a prediction come true. The harsh lines are Shara's commentary, not Mace's words.
- June 10, 2026 · Dispatch
National Review post-mortem: 'How Nancy Mace Self-Immolated'
National Review, a conservative flagship, ran a scathing post-mortem on Nancy Mace's fifth-place primary finish, arguing the collapse was self-inflicted by a politician who 'would say and do just about anything for attention.' The critique is notable for coming from her own ideological side.
June 9, 2026 · Dispatch'Buried the hatchet': after finishing fifth, Mace concedes the governor's race and endorses Alan Wilson, the rival she spent months branding a 'p*dophile protector'
On the night of June 9, 2026, after finishing fifth in the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary with about 11.4% of the vote, Nancy Mace conceded and endorsed the man who advanced to the June 23 runoff, Attorney General Alan Wilson. 'I want a law-and-order governor, and that law-and-order governor is going to be Alan Wilson,' she told supporters, saying that 'in the last couple of weeks, Alan Wilson and I have buried the hatchet.' The endorsement reversed a year of attacks: as recently as November 3, 2025 she had called Wilson a 'p*dophile protector' on X. Wilson has rejected those attacks, his office said Mace 'drastically mischaracterized' prosecution data, and nothing in the exchange is a finding about either man's conduct.