Will The 2026 Blue Wave Be Big Enough To Reach South Carolina... Tuesday's Special Election Says Yes

Nancy Mace's & Lindsey Graham's Careers Could Well Capsize

There was a special election Tuesday in a rural South Carolina State House district— number 50, which takes in all of Lee County, the 5th least populated in the state, and pieces of Kershaw and Sumter. It’s a minority majority district. Lee County is 35% white, Sumter 44% white and Kershaw 66% white. There are no real cities in the district, which is safely blue.

That said, last year Kamala barely beat Trump there, just 51.0% to 45.8%. That same day, Democratic state Senator Gerald Malloy, who represented Lee County for over two decades, was ousted by Republican JD Chaplin. The MAGA rednecks seem to have turned out in force. But not on Tuesday, when Democrat Keishan Scott blew his Republican rival, Sumter County Republican Party chairman Bill Oden, out of the water, 70.6% to 29.3%. My first reaction to Scott’s victory was to note that the 24 year old Scott will be the youngest member of the state legislature. But on second thought… Scott out-performed Kamala by over 20 points and beat the Republican by over 40! That bodes poorly for Republicans in swing-districts, even in as red a state as South Carolina. 

In fact, it makes me wonder if Nancy Mace and Joe Wilson are as safe as they think they are. Mace’s somewhat swingy 1st district gave Trump a 13 point win in 2024 and Wilson’s 2nd district gave Trump a 14 point win. Neither could afford a 20 point swing— and Mace is bogged down with one scandal after another and is facing some serious vulnerabilities heading into the midterms. Despite the district’s Trump lean, her public image has taken repeated hits— from her erratic political zigzags and idiotic self-serving theatrics to reports of a toxic and dysfunctional congressional office that keeps seeing unusually high staff turnovers. Former aides have described her as vindictive, dysfunctional and erratic, and the Congressional Workers Union recently highlighted her as one of the worst bosses on Capitol Hill. On top of that, her campaign finances are under scrutiny for some corrupt practices that whistleblowers from her staff turned her in for. Meanwhile, she took large sums from MAGA-aligned PACs while occasionally trying to posture as a moderate back in Charleston. The contradictions— plus the drama— are starting to catch up with her. In 2022, she won reelection by just 14,000 votes, and some Democrats— despite Jim Clyburn’s corrupt bargain to make her district much redder— smell blood in the water. If Republican turnout weakens the way it did for Scott Tuesday, Mace is toast.

As for the U.S. Senate race this cycle, presuming that Lindsey Graham survives multiple MAGA challenges— Graham has been officially endorsed by Señor TACO— he will face either Annie Andrews, who lost to Mace in 2022, or newly minted Illinois “Democrat” Joe Walsh. Last time Graham faced the voters, he beat well-financed lobbyist and Clyburn pawn Jaime Harrison by a comfortable 10 points. Harrison flushed $132,685,669 down the toilet (not even counting the over $17 million Schumer’s clueless DSCC and its allies wasted on the race). So Graham won by 10 points. Since then, he has continued to alienate MAGA voters who could decide to stay home. 10 points sounds safe— but not in a 20 point blue wave.

Back in Scott’s district, Rep. Will Wheeler resigned in January, just 3 days after the legislative session began, leaving the district without a representative for the whole 2025 session, precisely the kind of thing you would expect from Clyburn’s slimy, corrupt political machine. He'll be 85 next month and really needs to retire for the good of Democrats and Americans everywhere.