Charleston, South Carolina – At a pre-election event the weekend before the South Carolina primary, Tom Rice, a conservative congressman who is now on the wrong side of former President Donald J. Trump, confess.
“I made my next election a little harder than in the past,” he said on Friday, begging his supporters – a group he called “smart, rational people” and “good, solid mainstream Republicans” – to support him in opinion polls. Tuesday.
Two days earlier and about 100 miles south, Nancy Mace, another Palmetto Republican in the state who angered the former president, recognized her position as she knocked on doors on a hot morning.
“I accept everything. take responsibility. I’m not giving up, “she said, confident that voters in her Lowcountry area would be sympathetic. “They know that ‘hey, even if I don’t agree with her, she’ll at least tell me where she is,'” she added.
Ms. Mace and Mr. Rice are the former president’s two targets for revenge on Tuesday. After a pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, they were among those who blamed the president for the attack. Ms Mace, just days after her first term, said Mr Trump’s false rhetoric about “stolen” presidential elections had sparked a riot and threatened her life. Mr Rice, whose county borders Ms Mace in the north, immediately condemned Mr Trump and joined nine other Republicans (but not Mrs Mace) in a later vote for his impeachment.
Now, facing major challenges backed by the former president, the two have taken radically different approaches to political survival. Ms. Mace pulled her teeth out of her criticism of Mr. Trump, instead trying to discuss her conservative voting success and libertarian stripe in political debates. Instead, Mr Rice deepened his defense of the impeachment vote and further denounced Mr Trump in the trial.
If they turn away from their main rivals on Tuesday, Ms. Mace and Mr. Rice will join the growing list of incumbents who have endured the wrath of the Republican Party’s Trump wing without ending their political careers. Yet their conflicting strategies – reflecting both their political instincts and the different policies of their districts – will offer a glimpse into how far a candidate can go in challenging Mr Trump.
Representative Tom Rice at a campaign event in Conway, South Carolina, last week. Credit … Madeleine Gray for the New York Times
In the eyes of her supporters, Ms. Mace’s previous comments were less specific than an impeachment vote. She seeks to improve her relationship with pro-Trump parts of the Republican Party by spending almost every day of the past few weeks in the campaign to remind voters of her Republican integrity and not her unfiltered criticism of Mr. Trump.
“Everyone knows I was unhappy the other day,” she told January 6th. “The whole world knows. All my constituents know. ”
Her district, which stretches from the left corners of Charleston to the conservative country clubs of Hilton Head, has an electorate that includes far-right Republicans and Liberal Democrats. Ms. Mace advertises herself not only as a conservative candidate, but also as someone who can defend the politically diverse region against a Democratic rival in November.
“This is and will always be a swinging neighborhood,” she said. “I’m a conservative, but I also understand that I’m not just a conservative.”
However, this is not a positive message for everyone in Lowcountry.
Ted Huffman, owner of Bluffton BBQ, a restaurant nestled in the heart of Blufton’s tourist center, said he supported Katie Arrington, a Trump-backed former state official who is fighting Ms. Mace. What mattered to Ms. Mace was not her feud with Mr. Trump, but her relative absence from the neighborhood restaurant, Mr. Huffman said.
“Katie Arrington, she was here,” Mr. Huffman said, recalling several times when Ms. Arrington visited Bluffton BBQ. “I’ve never seen Nancy Mace.”
During an event in Somerville with Nicki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, Ms. Mace gave an amusing speech that outlined a list of right-wing speakers: high inflation caused by President Biden’s economic agenda, an influx of immigrants along the southern border , support for military veterans. She did not mention Mr. Trump.
Ms. Mace predicted a decisive primary victory against Ms. Arrington, who put her support for Trump at the center of her campaign message. Victory in the face of this, Ms. Mace said, would prove “the weakness of any approval.”
“I don’t usually give a lot of weight to approvals because they don’t matter,” she said. “This is really the candidate. This is the person people are voting for – that’s the important thing. “
Speaking from her front porch in Monks Corner, South Carolina, Deidre Stechmeier, a 42-year-old mother who remains at home, said she did not closely monitor Ms. Mace’s race. But when asked about the comments of the congresswoman condemning the January 6 uprising, she changed.
“This is something I agree with her,” she said, adding that she supported Ms. Mace’s decision to certify the Electoral College vote, a move that some Republicans called a final betrayal of Mr Trump. “There was so much conflict and uncertainty. I feel he had to be certified. “
Mr Rice’s impeachment vote, on the other hand, is a more recognizable twist.
That’s part of why Ms. Mace has a comfortable lead in the race, according to the latest polls, while Mr. Rice faces much more primary rivals and is likely to run in the runoff with Trump’s approval. State Representative Russell Fry after Tuesday.
Mr Fry’s campaign centered Mr Rice’s impeachment vote in his message, turning the vote into a referendum on Mr Rice’s five terms in Congress.
“It’s more than Donald Trump. He is an incumbent congressman who is losing the credibility of a very conservative county, “said Matt Moore, former chairman of the Republican Party of South Carolina and an adviser to Mr Fry’s campaign.
However, Mr Rice is betting on his ultra-conservative economic record and once-unproven support for the former president to win a sixth term in one of South Carolina’s most pro-Trump constituencies.
Supporter of former President Donald Trump during a pre-election event for Representative Nancy Mace on Sunday. Credit … Logan R. Cyrus for The New York Times
In an interview, Mr. Rice noted the Republican Party’s shift to pushing social issues out of politics – something he said was driven in part by the party’s former president’s wing, which helped redefine it.
He also outlined what the Republican Party should stand for: “less taxes, less government, more freedom, individual responsibility, the American dream,” he said. “If we’re not for that, then, damn it, I don’t know what the Republican Party is for.
The impeachment vote also won him the favor of some voters. Rick Giles, a Rice supporter in Conway, South Carolina, said he admired Mr. Rice for his vote.
“He stood up to Trump when a lot of people didn’t,” Mr Giles said. “He stood by his values. He did not adhere to the party line. I like.”
Conway is in the Seventh Congressional District of South Carolina, where Mr. Rice faces a number of contenders in Tuesday’s primary. Credit … Madeleine Gray for The New York Times
Mr. Rice’s area, in the northeast corner of South Carolina on the North Carolina border, is one of the most conservative in the state, preferring Republicans by nearly 30 points. Even before the impeachment vote, Mr Rice was one of Mr Trump’s staunchest supporters, with a record of the vote that coincided with Mr Trump’s position more than 90 per cent of the time.
“It’s not about my ballot. It’s not about my support for Trump. This is not about my ideology. It’s not because this other one is good, “Mr Rice said. “There is only one reason why he is doing this. And that’s just for revenge. “
Mr Trump has had less success in the United States at the heart of his main push. In Georgia, two of his most prominent enemies, Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Rafensperger, skillfully won their primary election against candidates backed by the former president. The two races of the Chamber, where he did not approve the starters, went to the runoff.
Mark Sanford, a former congressman who was defeated by Ms Arrington in 2018 after Mr Trump backed her main challenge, predicts Ms Mace will prevail.
“I think it will be fine,” he said, pointing to the growing number of transplants in the northern states that tend to favor candidates for the facility. “It doesn’t bode well for Nancy, it doesn’t bode well for Katie.”
However, he said Tuesday’s outcome was unlikely to change the former president’s approach to politics.
“It’s a binary with Trump,” Mr Sanford said. “You are not half inside, half – you are either inside or outside.”
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