South-Carolina
South Carolina Republicans try to extend winning streak as Sen. Lindsey Graham seeks fifth term
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina voters on Tuesday are aiming to winnow the field in high-profile races for governor and U.S. Senate, with Republicans seeking to maintain a statewide winning streak that stretches back decades.
Republican contenders have trumpeted their loyalty to President Donald Trump, who has remained popular in the state despite some nationwide wavering as the war with Iran continues. Sen. Lindsey Graham, among Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill, notched the president’s endorsement before his campaign had even begun.
In the governor’s race, Trump backed Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette over several opponents, including U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace. The primary will determine whether the endorsement can help Evette win outright or if there will be a runoff on June 23.
Democrats are searching for their first victory in a statewide race here in 20 years, but their campaigns for governor and Senate will be an uphill climb.
GOP governor candidates have played largely to Trump
Competition among Republicans for Trump’s support has seemed more intense than any other facet of the primary campaign.
Even before Evette received the president’s endorsement, she frequently featured photos and videos of herself with Trump in campaign materials. She was backed by outgoing Gov. Henry McMaster, a longstanding ally of Trump whose support telegraphed the president’s own.
Mace also wanted Trump’s support, and he endorsed her congressional reelection in 2024 even though she criticized his actions of Jan. 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.
Rep. Ralph Norman, among the most conservative members of the House and a member of the Freedom Caucus, strongly supported Trump in the president’s first term. But in the 2024 campaign, Norman stumped for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley instead of Trump.
Rom Reddy, a coastal businessman who has eschewed campaign donations and self-funded his effort, has touted his lack of political experience as an asset, drawing comparisons between Trump and himself.
Graham, backed by Trump, hopes to bounce Lynch en route to 5th term
South Carolina’s other top contest Tuesday is its Senate race, where Graham is competing for the Republican nomination as he seeks a fifth term. A political confidant and regular golfing partner of the president, Graham has routinely batted back primary challengers over the years. Some of this year’s contenders — including Project 2025 chief architect Paul Dans and former Lt. Gov. André Bauer — dropped out months ago.
Although their relationship has undulated through the years, Graham has remained close with Trump, who fulfilled the senator’s longstanding wish for direct confrontation between Washington and Tehran. Graham cheered Trump’s decision to strike nuclear sites last year and recently said he often speaks to the president about the ongoing conflict.
Among Graham’s primary foes are including Greenville businessman Mark Lynch, who has said Graham isn’t conservative enough to represent the state. Calling himself an “America First” candidate, Lynch has campaigned as a Trump supporter, but on social media the president has called him a “lunatic” and a “disaster for the Republican Party.”
Winning statewide in November remains a tall order for SC Democrats
Democrats haven’t won the governor’s office or a Senate seat in South Carolina for decades.
McMaster defeated his opponent by nearly 18 percentage points in 2022. Graham won by 10 points in 2020, defeating Jaime Harrison after the most expensive race in state history.
Some Democrats hope to capitalize on dissatisfaction with Trump this year. In the governor’s race, State Rep. Jermaine Johnson, seen as a rising star in the party, is facing several opponents, including political newcomer Billy Webster, a payday loan company founder who lent his campaign $2 million. There’s also attorney Mullins McLeod, who withstood calls from party leaders to shutter his campaign after dashcam video of his 2025 disorderly conduct arrest was released.
In the Senate race, Charleston physician Annie Andrews — who unsuccessfully challenged Mace in 2022 — is vying for the Democratic nomination against Brandon Brown, a funeral homeowner and former House candidate.
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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP
Breaking down UCLA’s NCAA Championship win over South Carolina
USAT’s Mitch Northam gives insight into UCLA’s first National Championship title in women’s basketball over South Carolina.
Sports Pulse
Team USA women’s basketball has several college stars to thank for its latest gold medal.
On June 7, the USA women’s basketball 3×3 roster secured gold with a 21-20 win over Australia at the FIBA 3×3 World Cup in Warsaw, Poland. The victory comes after a gritty 19-18 overtime win over Azerbaijan in the semifinals. The winning group included South Carolina’s Joyce Edwards, LSU’s Mikaylah Williams and MiLaysia Fulwiley, plus Oklahoma forward Saraha Williams.
Since the event began in 2012, the American women have medaled five times, including four gold medals (2012, 2014, 2023, 2026) and one bronze (2016).
Mikaylah Williams, who made the game-winning basket to push the USA out in front, also walked away with MVP honors. She scored a team-high nine points in the matchup. Mikaylah led the team in scoring with 6.6 points per matchup a joined Cameron Brink (2023) as the only other American woman to take home an MVP award.
“I’m blessed to be on this stage, to play with some amazing teammates, to play for some amazing coaches and to rep USA,,” Williams said postgame.
Edwards, a star at South Carolina, has the led Gamecocks to two national title games. The 6-foot-3 forward was a consensus All-American as a sophomore this past season, averaging 19.2 points, 6.8 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 1.8 steals and 1.1 blocks per game while shooting 57.1% from the floor.
Mikaylah Williams has started in 105 of the 106 games she’s played at LSU and was named to first-team All-SEC for a second time this past season. Over her career, Mikaylah has averaged 15.4 points, 4.9 rebounds and 3.3 assists per game while shooting 39.3% from 3-point range.
Edwards and Fulwiley previously played together at South Carolina during the 2024-25 season before Fulwiley transferred to LSU, where she plays alongside Mikaylah Williams. Fulwiley has won the SEC’s Sixth Player of the Year twice and has also been named to an All-Region team in the NCAA Tournament twice. Last season, Fulwiley averaged 14.6 points, 3.6 rebounds, 3.5 assists, 2.8 steals and 1.4 blocks per game.
Sahara Williams averaged 12.4 points, 7.9 rebounds and 3.8 assists per game while shooting 46.1% from the floor this past season for the Sooners. She helped Oklahoma make the Sweet 16 during the 2026 NCAA Tournament, where the Sooners fell to Edwards and South Carolina.
President Donald Trump endorsing Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette underscores his on-again, off-again alliance with the outspoken congresswoman.
Nancy Mace looking to ban naturalized citizens from office
Rep. Nancy Mace proposed legislation aiming to ban foreign-born U.S. citizens from becoming federal judges and being appointed to Senate-confirmed positions.
In May, an unusual argument broke out between Republican contenders for their party’s gubernatorial nomination in South Carolina: Rep. Nancy Mace confidently declared online two weeks before the June 9 primary that President Donald Trump had not endorsed her chief rival.
Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, she said, was misrepresenting her ties to the president.
“Do not believe her lies,” Mace, a three-term congressman, said in a May 29 post on X, which was accompanied by an AI-generated picture of Mace standing next to the president with both giving a thumbs up.
But hours later Trump did publicly endorsed Evette, describing her as a “good friend, fighter and winner” who had “never wavered” since his first presidential campaign in 2016. The whiplash, which drew mockery of Mace from some Republicans, highlighted that the congresswoman isn’t as tight with the president as her campaign would like voters to believe.
“Mace was thinking that Trump was going to stay out of it,” Republican activist Rick Beltram, a longtime figure in South Carolina politics, told USA TODAY.
“Clearly when you say something like that, and two minutes later it’s a different outcome, it does make you look a little silly,” he added. “She missed the mark.”
Trump’s support is the most coveted prize in Republican primaries nationwide in 2026, which he’s demonstrated by waging an aggressive campaign against multiple incumbents who’ve crossed him whether in Congress or state legislatures.
And his influence is felt in South Carolina, a staunchly conservative state where the party’s nomination almost ensures a win in the general election and GOP primaries have a long history of being nasty competitions.
Mace is a conservative who in 2025 called herself “Trump in high heels,” but she and the president have had their differences.
Mace’s most recent transgression came last year when she was among four House Republicans – along with Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia – who joined Democrats to compel the U.S. Justice Department to release its files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“I know I put the likelihood of an endorsement on the line when I demanded transparency on the Epstein files,” Mace said in another May 29 post. “If sacrificing my values is the price of an endorsement, I will never pay it.”
‘This is Trump country’: Polling shows Evette breaking away
The field to succeed Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, who is term limited, attracted a notable group that includes Mace and Evette, but also state Attorney General Alan Wilson, Rep. Ralph Norman and business executive Ron Reddy.
For much of the campaign’s final two-month stretch, polls have shown the contenders within striking distance of each other.
But Evette believes Trump’s backing will prove decisive in a state he won by roughly 18 percentage points in the 2024 presidential election.
“This is Trump country, and people feel that the president is doing a great job,” Evette told USA TODAY in a June 5 interview. “It plays a key role in distinguishing candidates, and I think what this shows is the character of the candidates. People want to see loyalty, they want to see fighters and they want to see people who are like-minded.”
Trump’s approval rating has remained steady in South Carolina, with the president holding a 50% approval versus a 47% disapproval rating, according to Morning Consult. But as other primaries across the country have demonstrated this year, among the GOP base he remains far more popular.
Evette has seen a noticeable boost in polling since the May 29 endorsement, which appears to have distinguished her from the rest of the herd.
A poll by the Trafalgar Group, an Atlanta-based Republican firm, conducted a week before Trump got involved in the race found Evette with a slight lead at 19.9%. She was followed by Wilson at 19.4%; Reddy at 19%; Norman at 15.9% and Mace at 14.6% in the survey that had a roughly three percent margin of error.
But in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s nod, those figures shifted dramatically in the lieutenant governor’s favor, the same pollster found. In a survey conducted June 2-4, Evette was holding a 26.3% lead while none of her competitors raked in more than 18%.
That is critical, South Carolina conservatives say, in a crowded race where there is a high likelihood for a June 23 runoff if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote. Each of the contenders have showcased their relationship with the president in their pitch to voters.
Wilson, for instance, has a “Trump Tough” page on his campaign website dedicated solely to his relationship with the president. It spotlights his defense of Trump’s executive orders in court and support for cabinet appointees such as FBI Director Kash Patel.
“Our mailboxes have absolutely been flooded by mail pieces from all the candidates, and they all are showing pictures with them standing next to Donald Trump,” Beltram told USA TODAY.
Mace’s hot and cold Trump relationship could determine fate of the ‘Iron Lady’
Republicans who’ve publicly disagreed with the president’s agenda or approach to politics have paid the price ahead of the 2026 midterms.
From Indiana to Louisiana, many longtime incumbents have been easily booted from office while others have been hounded out of Washington by Trump’s scathing online tongue lashings. In some regards, Mace is no different given her previous criticisms of the president.
Three days after first assuming office, for example, as rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack, she issued a blistering response while locked in her office. The congresswoman called the attempted insurrection “un-American” and slammed Trump’s rhetoric ahead of the incident.
“His entire legacy was wiped out yesterday,” Mace said at the time.
The president responded by calling her a “grandstanding loser” and later endorsed a former state legislator who ran against Mace in the 2022 Republican primary.
“Nancy fights Republicans all the time and is not at all nice about it,” Trump said at the time. “Frankly, she is despised by almost everyone, and who needs that in Congress, or in the Republican Party?”
She easily won that reelection bid by 14 percentage points, however.
In the years since, Mace made a noticeable rightward shift toward Trump, saying there was no ill-will as he waged a comeback campaign against former President Joe Biden two years ago. She endorsed him during the 2024 Republican primary for president over Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, who backed her during the feud with Trump.
Mace in turn was supported in her 2024 reelection bid and spoke at the Republican National Convention that year after being floated as a possible running mate. But in the aftermath of Trump’s choice to support her gubernatorial rival, the congresswoman has been on a tear online.
In a May 31 post on X, she declared herself the “Iron Lady”, a nickname given to former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, featuring an AI-generated picture sporting the foreign leader’s famous hairstyle. The bio on that social media account also now mentions that Trump endorsed her in 2024 for Congress.
Asked how she would handle disagreements with the president, Evette, who was an entrepreneur before entering politics, said he appreciates consistency when it comes to allies, whether in Washington or the state level. The lieutenant governor said she can’t speak to how Trump views his relationship with the congresswoman now, but that she would handle disagreements with him differently.
“The president and I are both business people, we’re not career politicians, so when business people disagree, they don’t take to social media, they don’t take to the news media,” Evette said. “They call each other and have a conversation. If there was a topic that the president and I maybe wouldn’t see eye to eye on, that is exactly the way I would handle it.”
The Mace campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story, but supporters who spoke with USA TODAY noted she has remains a popular figure among grassroots conservatives in the state.
Marty Irby, president and CEO of Capitol South LLC, a conservative-leaning lobbying firm in Washington, DC, noted she has won against Trump-backed candidates before.
“She doesn’t need Donald Trump, she doesn’t really need endorsements,” he added. “She is a fearless woman. She’s the most fearless member of the House — period — and has more guts than most of the men in this entire town and entire Congress and in the administration.”
The polls, however, suggest otherwise.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) – Former South Carolina quarterback Stephen Garcia is sharing a health update after revealing last month he’d been diagnosed with colorectal cancer.
Earlier this week, Garcia sat down with NBC affiliate WFLA in Tampa to provide an update on his condition.
Garcia says he’s receiving chemotherapy treatment at Moffitt Cancer Center and adds that the support of family, friends, and his medical team has helped him stay positive through the process.
He says he continues to stay active, even on the tougher days.
Garcia also shared his thoughts on the upcoming Gamecock football season and the program’s direction. Garcia says he remains optimistic and is taking things one day at a time as treatment continues.
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