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Doug Stafford

Veteran Republican political strategist and longtime Rand Paul adviser who served as spokesman for Nancy Mace's 2022 congressional re-election campaign.

Doug Stafford

Doug Stafford is a well-known Republican political strategist with a career centered on Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). He served as Paul's Senate chief of staff and as a senior adviser to Paul's 2016 presidential campaign. LegiStorm records him as a current senior adviser to Sen. Paul's office (as of November 2016 onward). He is also a general political consultant and has worked on various Republican campaigns outside of Paul's orbit.

Note on identity: The Doug Stafford who worked with Nancy Mace is the same person as the nationally recognized Rand Paul strategist. Public reporting by Fox News (January 2024) identified Stafford by name as "spokesman for Mace's re-election campaign" while reporting on efforts by former Mace staffers to challenge her politically. The connection between Stafford and Mace, and the eventual political friction it created, is reported in the public record.

Connection to the Nancy Mace record

Stafford served as a campaign spokesman for Mace's 2022 congressional re-election campaign in South Carolina's 1st Congressional District. His work with Mace was noted publicly at the time, including in podcast commentary in which he discussed the 2022 race.

Because of Stafford's close ties to Sen. Rand Paul, his role with Mace attracted attention as Mace sought to align more closely with Donald Trump. Public reporting noted that Mace and Stafford parted ways as a campaign relationship, with reporting indicating that Stafford had been critical of Trump's foreign policy positions, a point of friction given Mace's efforts to secure Trump's support. The nature and timing of that parting are not fully detailed in available public reporting.

In January 2024, Fox News quoted Stafford as still functioning in a spokesman capacity for Mace's re-election campaign, dismissing reports about former chief of staff Dan Hanlon's potential primary challenge against Mace. In that article Stafford questioned whether Hanlon met the district's residency requirements for a congressional run.

When Austin McCubbin resigned from Mace's 2025-2026 gubernatorial campaign (December 2025), his public statement accused Mace of embracing Rand Paul's political network, the same orbit in which Stafford operates. McCubbin's resignation statement and subsequent media coverage (Post and Courier, NOTUS, ABC News 4) framed the Rand Paul connection as a central dispute; Stafford was not quoted in that coverage.

Sources

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