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Part of: The 2026 South Carolina Senate Special Election

Dispatch

A 'Mace for Senate' domain has sat registered since 2023, its owner hidden behind private WHOIS

A reader sent Maceopedia an ICANN registration-data lookup for maceforsenate.com. The public record shows the domain was created on August 24, 2023, nearly two years before Lindsey Graham's death opened a South Carolina Senate seat that Nancy Mace is now publicly weighing. Whoever registered it has kept their identity private: the registrant name, organization, and phone are all redacted, and the domain serves no website. Maceopedia independently confirmed the record against Verisign's authoritative RDAP database. The record does not establish who owns the domain, and this dispatch makes no claim that it is Mace or her campaign.

A reader sent Maceopedia a registration-data lookup, the kind anyone can run on ICANN's public lookup tool, for a single domain name: maceforsenate.com. The interesting part is not that the domain exists. It is when it was registered, and that whoever registered it has hidden who they are.

What the public record shows

The domain's registration data, confirmed below against the authoritative registry database, reads:

  • Created: August 24, 2023
  • Registry expiration: August 24, 2026
  • Last changed: August 9, 2025
  • Registrar: Squarespace Domains II LLC (the registrar that absorbed Google Domains); the nameservers are still Google's cloud DNS
  • Status: clientDeleteProhibited, clientTransferProhibited (standard registrar locks)
  • DNSSEC: signed
  • Registrant name, organization, phone, fax: all returned as "The RDAP server redacted the value"

In other words, the domain has been held for nearly two years, was renewed as recently as August 2025, and its owner is shielded behind the registrar's privacy service.

Why the 2023 date is the story

A "Mace for Senate" domain registered in August 2023 predates any actual opening. Nancy Mace was a sitting U.S. House member with no Senate seat to run for. The South Carolina Senate vacancy did not exist until July 11, 2026, when Sen. Lindsey Graham died and Mace, days after finishing fifth in the Republican primary for governor, began publicly weighing a run for the seat. The domain was registered, and quietly renewed, well before that.

The public record does not say who registered it or why. A "candidate for X" domain can be registered by a campaign preparing a lane, by a supporter, by a defensive registrant parking the name so no one else grabs it, or by someone with no connection to the candidate at all. Maceopedia makes no claim about which of these applies here. The only things the record actually establishes are the dates, the registrar, and the fact that the owner chose to stay private.

It is registered, but dark

As of this writing, maceforsenate.com serves no website. The domain is delegated to Google's cloud nameservers but publishes no address records (no A, AAAA, or CNAME for the apex or www), so a browser request to it does not connect. It is a name held in reserve, not a live campaign site.

How this was verified

The tip arrived as a reader submission: a screenshot of ICANN's registration-data lookup for the domain. Because a submitted screenshot can be altered, Maceopedia independently re-queried the domain against Verisign's authoritative RDAP database (the registry of record for .com) and confirmed the registration date (2023-08-24), the expiration (2026-08-24), the 2025-08-09 change, and the Squarespace registrar all match. The registrant-privacy redaction comes from the registrar's own RDAP record as surfaced by the ICANN lookup.

This dispatch reproduces public domain-registration data and makes no assertion about the identity, motive, or affiliation of whoever registered maceforsenate.com. Domain-registration records do not establish who controls or paid for a name, and privacy redaction is a routine, lawful option offered by most registrars. If the registrant is identified in the future, this entry will be updated.

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