COLUMBIA, S.C. — One of the most hotly contested U.S. House primaries in recent South Carolina memory ended with incumbent Nancy Mace winning her party's nomination, despite opposition from former President Donald Trump.
Results show The race features incumbent Nancy Mace winning with 53 percent of the vote against challenger Katie Arrington's 45 percent. A third candidate, Lynz Piper-Loomis, was on the ballot but dropped out in the final weeks and endorsed Arrington.
Mace was first elected in 2020, when she beat incumbent Democrat Joe Cunningham in the general election. She’d been in the State House for several years before that and is known to many in the state for being the first female Citadel graduate.
Arrington, who also once served in the state legislature ran for this same seat in 2018, oddly enough losing to the man Mace beat, Joe Cunningham.
But Mace ran afoul of former President Donald Trump when she criticized him following the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Trump supported. Arrington, who won the GOP nomination for the seat in 2018 by defeating incumbent Mark Sanford, another critic of the former president. She went on to lose the seat to Cunningham in the general election in Democrats' first flip of a South Carolina seat in decades.
Mace sought to make amends for angering Trump, filming a video in New York this year outside Trump Tower to remind her constituents that she was one of the former president’s “earliest supporters.” She worked for his 2016 campaign and had his backing in her 2020 run.
Despite the shun from Trump, Mace was endorsed by former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
Mace, who narrowly defeated Cunningham in 2020, has spent one term representing the politically diverse 1st Congressional District, which includes Charleston and stretches south to other coastal areas including Hilton Head Island.
Mace will now face Democrat Annie Andrews, Labor candidate Lucus Faulk, and Alliance candidate Joseph Oddo in the November general election.