Republican Nancy Mace defeats Democrat Joe Cunningham, reclaiming seat for GOP
Republican Nancy Mace won South Carolina’s most competitive U.S. House race early Wednesday, injecting a shot of hope into the GOP two years after the party was devastated by a shocking loss here along South Carolina’s dependably Republican coastline.
Mace’s win over Democrat Joe Cunningham makes him a one-term congressman, which Republicans had been anxious to do from the moment he won the seat.
The Associated Press at 2:04 a.m. projected Mace would defeat Cunningham, a moderate Democrat who thought his bipartisan pitch could cut through a caustic partisan presidential election.
The results will be certified Friday afternoon.
Her victory also carries historic weight.
Mace, a 42-year-old single mother of two, will now become the first Republican woman to represent the 1st Congressional District, making it the second time she has shattered gender barriers.
In 1999, she became the first woman to graduate from The Citadel Corps of Cadets. As she celebrated her victory on Election Night, she wore the military school’s iconic gold ring on her right hand.
She also wore a blue seersucker mask with the Palmetto State flag’s iconic tree and moon, and took photos with her supporters who had gathered at Saltwater Cowboys, an outdoor restaurant on Shem Creek.
In a district where President Donald Trump won by 13 percentage points in 2016, Mace convinced voters that Cunningham was too liberal to represent the Lowcountry in Washington.
She had help from national Republicans, which poured millions into the race after singling the seat out as a top pick-up target.
Mace won this seat back for Republicans despite being outraised and out-spent by the Democratic incumbent for most of the campaign. She defied the predictions of national election forecasters who shrugged at her largely textbook GOP campaign and gave the advantage in the contest to Cunningham, who beat her to the airwaves and delivered a consistently moderate message.
“We made possible what many said was impossible,” Mace said in a text to The State newspaper after learning of her win.
Outside Republican groups poured millions into the race after ignoring warning signs in 2018, which ultimately led to the reliably Republican seat slipping away from their grasp for the first time in nearly 40 years.
She also triumphed after Trump tweeted his support of her four times: Twice after Mace secured her party’s nomination in June, and two times more in October as the election neared.
Nationalizing the race
On the stump and in her own farewell speech earlier this year at the S.C. State House, Mace described the November elections as America being at a crossroads.
“We have the choice between freedom, or the government being responsible for all. We have the choice between safety and security, or anarchy,” Mace said in her goodbye speech.
The more nationalized message was part of a strategy to not only mobilize the Republican base during a presidential year, but to unify it.
Mace saw what happened in 2018 when Cunningham’s win laid bare a fractured GOP that failed to rally behind its Republican candidate.
Though she deployed many of the same tactics that Republican congressional candidate Katie Arrington used in 2018, like tying Cunningham to Democratic U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the message landed differently in a presidential year.
Walter Whetsell, one of South Carolina’s most experienced GOP consultants, said the devastating Republican loss in 2018 also gave Mace something Arrington never had: A roadmap to victory.
“When we run campaigns, we learn a lot more lessons from losing campaigns than winning them. Mace had the benefit of looking back and doing a real autopsy and dissection of what happened here. That is invaluable,” Whetsell said.
But in many other ways, Mace’s win was of her own making.
Tailor-made for the district
Raised in the district’s own Goose Creek, Mace entered the race with valuable name recognition.
She attended Stratford High School but dropped out. She worked at the Waffle House in Ladson and took classes at a nearby technical college to obtain her high school diploma.
In 1999, Mace became the first woman to graduate from The Citadel. She unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, in 2014. Four years later, she ran a race on her own terms and was elected to the S.C. State House, where she represented portions of Mount Pleasant, Daniel Island, the Cainhoy peninsula, Hanahan and Goose Creek.
On the stump, she called her life “a series of second chances.” She connected with people by sharing a memory of how she shouted out hashbrown orders while standing on a piece of duct tape.
“She was the Waffle House waitress who had trouble in high school and got her life together and went to The Citadel and got elected to the state legislature. She didn’t try to make anybody believe she was somebody she wasn’t,” Whetsell said.
Mace also leaned into her Trump ties during a crowded four-person Republican primary, but pulled back from Trump in the general election campaign and diversified her support.
She got early backing from the GOP establishment.
Mace clinched the endorsement of the top two ranking members of the U.S. House Republican leadership: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La.
Mace also recognized that she would need to raise more than $3 million in four months to win the seat back against a popular Democratic incumbent, despite the Republican voting history of the district.
“We need a candidate with the right organization, the right fundraising energy and work ethic to win this seat back,” she said at the time.
It became the most expensive U.S. House race in South Carolina history.
Federal pre-election reports show Cunningham raised some $6.5 million this cycle, while Mace raised just shy of $5 million. Millions also poured in from outside groups, as national Democrats looked to defend their newfound territory while national Republicans sought to win it back.
Navigating the Trump factor
With the primary behind her, Mace tread carefully with how closely she tied herself to Trump at the top of the ticket.
Mace worked as a coalitions director and field director in South Carolina for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, but she made no mention of the president on her 2020 campaign website.
She welcomed Vice President Mike Pence to the district this summer when he headlined a fundraiser for Mace at The Citadel, her alma mater and South Carolina’s military college.
Only in the final weeks did Mace’s campaign begin reminding voters that Trump and his administration had endorsed her in the contest.
Her campaign volunteers handed out flyers featuring a photo of Mace standing next to Trump as he gave a thumbs-up. A voiceover in her last TV ad promised Mace would “stand with President Trump” to defend the military, cut taxes and help Lowcountry families get back to work.
In four tweets, Trump reiterated his “complete and total endorsement” of Mace as she tried to unseat Cunningham.
In June, Trump called Mace “a Great Warrior” who was needed in Washington. As Election Day neared, Trump called Cunningham “a puppet for Nancy Pelosi and the Radical Left!”
While Cunningham stuck with his pledge to put “Lowcountry Over Party,” Mace’s own tagline spoke to where she thought Cunningham failed. Her campaign slogan was “Lowcountry First.”
A distinctly local issue emerged in the final month of the campaign: The fate of the Marine Corps Recruit Depot on Parris Island.
Parris Island
Mace claimed that Cunningham’s vote for the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act in December 2019 was a “dereliction of duty” because it included an amendment requiring the Marine Corps to make all of its boot camps co-ed.
After a Marine leader said closing Parris Island and building a new base elsewhere for co-ed training was being considered, Mace jumped on the statement and accused Cunningham of voting to put Parris Island “on the chopping block.”
Even though a majority of South Carolina’s Republican leaders also voted for the same defense package as Cunningham, Mace cast the blame squarely on Cunningham because the base falls in the 1st Congressional District.
Cunningham later joined his Republican colleagues in Washington in sponsoring a bill to save Parris Island.
Whetsell said Mace was able to use the issue to characterize Cunningham as a congressman caught not paying attention to the needs of the 1st District.
“As Republican as it’s traditionally been, they take very, very seriously their congressman going to Washington and getting things done for them, whether it’s getting the funding for the Arthur Ravenel Bridge or keeping the base in Beaufort,” Whetsell said. “What made the Parris Island issue particularly cutting was that it gave Mace the ability to debunk the job Cunningham has done for the 1st District.”
A bipartisan message drowned out
Cunningham refuted the partisan caricature Mace painted of him as he tried to convince voters to look past his political label and instead look at how he delivered for the district rather than for the Democratic Party.
President Trump signed three bills into law that Cunningham sponsored.
Cunningham touted his endorsement from the U.S. Chamber, a pro-business group that typically backs Republicans. He also reminded voters that the Lugar Center named him one of the most bipartisan members of Congress.
Cunningham highlighted areas where he disagreed with his fellow Democrats, like his vote against raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. He voted for Cheri Bustos to be speaker of the House, not Nancy Pelosi. He also voted against a congressional pay raise.
He also emphasized that he sought to work with Trump where he could.
But Cunningham’s moderate message wasn’t enough to keep him in office.
Cunningham fell victim to the assumption that a bipartisan appeal would be enough to once again break through a district drawn with a built-in Republican advantage.
Instead, his efforts were drowned out by a polarizing presidential race at the top of the ticket that spurred what was expected to be record-breaking voter turnout.
Cunningham, 38, had never run for office when he was narrowly elected to represent South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District in 2018, a seat previously held by Mark Sanford.
It was a district he was never supposed to win.
Drawn for Republicans
He was the first Democrat in nearly 40 years to hold the seat and was elected on the so-called “blue wave” of the 2018 midterms when Democrats picked up 41 U.S. House seats.
Almost immediately, Republicans vowed revenge and identified Cunningham’s seat as a top target on their path to reclaiming a majority in 2020.
Before Cunningham was even sworn into office, the South Carolina Republican Party launched its plans for a 1st District reclamation project.
It was a change of pace for a district that had been drawn to favor Republicans. It includes all or sections of Charleston, Berkeley, Dorchester, Beaufort and Colleton counties.
At nearly every turn, in ways large and small, Mace built the case that Cunningham was out of step with the historically Republican district he was elected to represent.
On the debate stage, Mace referred to him as “Democrat Joe Cunningham.” On the stump, she said Cunningham voted with Pelosi 90% of the time. She characterized his record as “socialism at its best.”
Mace also reminded voters that Cunningham voted to impeach Trump.
However, Cunningham’s most contentious vote would be overshadowed by unimaginable forces when the nation was faced with combatting a pandemic for the first time in more than a century.
Not only did Cunningham and Mace both test positive for the novel coronavirus, but restrictions on public events forced both campaigns to adjust their messaging tactics.
While Mace was quick to jump back to holding socially-distanced events in-person along with online offerings, Cunningham kept his events mostly virtual until the final weeks.
The money race
The pandemic also made TV ads an essential battleground. Mace was able to get on the air with eight spots. Cunningham aired 13.
It wasn’t until early October that both candidates appeared in the same room for a televised debate.
Outraised and out-spent on TV, Mace took her case directly to voters in the final days of her campaign. She knocked doors in the rain and hopped on a campaign bus with Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a man she had unsuccessfully tried to primary in 2014.
“We were divided in 2018, and I’ve been trying to unite the party. You saw that with the results of the Republican primary with a four-person primary and no runoff. You’re seeing it here at the end as well,” Mace said in an interview with The State in the final weeks of her campaign. “Republicans are coming back and coming together.”
College of Charleston political scientist Gibbs Knotts said Mace is the type of candidate that the district was always meant to elect.
“The fact is that when the state legislature drew that district it was always designed to have a Republican. You’ve got people here that have been electing Republican candidates for a long time,” he said. “On paper, Mace was tailor-made to represent this district.”
This story was originally published November 4, 2020 at 2:20 AM with the headline "Republican Nancy Mace defeats Democrat Joe Cunningham, reclaiming seat for GOP."
