Part of: The 2026 South Carolina Senate Special Election
A 'Mace for Senate' domain has sat registered since 2023, its owner hidden behind private WHOIS
A reader sent Maceopedia an ICANN registration-data lookup for maceforsenate.com. The public record shows the domain was created on August 24, 2023, nearly two years before Lindsey Graham's death opened a South Carolina Senate seat that Nancy Mace is now publicly weighing. Whoever registered it has kept their identity private: the registrant name, organization, and phone are all redacted, and the domain serves no website. Maceopedia independently confirmed the record against Verisign's authoritative RDAP database. The record does not establish who owns the domain, and this dispatch makes no claim that it is Mace or her campaign.
A reader sent Maceopedia a registration-data lookup, the kind anyone can run on ICANN's public lookup tool, for a single domain name: maceforsenate.com. The interesting part is not that the domain exists. It is when it was registered, and that whoever registered it has hidden who they are.
What the public record shows
The domain's registration data, confirmed below against the authoritative registry database, reads:
- Created: August 24, 2023
- Registry expiration: August 24, 2026
- Last changed: August 9, 2025
- Registrar: Squarespace Domains II LLC (the registrar that absorbed Google Domains); the nameservers are still Google's cloud DNS
- Status: clientDeleteProhibited, clientTransferProhibited (standard registrar locks)
- DNSSEC: signed
- Registrant name, organization, phone, fax: all returned as "The RDAP server redacted the value"
In other words, the domain has been held for nearly two years, was renewed as recently as August 2025, and its owner is shielded behind the registrar's privacy service.
Why the 2023 date is the story
A "Mace for Senate" domain registered in August 2023 predates any actual opening. Nancy Mace was a sitting U.S. House member with no Senate seat to run for. The South Carolina Senate vacancy did not exist until July 11, 2026, when Sen. Lindsey Graham died and Mace, days after finishing fifth in the Republican primary for governor, began publicly weighing a run for the seat. The domain was registered, and quietly renewed, well before that.
The public record does not say who registered it or why. A "candidate for X" domain can be registered by a campaign preparing a lane, by a supporter, by a defensive registrant parking the name so no one else grabs it, or by someone with no connection to the candidate at all. Maceopedia makes no claim about which of these applies here. The only things the record actually establishes are the dates, the registrar, and the fact that the owner chose to stay private.
It is registered, but dark
As of this writing, maceforsenate.com serves no website. The domain is delegated to Google's cloud nameservers but publishes no address records (no A, AAAA, or CNAME for the apex or www), so a browser request to it does not connect. It is a name held in reserve, not a live campaign site.
How this was verified
The tip arrived as a reader submission: a screenshot of ICANN's registration-data lookup for the domain. Because a submitted screenshot can be altered, Maceopedia independently re-queried the domain against Verisign's authoritative RDAP database (the registry of record for .com) and confirmed the registration date (2023-08-24), the expiration (2026-08-24), the 2025-08-09 change, and the Squarespace registrar all match. The registrant-privacy redaction comes from the registrar's own RDAP record as surfaced by the ICANN lookup.
This dispatch reproduces public domain-registration data and makes no assertion about the identity, motive, or affiliation of whoever registered maceforsenate.com. Domain-registration records do not establish who controls or paid for a name, and privacy redaction is a routine, lawful option offered by most registrars. If the registrant is identified in the future, this entry will be updated.
Sources
- Reader submission: ICANN registration-data lookup for maceforsenate.com (ICANN's public tool: lookup.icann.org)
- Independent verification: Verisign RDAP record for maceforsenate.com (registry of record for .com)
- Related: Townhall says Mace is 'already talking' about taking over Graham's Senate seat · Trump allies say they can 'block Rep. Nancy Mace' from Graham seat appointment
Read next
August 26, 2026 · DispatchNorman snubs Mace: no mention, no thank-you at all in his concession speech. She broke with Trump to endorse him.
Rep. Ralph Norman lost the South Carolina Republican U.S. Senate runoff to Sen. Darline Graham Nordone on August 25, 2026, and conceded in Rock Hill. In the roughly six-minute speech he thanked a dozen supporters and endorsers by name: Mark Sanford, Dan Bishop, Pat Harrigan, Rick Scott, Mike Lee, Nikki Haley, Adam Morgan, and more. One name never came up: Nancy Mace. Five weeks earlier, Mace broke publicly with President Trump to endorse Norman, calling him a warrior who 'doesn't bend, doesn't break, and doesn't back down,' and Norman had thanked her on camera and in writing as 'a fearless conservative fighter.' When it counted, on the night the race ended, he did not mention her once. We transcribed the full concession to confirm it: zero mentions of Mace.
August 23, 2026 · DispatchNancy Mace's Top 5 Political Failures: dead last for governor, the Speaker she toppled for nothing, and one law in nine years, a post office
A catalog of the record. Across nine years in office Nancy Mace built a national brand and almost no results to match it. She finished dead last, fifth of five, in the 2026 Republican primary for governor. She helped throw out a sitting Speaker of the House and got a more MAGA Speaker, three weeks of paralysis, and a revenge primary for her trouble. She lost to Lindsey Graham the one time she ran against him, in 2014, then talked herself out of his seat in 2026 after polling at 10 percent. Of the 192 bills she has sponsored, the only ones enacted rename post offices. And the Trump endorsement she remade her whole career to win went, twice, to her opponents. Every figure and quote below is public and dated.
August 22, 2026 · DispatchNancy Mace says she is "now regretting" not running for the Senate. She finished fifth of five for governor, then ruled herself out of this very seat.
In an August 21, 2026 episode of her Facebook show 'Get Maced,' Rep. Nancy Mace watches a rival in the South Carolina U.S. Senate runoff and says, 'I'm now regretting I'm not running for the US Senate.' The line lands against her own recent record. Ten weeks earlier she finished fifth of five in the June 9 Republican gubernatorial primary with 12.1 percent. When Lindsey Graham's Senate seat then opened, she polled at 10 percent, tied for third, and on July 20 she publicly ruled herself out. This dispatch sets her on-camera regret next to the results and polling she is regretting.
July 28, 2026 · Dispatch'He believed that showing up mattered': Mace issues a press release as every other SC House Republican attends Graham's funeral
On July 28, 2026, Sen. Lindsey Graham's casket lay in the US Capitol Rotunda and then was carried to Washington National Cathedral for his funeral. Every other South Carolina House Republican was there. Rep. Sheri Biggs and Rep. Joe Wilson presented wreaths at his casket. Reps. Russell Fry and Ralph Norman accompanied the South Carolina delegation. Rep. Nancy Mace, who spent two weeks publicly weighing a run for Graham's Senate seat and publicly clashing with him during his lifetime, did not attend. Her office issued a press release statement instead. Filing for the special election primary closed at noon the same day.
July 21, 2026 · DispatchOne day after quitting the race, Nancy Mace endorses Ralph Norman and snubs Trump's pick for Graham's Senate seat
One day after ruling out her own Senate bid, Rep. Nancy Mace endorsed Rep. Ralph Norman for the South Carolina special election on July 21, 2026, breaking publicly with President Trump, who had endorsed Lindsey Graham's sister Darline Graham Nordone on July 17. Norman accepted the endorsement while pledging to 'stand with President Trump,' the same president whose candidate he and Mace are now both running against. Filing opens today and closes July 28, with the primary set for August 11.
July 20, 2026 · Dispatch"South Carolina, I'm in": Russell Fry becomes the fourth Republican to enter the race for Lindsey Graham's Senate seat
Rep. Russell Fry (SC-7) announced a bid for the U.S. Senate on X at 8:01 a.m. ET on July 20, 2026, becoming the fourth declared Republican in the special election for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham's seat, joining Mark Lynch, Duke Buckner, and Rep. Ralph Norman. Fry, 41, unseated five-term incumbent Tom Rice in a 2022 primary after Rice voted to impeach President Trump; Trump has praised Fry as 'outstanding' but has not endorsed him, having already backed interim Sen. Darline Graham Nordone. Candidate filing does not open until noon Tuesday, July 21, so none of the four declared candidates, or anyone else, has filed yet. About an hour after Fry declared, Rep. Nancy Mace posted an objection to dual candidacies, writing that 'if you're running for two offices at once, you've already told us who you are' and that she 'will never hand Hakeem Jeffries that gift.' She named no one, but on the facts as they stand only Fry fits: he won his SC-7 primary on June 9 and is already the Republican nominee for that seat, so he would appear on the November ballot for both offices, while Norman did not file for House reelection after running for governor. Mace has still not announced a decision of her own.