Trump’s Power Tested in South Carolina Congressional Primaries with Mixed Results
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Two Republican congressional primaries in South Carolina on Tuesday served as the latest test of former president Donald Trump’s hold on the GOP — with mixed results.
South Carolina state representative Russell Fry, who received Trump’s endorsement, defeated incumbent Representative Tom Rice in the Republican primary to represent South Carolina’s seventh congressional district, the Associated Press has projected. Fry won 51.1 percent of the vote to Rice’s 24.6 percent, with more than 95 percent of the vote counted, according to the New York Times.
Meanwhile, Representative Nancy Mace successfully fended off a challenge from a Trump-backed opponent, former state representative Katie Arrington, in South Carolina’s first congressional district on Tuesday night, the AP projects. Mace had secured 53.1 percent of the vote to Arrington’s 45.2 percent with 89 percent of votes reported, according to the Times.
The election was yet another test of Trump’s remaining influence in the GOP, after he had vowed to take down both Mace and Rice for their lack of support in the wake of the Capitol riot.
Rice has been on Trump’s bad side ever since the five-term congressman became one of only ten Republicans to vote to impeach the former president for incitement of an insurrection in connection with the January 6 Capitol riot.
“I know that I did the right thing, I’m happy with where I am, and I’ll take the consequences of it,” Rice told the Associated Press in an interview in November. “Even maybe some of them that didn’t like my vote, I think they’ll appreciate my honesty and my effectiveness, and I can win them back over. But we’ll see.”
While Trump previously had sizable support in Rice’s district in both 2016 and 2020 — winning the area by 58 percent — the congressman outperformed Trump, winning 61 percent of the vote in the district in 2016 and 62 percent in 2020.
Fry will take on Democratic Army veteran Daryl Scott, who had no challengers in the primary, in November.
While Mace did not vote to impeach Trump for inciting an insurrection in connection with the Capitol riot, she was critical of the former president in the wake of the attack. She said Trump’s false claims that the election was “stolen” from him had caused the riot and threatened her life.
Mace also voted to certify President Biden’s 2020 election win despite Trump’s wishes and voted to hold former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot.
In light of Mace’s defiance, Trump threw his support behind Arrington, who won the GOP nomination for the seat in 2018 after defeating incumbent Mark Sanford. Arrington lost in the general election to Joe Cunningham, handing Democrats their first flip of a South Carolina seat in decades.
“Nancy fights Republicans all the time and is not at all nice about it,” Trump said on Sunday. “Frankly, she is despised by almost everyone, and who needs that in Congress, or in the Republican Party?”
Yet Mace had picked up endorsements from Nikki Haley, who served as ambassador to the United Nations under Trump and was once South Carolina governor, as well as former Trump chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.
Mace will face off in the general election against Democrat Annie Andrews, who ran uncontested in the Democratic primary.
