Mark Sanford places last-minute bid for Nancy Mace’s Congressional seat. Who else is running?
Former South Carolina representative and governor Mark Sanford will once again make a run at South Carolina politics, vying for a seat in an already crowded race to fill the Lowcountry’s 1st Congressional District, which includes Beaufort County.
Just hours before the deadline closed at noon Monday, Sanford filed the paperwork to run in the June 9 Republican primary for the seat, which he has held twice before. He joined 10 other Lowcountry Republicans who had already formally filed for the race to replace Rep. Nancy Mace, who is making a bid for governor.
Among them are several Republican candidates from Beaufort County, including Dan Brown, Tyler Dykes and current Beaufort County Councilman Logan Cunningham.
Sanford is no stranger to South Carolina politics.
He held office in the 1st District between 1995 and 2001 before serving as governor from 2003 to 2011. In 2013, he returned, serving two more full terms before falling to a Republican challenger in 2018. For the first time in decades, the seat fell to a Democratic contender that year. Mace won the seat back in 2020.
State Representative Mark Smith, who is among many running for the seat, voiced frustrations about Sanford’s bid on social media.
“Mark Sanford is back — not because the Lowcountry asked for him, but because he cannot give up the spotlight,” he wrote. While serving as governor in 2009, Sanford disappeared for several days, later admitting he had traveled to South America for an extramarital affair. His staff told the media he had been hiking on the Appalachian Trail.
“South Carolinians remember exactly who he is,” Smith wrote. “A governor who went missing. A politician who turned his back on President Trump. A person who espouses term limits and runs again and again. And a candidate voters rejected the last time he was on the ballot — a race that helped hand this seat to a Democrat.”
But Sanford is holding strong in continuing his political message against deficit spending and foreign interventions that don’t directly involve Americans.
“Our nation’s debt is the issue that will define whether this country survives in the form we’ve known it,” Sanford said in a news release.
“It will also define how young and old fare over the years ahead, because inflation and interest rates, the value of the dollar, and our ability to afford all that goes with building and sustaining our lives will be driven by what happens next in confronting Washington’s addiction to spending money we don’t have on programs we can’t afford.”
Who else is running?
Before Sanford officially entered the race Monday, it was already a crowded pool for the seat that represents Beaufort, Berkeley, Charleston, Colleton, Dorchester and Jasper counties.
Among the Republicans are three Bluffton residents, Brown, Dykes and Cunningham, Jay Byars of Dorchester County, Cindy Wagner Riley and Smith of Berkeley County and four Charleston County candidates: Jenny Costa Honeycutt, Kendal Ludden, Sam McCown and Alex Pelbath.
Francina Dantzler, Matthew Fulmer and Mayra Rivera Vazquez, all from Bluffton, will be running as Democrats. As will Mac Deford, who formerly served as General Counsel for the Town of Hilton Head, Max Diaz of Berkeley County and Ben Frasier and Nancy Lacore of Charleston County.
Bill Reeside of Edisto Island is running as a Libertarian. Margo Ellis will run as part of the Alliance Party, a party established in South Carolina as an alternative to the two-party system.
This story was originally published March 31, 2026 at 9:02 AM.
