COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina Republican U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace is trying to tighten her grip on her seat in a state that doesn’t mind sending people back to Congress for decades.
Questions have been raised about whether Mace’s attention-seeking personality and brashness and willingness to thwart her party’s establishment could pose a risk. But so far she has been embraced by her 1st coastal district.
Mace flipped the seat back to Republicans in 2020 after a stunning setback from incumbent Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham. She fought a Republican challenger backed by former President Donald Trump in 2022 and scored a surprisingly easy victory — this time with Trump’s support – during the 2024 Republican primaries without drain.
Her fellow Republicans in the South Carolina General Assembly also did her a favor redesigning the neighborhood and turning traditionally Democratic districts in and around downtown Charleston into the state’s only majority-minority district. According to the old map, Mace won less than 51% of the vote in 2020. With the new cards in 2022, she achieved more than 56%.
Mace’s Democratic challenger at the close of voting Tuesday is businessman and former CEO of the International African American Museum Michael Moore. His campaign has struggled to gain momentum and Mace has barely acknowledged he is in the race.
Moore said Mace is more concerned with national attention and charitable causes like legalizing marijuana than helping people in her district. She joined seven far-right Republicans to drive away former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Mace said it’s her way of fighting for voters in her eclectic district, which includes century-old neighborhoods near Charleston and huge developments of retirees around Beaufort who have moved to South Carolina.
A victory on Tuesday and Mace is on track to become a fixture in South Carolina’s U.S. House of Representatives delegation — like Democrat Jim Clyburn, who is running for a seventeenth term, or Republican Joe Wilson, who is seeking a twelfth term.
Wilson is running against Democrat David Robinson II in the 2nd District, which includes suburban areas around Columbia and west and south toward Aiken.
Robinson is a U.S. Army veteran who enlisted after the September 11 attacks and is advocating for missing people after his son disappeared in the Arizona desert.
Wilson sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and is the senior member of the House Armed Services Committee. He is also remembered as the Congressman who screamed “You’re lying!” at Barack Obama during the president’s joint address to Congress on health care in 2009.
Clyburn has represented the state’s 6th District since it was elected in 1992 to have a majority of minority voters. This year, his Republican challenger is attorney Duke Buckner in the sprawling district bordered by areas around Charleston, Beaufort and Columbia.
Clyburn is a key member of the Democratic leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives his approval from President Joe Biden just before the 2020 presidential primaries in South Carolina set his old friend’s path to victory.
Perhaps no challenger has worked harder than Democrat Kathryn Harvey in the 4th District, which includes Greenville and Spartanburg, sending a Republican to Washington in every election since 1992.
Harvey has raised a surprising amount of money and traveled throughout the district, while U.S. Rep. William Timmons has spent most of his time out of state campaigning for Republicans in races he believes are more competitive as he tries to make ensuring that the U.S. House remains within the state. GOP control.
For the second election in a row, Timmons had to win a tough Republican primary, in which his opponent tried to portray him as a liberal.
Harvey helps nonprofits with marketing, fundraising and leadership.
South Carolina will have at least one new face in the U.S. House. Republican Rep. Jeff Duncan decided not to run for an eighth term in the 3rd District, the most Republican in the solidly conservative state.
Sheri Biggs is a nurse and Air National Guard officer and if she wins on Tuesday, she will be only the second Republican woman to run for Congress from South Carolina after Mace.
Her opponents are Sherwin-Williams paint store manager and Democrat Byron Best of Greenwood, and Michael Bedenbaugh of the Alliance Party.
The district in the northwest corner of the state contains several small population centers.
U.S. Rep. Russell Fry is seeking a second term in the 7th District, which stretches from Myrtle Beach to Florence in the northeastern part of the state. Fry lost weight an incumbent Republican in 2022 who voted to impeach Trump.
Fry’s challenger is teacher Mal Hyman, who calls himself an independent Democrat.
And in the 5th District, Republican U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman is seeking a fourth full term. The district runs from Rock Hill in suburban Charlotte, North Carolina, south and east to Sumter.
The real estate developer is running against Democrat Evangeline Hundley, who has also worked in the real estate and construction industries.