New polling suggests Republican Rep. Nancy Mace’s bid for governor of South Carolina is in danger.
A survey released Tuesday from the polling firm Wick found Mace is fourth in the crowded primary field, with just 10.5% of the vote, behind state Attorney General Alan Wilson, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, and fellow U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman.
That’s a much worse result than her standing in an October poll from Winthrop University, which found Mace in first, with 17% support among Republican voters.
Wick found Mace with the highest unfavorables in the group of Republican candidates. Nearly half of likely GOP primary voters (48.5%) view Mace unfavorably, compared with 30.0% who have a positive view. That unfavorable rating is leaps and bounds worse than the rest of the leading Republicans in the field, who have net-positive approval ratings.
The poll comes after Mace had an unhinged, weeks-long public meltdown over an incident that happened at an airport in Charleston, South Carolina.
Mace reportedly berated law enforcement officers and Transportation Security Administration employees who were going to escort her to her gate. Mace claims the security escort was late, while the law enforcement officers say the information provided to them from Mace’s team was incorrect, which led to a miscommunication.
Rep. Nancy Mace wears a red “A” on her shirt in a 2023 publicity stunt.
Mace went on to accuse the airport leadership of personally targeting her for more security checks, and concocted a conspiracy theory that she was the victim of the “DEEP STATE and BIG BROTHER.”
Her conduct was so out of control that members of her own party’s congressional delegation publicly condemned her.
“It is never acceptable to berate police officers, airport staff, and TSA agents who are simply doing their jobs, nor is it becoming of a Member of Congress to use such vulgar language when dealing with constituents,” Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina wrote in a Facebook post. “Not only are these officers sworn to protect us, but we also take an oath to represent them. We work for them, not vice versa.”
“I concur with [Scott’s] statement when it comes to the men and women who provide security at the Charleston International Airport,” Lindsey Graham, the state’s other Republican senator, wrote in a post on X.
Even before the airport meltdown, Mace was notorious for her mistreatment of staff—a number of whom have spoken out publicly about their traumatic tenures in her office. For example, in May, former staffers said they were forced to make burner social media accounts to post laudatory comments about Mace.
Former staffers aren’t the only people she’s on the bad side of.
Mace has also angered President Donald Trump. She was one of a handful of GOP lawmakers who helped force a House vote on the bill compelling the Trump administration to release its files on the accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
That acceptable conduct has also earned her condemnation from members of her own party. A staffer on her gubernatorial campaign resigned on Monday citing what he believed is Mace’s disloyalty to Trump.
“My advice to the President, my friends in the White House, and South Carolina Trump voters: scratch her name from the list,” Mace’s now-former campaign strategist J. Austin McCubbin wrote in a post on X. “As we say in South Carolina, there’s no lesson in the second kick of a mule.”
Even before the new poll came out, right-wing pundits said they were worried about Mace and thought that she was going to lose the gubernatorial primary due to her messy behavior.
“There’s something wrong with Nancy Mace. And I’m not a fan of hers, and it’s increasingly because she’s not mentally well, and it’s really clear she’s not mentally well, and I don’t know if she has friends who can do an intervention with her, but Nancy Mace needs a real intervention,” right-wing radio host Erick Erickson said on his program.
But now polling shows her bid may be in peril.
Due to her gubernatorial bid, Mace won’t be back in Congress after the 2026 election, and she appears to be on track to lose her gubernatorial bid too.
As they like to say on “Seinfeld,” “That’s a shame.”
