National Review on Mace's primary loss
Writing for National Review the morning after Mace's fifth-place finish in the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary, staff writer Jeffrey Blehar published a valedictory column declaring her electoral career over. Blehar called Mace 'one of the more disturbed politicians I have ever encountered' and said he had stopped writing about her out of stated concern for her well-being. The piece is opinion commentary; Mace has not publicly responded to it.
Jeffrey Blehar ·
"I'm fairly certain this is also the last occasion I shall ever have to write about Nancy Mace ... one of the more disturbed politicians I have ever encountered during my professional career.", Jeffrey Blehar, National Review
The morning after Nancy Mace finished fifth in the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary, National Review staff writer Jeffrey Blehar published a valedictory column under a one-word verdict of a headline: "Goodbye, Nancy Mace." Its subtitle: "The winds of change have now swept her away from elected office entirely, and hopefully politics as well."
Blehar recounts that Mace "dropped out of her House race ... to run for governor in a sharply divided field," appealed "(directly, sometimes manically, and occasionally fraudulently) to Donald Trump for his endorsement," did not get it, and "finished a humiliating fifth place in what was essentially a five-way race, despite her political celebrity and fundraising."
The column is less a postmortem of the race than of the author's own decision to stop covering her. Blehar writes that he had said little about Mace since 2024 because, in his telling, "she falls into that rare class of politicians whose mental well-being I am genuinely concerned for," likening continued coverage to "the paparazzi swarming around Britney Spears." He describes her, at her most provocative, as "an endlessly publicity-hungry, attention-seeking fruitcake," and closes by saying he hopes she will "go and spend an extended amount of time quietly seeking the help she needs."
For a fuller accounting of the campaign's collapse, the piece points readers to a companion National Review post by Matthew Wilson, "How Nancy Mace Self-Immolated."
These are the opinions of the columnist. Mace, who conceded the race and endorsed state Attorney General Alan Wilson, has not publicly responded to the column.
Sources & related coverage
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June 10, 2026 · DispatchNational Review post-mortem on Mace's primary loss
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June 14, 2026 · DispatchJezebel reader-comment feature on Mace's loss
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Ace of Spades HQ pans Mace's fifth-place primary finish
The long-running conservative blog Ace of Spades HQ mocked Nancy Mace's fifth-place finish in the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary, casting her as a self-promoter who 'cynically tried to ride the Epstein Files to victory,' and folding her into a call to 'purge all the flakes, grifters, hangers-on, fame-whores.' Like the National Review and Washington Times pieces, the criticism comes from her own side of the aisle.