Evette and Wilson advance to South Carolina Republican governor runoff
Trump-endorsed lieutenant governor and attorney general will face off June 23 after Nancy Mace fails to crack the top two.
South Carolina's Republican gubernatorial primary produced no outright winner Tuesday night, sending Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette and Attorney General Alan Wilson into a June 23 runoff and eliminating Rep. Nancy Mace from the contest.
Evette enters the runoff with a significant political advantage: a formal endorsement from former President Donald Trump. Wilson, while a self-described Trump supporter, did not receive the former president's backing, a distinction both campaigns and observers have noted throughout the race.
Mace's elimination was among the night's most notable outcomes. The congresswoman had run a high-profile campaign after a public falling-out with Trump, but CBS News projected she did not advance past the primary stage.
NPR framed the runoff as a contest between two MAGA-aligned figures differentiated primarily by Trump's explicit stamp of approval on Evette, suggesting the endorsement could prove decisive in a Republican electorate that remains strongly tied to the former president.
CBS News centered its coverage on the structural result — a two-candidate runoff and Mace's exit — without drawing strong conclusions about ideological distinctions between the two finalists.
The governor's race is set against a broader reshuffling of South Carolina's Republican congressional map. In the state's 1st Congressional District, Jenny Honeycutt and Mark Smith advanced to a separate June 23 runoff to fill the seat being vacated by Mace, who left the House to pursue the governorship.
South Carolina holds runoff elections when no primary candidate clears fifty percent of the vote, a threshold neither Evette nor Wilson reached. The state has trended heavily Republican in statewide races, making the GOP runoff winner the strong favorite in the general election.
The June 23 contest will test whether Trump's endorsement is sufficient to consolidate Republican primary voters behind Evette, or whether Wilson's own conservative credentials and statewide name recognition can overcome the lack of presidential backing.