COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson has won a runoff election, defeating the Republican whom President Donald Trump had initially picked to become the state’s gubernatorial nominee.
Wilson won Tuesday over Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, whom Trump endorsed in the closing days of the primary campaign. Most Republicans in the race had vied for the president’s backing during their campaigns, and days before the runoff Trump later
said he supported both candidates.
Evette also had support from outgoing Gov. Henry McMaster, alongside whom she’s served for eight years. She and Wilson had advanced over other GOP candidates including U.S. Reps. Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman.
Wilson has served as the state’s top prosecutor since 2011, taking actions to support Trump’s political and personal moves. His victory sets up a November general contest with state Rep. Jermaine Johnson, who won the Democratic nomination outright two weeks ago.
He is the son of longtime U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson.
As news spread of Wilson’s win, scattered whoops went up around the downtown Columbia ballroom, where supporters had only begun to fill in for his Election Night party.
The Republican primary to succeed McMaster, who is term-limited, largely centered around candidates’ proximity to Trump, with nearly all of the GOP contenders expressing hope of securing his endorsement.
That achievement initially went to Evette, 58, who has served alongside McMaster for two terms, in the primary’s closing days. Long before that, Evette often featured photos and video of herself with the president in campaign ads and other materials. She also hired a campaign team that includes Trump’s longtime pollster Tony Fabrizio.
But as Wilson seemed to gain momentum heading into the runoff, Trump on Friday said he was endorsing both candidates, throwing a curveball to voters looking to the president for guidance.
Wilson, 52, also boasted support from sheriffs and solicitors across the state, law enforcement officials with whom he works often as South Carolina’s top prosecutor.
Immediately following Trump’s double endorsement on Friday, Wilson began boasting about it, too. Moments after Trump posted on social media about the race, Sen. Tim Scott said he was supporting Wilson. A person familiar with Scott’s thinking but not authorized to speak publicly about it said the South Carolina Republican had been making calls in support of Wilson, helping raise money and lobbying Trump to back him as well.
Despite their heated sparring in the campaign’s early days, Mace endorsed Wilson’s runoff campaign, and he said on primary night they had “buried the hatchet.” He drew backing from some of the other contenders who failed to make the runoff, including U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman and state Sen. Josh Kimbrell, who ended his bid just before the primary. On Monday, Sen. Ted Cruz, another Wilson backer, came to South Carolina to stump for his bid.
On primary night, Evette came out swinging against Wilson, calling the longtime prosecutor a “career politician ... who won’t take a stand and who does the political thing and not the right thing.” Despite having been elected statewide multiple times by many of the same voters who have supported Evette, the mention of Wilson’s name elicited boos from her crowd.
Wilson, meanwhile, didn’t name Evette, instead saying he welcomed support from voters who had backed other candidates.
Their only runoff debate was heated. Because each was given time to issue a rebuttal whenever their name was mentioned, the debate’s first half-hour swiftly devolved into a ping-ponging, back-and-forth over allegations of mudslinging and taxpayer-funded salary increases. The audience provided a soundtrack of thunderous jeers and hoots.
The prevailing sentiment for those watching the GOP gubernatorial primary had been that it would go to a runoff, although the combination of which of the five candidates would advance to Tuesday’s second round of voting was anyone’s guess.
With a handful of Republican heavy hitters in the race, and no clear front-runner — at least not one able to crack the 50% threshold needed to win a nomination outright — campaigns across the board long talked about a primary campaign that would wrap up on the day of the runoff, not the June 9 primary itself. And ultimately, it was the two candidates who had faced voters in previously statewide-elected seats who advanced.
Although he faced several challengers in his pursuit of a fifth term, Sen. Lindsey Graham won his June 9 primary outright, dominating a handful of challengers who had critiqued the veteran lawmaker as not conservative enough for this deeply Republican state.
Endorsed by Trump before his reelection campaign had even begun, Graham repeatedly touted his status as political confidant and regular golfing partner to the president, although he regularly acknowledges the vacillating nature of their relation through the years.
While Democrats also had multiple candidates running in some primary contests earlier this month, they’re not dealing with runoffs in the top races.
State Rep. Jermaine Johnson, seen a rising star among South Carolina Democrats, defeated two other hopefuls to win his party’s gubernatorial nomination outright,
And Charleston physician Annie Andrews also cleared the Democratic field in her challenge to Graham.
While South Carolina Democrats hope their primary momentum helps propel them to general election wins, they have lots of ground to make up on that front.
McMaster notched double-digit victories in 2018 and 2022, defeating Democrat Joe Cunningham by nearly 18 percentage points. Democrats haven’t won a governor’s race in the state since 1998.
As for U.S. Senate seats, no Democrat has won one of those here in decades either. When he last ran in 2020, Graham defeated his Democratic opponent, Jaime Harrison, by a 10 percentage point margin. That contest was the most expensive in state history, and among the country’s most expensive congressional races ever.
The last time a Democrat won any statewide-elected seat in South Carolina was 2006. And in recent history, Republicans have typically taken statewide seats in the state by double-digit margins.
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Collins reported from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP
