CHARLESTON, S.C. — Republican Nancy Mace has defeated incumbent U.S. Rep. Joe Cunningham, dealing a blow to the gains South Carolina Democrats made two years ago.
Mace, a member of the State House of Representatives, beat Cunningham in a seat Republicans loudly announced they were determined to flip back days after the Democrat’s win in 2018. Cunningham won the seat in 2018 after defeating Katie Harrington and is the first Democrat to hold the seat since 1981.
She will be only the second woman to serve in the U.S. House from South Carolina. Mace got support from President Donald Trump on Twitter and once worked on the president’s campaign.
Mace is the first woman to graduate from The Citadel. Mace is currently serving in the SC House of Representatives, representing District 99 which covers Hanahan, northeast Mount Pleasant and Daniel Island in Charleston County. She has been in office since 2018 when she won a special election to replace Jimmy Merrill, who resigned after convictions of several ethics violations.
The 1st District was redrawn in 2010 when South Carolina received another seat in Congress due to increased population. Since 2013, the district has been a grouping of parts of coastal counties – Charleston, Berkeley, Dorchester and Beaufort -- stretching from Hilton Head to end at the Santee River.
Tim Scott, who's now in the U.S. Senate, won the seat in 2010 and 2012 but gave it up when appointed to the US Senate by Gov. Nikki Haley. Scott was replaced by Mark Sanford, who had held the seat from 1995-2001 before he gave it up to run for Governor. Sanford lost his bid for re-nomination in 2018 to Harrington.
Cunningham is a member of the moderate-to-conservative Blue Dog Coalition of Democrats in national office and declined to back Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. He is a former ocean engineer – he attended College of Charleston before transferring to Florida Atlantic University – and holds a law degree from Northern Kentucky University. Cunningham is on the Committee on Natural Resources and the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs and in 2019 voted for both articles of impeachment against President Trump. He said in an interview with Politico, “At the end of day, this is simply about the rule of law, whether we’re a country with laws or not and what type of precedent we want to set for future presidents."
