The Republican battle for South Carolina's 1st Congressional District wasn't that close of a fight after all.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace dominated the primary turnout, the early vote totals and the absentee votes by mail. She wound up beating chief rival Katie Arrington by 5,873 votes.
Mace's political path to victory in the June 14 primary played out like a one-two punch: Run up the margins in Charleston County, and solidify the win with Beaufort County.
As Mace's campaign manager Austin McCubbin put it in an interview "Charleston was our vanguard," meaning their best turf.
Mace beat Arrington by nearly 5,000 votes in Charleston County, swamping Arrington's gains elsewhere in the district and cutting off any hope she could prevail.
A snapshot of results in the six counties that comprise the new post-Census 1st Congressional District helps tell the story of how Mace performed strong most everywhere, while Arrington's best performance came out of Berkeley County where her vocal backing of former President Donald Trump ran high.
Results showed:
- Beaufort: Mace by 1,659
- Berkeley: Arrington by 581
- Charleston: Mace by 4,956
- Colleton: Mace by 92
- Dorchester: Arrington by 48
- Jasper: Arrington by 205
The final results will be certified June 16.
While Mace didn't get the double-digit victory she was predicting in the contest's final days, she came awfully close. With 100 percent of the returns reported, she defeated Arrington by nearly 9 points.
Mace not only won Charleston County, she won every precinct on James Island, Folly Beach, Seabrook, Sullivan's Island, Isle of Palms, and all but two of the dozens of Mount Pleasant precincts.
"Mount Pleasant was the paint on the basketball court — whenever anyone tried to come into the paint, we blocked them out," McCubbin said. "Let me put it this way: If you live in Mount Pleasant, and you're a reliable Republican voter, you were on our list."
Mace also won every precinct on Kiawah Island, the affluent coastal community that is home to one of Mace's biggest endorsers the race: former Gov. Nikki Haley.
Trump's former U.N. ambassador not only joined Mace for two get out the vote rallies in the final 72 hours of the primary, she also appeared in a TV ad early on in the election cycle where she called Mace “tough as nails” and a “fighter.”
On the day of the primary the Mace campaign made upwards of 2,000 phone calls to Charleston voters.
But the campaign would also zero in on Beaufort in the final days where they sought to motivate supporters particularly in downtown Beaufort, Port Royal and Bluffton.
"I always said this race was going to be won or lost in Beaufort County," said the county's GOP Chairman Kevin Hennelly. "For Nancy, she just had to win Beaufort. For Katie, she had to win enough here to overcome whatever Mace did in Charleston."
That's part of what made the fight for Beaufort so pivotal in this election. Older retirees who have moved to South Carolina are proving to be some of the most reliably conservative and often pro-Trump Republican voters, making Beaufort an especially important electorate.
Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties have also been growing rapidly, but the dominant age group for voters among them is 25 to 44.
What's also up for debate is how much Mace's drawing of Trump's ire in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack affected the outcome.
While Mace voted to certify the 2020 election against Trump's desires, she also became one of Trump’s most vocal Republican critics at the time .She told CNN that Trump’s “entire legacy was wiped out” by what happened that day, and when Fox News asked whether she believed Trump has a future in the Republican Party, she replied, “I do not.”
As returns rolled in June 14, Mace and her team realized the effect was not fatal and that the congresswoman had trounced the vocally pro-Trump Arrington, including in her own home voting precinct of Dorchester 2.
The night ended around 11 p.m. when Mace delivered her victory speech on the 18th hole of the Patriot Links Golf Course in Mount Pleasant.
In a hotel banquet room across the district in Summerville, Arrington delivered her concession speech, where she endorsed Mace.
