Congresswoman Nancy Mace, a as soon as average Republican turned Trump loyalist, formally launched her bid for governor of South Carolina on Monday.
At the moment serving her third time period in Congress, Mace, 47, was as soon as a Trump critic. Now, per the Related Press, she calls herself “Trump in excessive heels” and guarantees to be a “tremendous Maga governor” within the largely Republican state.
Mace’s video announcement launching her bid for the South Carolina GOP gubernatorial major on Monday targeted closely on her pro-Trump credentials, that includes a clip of the president calling her a “fighter”. She requires a “zero-tolerance method to crime”, slicing the state earnings tax to zero and stopping “the unconventional gender agenda” and “woke ideology” in South Carolina’s faculties.
The brand new marketing campaign cements her Trump-era transformation. The consultant for South Carolina’s first congressional district was one among seven Home Republicans who signed a letter in 2021 saying Congress didn’t have the authority to overturn the outcomes of the 2020 election in Trump’s favor. She was additionally extremely crucial of his position within the January 6 assault on the US Capitol. Trump subsequently endorsed a major opponent to Mace’s 2022 congressional marketing campaign, which she in the end nonetheless received, calling her an “completely horrible candidate”.
She has since turn into a fierce ally of the US president, particularly on so-called tradition warfare points, equivalent to transgender rights, and his excessive immigration insurance policies. Trump and the freshly Maga-fied Mace went on to endorse one another within the 2024 election.
Simply final week, Mace was criticised for disclosing that she likes to cruise the net for movies of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) brokers dragging folks into custody, saying she “can consider nothing extra American”. She instructed Fox Report Weekend host Jon Scott that she was championing proposed laws that may “defund and take tax breaks away” from US cities that limit how a lot native authorities cooperate with federal immigration officers.
Previous to that, Mace seized nationwide headlines by her vocal opposition to transgender ladies being allowed to make use of ladies’s restrooms. Although as not too long ago as 2023 she had described herself as “professional transgender rights”, she has since made being anti-trans rights a core a part of her political persona. Mace has, for example, repeatedly instantly attacked the primary overtly trans member of Congress, US Home member Sarah McBride of Delaware, who first took workplace in January. Final 12 months she focused McBride by introducing a decision to ban transgender ladies from utilizing the ladies’s restrooms on the Capitol.
“We is not going to fund any faculties that permit organic males in ladies’s bogs or locker rooms, that permit males to compete in ladies’s sports activities, or faculties that push gender ideology,” she added.
She now enters a crowded GOP major through which competitors for Trump’s endorsement – and the backing of his base of supporters – is predicted to be fierce, and through which there isn’t but a transparent frontrunner. Among the many different candidates are the state’s legal professional normal Alan Wilson, its lieutenant governor Pamela Evette, and US consultant Ralph Norman, one of the crucial conservative members of the Home. The incumbent governor isn’t allowed to hunt one other time period.
“I’m operating for governor as a result of South Carolina doesn’t want one other empty go well with and desires a governor who will battle for you and your values,” Mace stated throughout a launch occasion on the Citadel army school in Charleston. She turned the primary lady to graduate from the Citadel in 1999. “South Carolina wants a governor who will drag the reality into daylight and flip the tables if that’s what it takes,” Mace stated.
