National Review on Mace's primary loss

"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.

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