President Donald Trump’s endorsement of Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evett underscores his on-again, off-again alliance with the outspoken congresswoman.
Nancy Mace considers banishing naturalized citizens from public office
Representative Nancy Mace has proposed a bill aimed at banning foreign-born Americans from becoming federal judges or being appointed to Senate-confirmed positions.
In May, an unusual spat broke out between the Republican candidates for South Carolina’s gubernatorial nomination. Two weeks before the June 9 primary, Congresswoman Nancy Mace confidently declared online that President Donald Trump is not endorsing his archrival, the Republican Party.
She said Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evett had lied about her relationship with the president.
“Don’t believe her lies,” Mace, a three-term congressman, said in a May 29 post on the X show. The post was accompanied by a photo of an AI-generated Mace standing next to the president and giving a thumbs up.
But hours later, President Trump publicly endorsed Evett, calling him a “good friend, fighter and winner” who has “never wavered” since his first presidential run in 2016. The caning, which drew ridicule from some Republicans, underscored that Mace is not as close to the president as his campaign would like voters to believe.
Rick Beltrame, a longtime Republican activist in South Carolina politics, told USA TODAY that “Mr. Mace thought Mr. Trump would stay out of this issue.”
“Obviously, if you say something like that and two minutes later it’s a different result, you’re going to look a bit stupid,” he added. “She missed the mark.”
Trump’s endorsement is the most coveted prize in the 2026 Republican primaries across the country, evidenced by his aggressive campaigns against several incumbents running against him in Congress and statehouses.
And his influence is felt in South Carolina. In South Carolina, the party’s nomination is almost guaranteed to win the general election, and Republican primaries have long been bitterly contested.
Mace is a conservative who has dubbed herself “Trump in heels” in 2025, but she and the president have also had their differences.
Mace’s most recent violations occurred last year when he was one of four House Republicans, along with Thomas Massey of Kentucky, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, to join Democrats in forcing the Justice Department to release files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In another post on May 29, Mace said, “I know I was gambling with my chances of support when I called for transparency on the Epstein file.” “If the price of my support is to sacrifice my values, I will never pay it.”
‘This is Trump country’: Poll shows Evett is leaving
A group of prominent candidates to replace term-limited Republican Gov. Henry McMaster have assembled, including Mace and Evett, as well as state Attorney General Alan Wilson, U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman and business executive Ron Ready.
For most of the last two months of the campaign, polls have shown each candidate within shooting distance of each other.
But Evett believes Trump’s support will be decisive in the 2024 presidential election in states he won by about 18 percentage points.
“This is Trump country, and people feel like the president is doing a great job,” Evette said in a June 5 interview with USA TODAY. “This plays an important role in differentiating the candidates, and I think this shows the character of the candidates. People want to see loyalty, they want to see warriors, they want to see like-minded people.”
According to Morning Consult, President Trump’s approval rating is stable in South Carolina, with 50% approval and 47% disapproval. But as other primaries around the country have shown this year, he remains far more popular among Republican voters.
Evett has made significant gains in the polls since announcing her support on May 29, which seems to set her apart from other candidates.
A poll conducted by Trafalgar Group, an Atlanta-based Republican firm, a week before Trump entered the race, showed Evett with a slight lead at 19.9%. She was followed by Wilson with 19.4%. 19% for ladies. In this survey, Norman scored 15.9% and Mace 14.6%, with a margin of error of about 3%.
But immediately after Trump’s assent, those numbers changed dramatically in the lieutenant governor’s favor, the same pollster found. In the survey conducted from June 2nd to 4th, Evette held a 26.3% lead, while no competitors did more than 18%.
South Carolina conservatives say this is critical in a crowded race that will likely lead to a June 23 runoff if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote. Each candidate has emphasized their relationship with the president in their pitches to voters.
For example, Wilson has a “Trump Tough” page on his campaign website dedicated solely to his relationship with the president. His focus is on defending Trump’s executive orders in court and supporting Cabinet appointees such as FBI Director Kash Patel.
“Our mailboxes are flooded with mail from all the candidates, and they’re all showing pictures of themselves standing next to Donald Trump,” Bertram told USA TODAY.
Mace’s passionate and cold relationship with Trump could determine the fate of the ‘Iron Lady’
Republicans, who have publicly opposed the president’s policies and approach to politics, will pay a price ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
From Indiana to Louisiana, many longtime incumbents have been easily ousted from office, while others have been forced out of Washington by Mr. Trump’s vitriolic online lashings. In some respects, Mace is no exception, given his past criticisms of the president.
For example, three days after her first inauguration, she reacted violently while locked in the Oval Office as a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. The congressman called the attempted riot “un-American” and slammed President Trump’s comments before the incident.
“Yesterday, his entire legacy disappeared,” Mace said. said at the time.
The president called her a “big loser” and later endorsed the former state lawmaker who ran against Mace in the 2022 Republican primary.
President Trump said at the time: “Nancy is always fighting with the Republicans, and she’s not happy about it at all.” “Frankly, she’s despised by just about everyone. Who in Congress or the Republican Party needs that?”
However, she easily won re-election by a margin of 14 percentage points.
Since then, Mace has made a notable shift to the right against Trump, saying he meant no malice when he campaigned against former President Joe Biden two years ago. She endorsed him in the 2024 Republican presidential primary over former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who supported her during her feud with President Trump.
Mace, on the other hand, was endorsed for re-election in 2024 and was floated as a running mate, before speaking at the Republican National Convention that year. However, the lawmaker has been in tears online after President Trump chose to support his rival governor.
In a May 31 post to X, she declared herself the “Iron Lady” (a nickname given to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher) and featured an AI-generated photo showing off the foreign leader’s famous hairstyle. Her social media account bio also states that President Trump endorsed her for Congress in 2024.
Asked how he would handle disagreements with the president, Evett, who was an entrepreneur before entering politics, said he values consistency when it comes to allies, whether in Washington or at the state level. The lieutenant governor said he could not speak at this time about how President Trump views his relationship with the lawmaker, but said he would address any disagreements with Trump in a different way.
“Both the president and I are businessmen, not career politicians, so when businesspeople disagree, we don’t take it to social media or the news media,” Evett said. “They call each other and have conversations. If there was a topic that the president and I probably couldn’t see eye to eye on, that’s exactly how I would handle it.”
Mace’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment for this story, but supporters who spoke with USA TODAY noted that Mace remains a popular figure among grassroots conservatives in the state.
Marty Irby, president and CEO of Capitol South LLC, a conservative lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., said he has won against pro-Trump candidates before.
“She doesn’t need Donald Trump and she doesn’t really need his support,” he added. “She’s a fearless woman. She’s the most fearless person in the House, more courageous than most of the men in this entire city, this entire Congress, and this administration.”
But polls suggest otherwise.
