Two Targets of Trump’s Ire Take Different Paths in South Carolina

CHARLESTON, S.C. — At a marketing campaign occasion the weekend earlier than South Carolina’s main election, Tom Rice, a conservative congressman now on the mistaken aspect of former President Donald J. Trump, supplied a confession.

“I made my next election a little bit harder than the ones in the past,” he stated on Friday, imploring his supporters — a bunch he known as “reasonable, rational folks” and “good, solid mainstream Republicans” — to assist him on the polls on Tuesday.

Two days earlier than and a few 100 miles south, Representative Nancy Mace, one other Palmetto State Republican who drew the previous president’s ire, acknowledged her place whereas knocking doorways on a sweltering morning.

“I accept everything. I take responsibility. I don’t back down,” she stated, assured that voters in her Lowcountry district could be sympathetic. “They know that ‘hey, even if I disagree with her, at least she’s going to tell me where she is,’” she added.

Ms. Mace and Mr. Rice are the previous president’s two targets for revenge on Tuesday. After a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, they have been amongst those that blamed the president for the assault. Ms. Mace, simply days into her first time period, stated that Mr. Trump’s false rhetoric concerning the presidential election being “stolen” had stoked the riot and threatened her life. Mr. Rice, whose district borders Ms. Mace’s to the north, instantly condemned Mr. Trump and joined 9 different Republicans (however not Ms. Mace) in later voting for his impeachment.

Now, in the face of main challenges backed by the previous president, the 2 have taken starkly completely different approaches to political survival. Ms. Mace has taken the enamel out of her criticisms of Mr. Trump, searching for as a substitute to debate her conservative voting file and libertarian streak in coverage discussions. Mr. Rice, as a substitute, has dug in, defending his impeachment vote and further excoriating Mr. Trump in the method.

Should they fend off their main challengers on Tuesday, Ms. Mace and Mr. Rice will be part of a rising record of incumbents who’ve endured the wrath of the G.O.P.’s Trump wing with out ending their political careers. Yet their conflicting methods — a mirrored image of each their political instincts and the differing politics of their districts — will provide a have a look at simply how far a candidate can go in their defiance of Mr. Trump.

In the eyes of her supporters, Ms. Mace’s previous feedback are much less concrete than a vote to question. She has aimed to enhance her relationship with pro-Trump parts of the G.O.P., spending almost daily of the previous a number of weeks on the marketing campaign path to remind voters of her Republican bona fides, not her unfiltered criticism of Mr. Trump.

“Everyone knows I was unhappy that day,” she stated of Jan. 6. “The entire world knows. All my constituents know.” 

Her district, which stretches from the left-leaning corners of Charleston to Hilton Head’s conservative nation golf equipment, has an citizens that features far-right Republicans and liberal Democrats. Ms. Mace has marketed herself not solely as a conservative candidate but additionally one who can defend the politically various district in opposition to a Democratic rival in November.

“It is and always will be a swing district,” she stated. “I’m a conservative, but I also understand I don’t represent only conservatives.”

That isn’t a constructive message for all in the Lowcountry, nonetheless.

Ted Huffman, proprietor of Bluffton BBQ, a restaurant nestled in the guts of Bluffton’s touristy city heart, stated he was supporting Katie Arrington, the Trump-backed former state consultant taking up Ms. Mace. What counted in opposition to Ms. Mace was not her feud with Mr. Trump however her relative absence in the restaurant’s half of the district, Mr. Huffman stated.

“Katie Arrington, she’s been here,” Mr. Huffman stated, recalling the few instances Ms. Arrington visited Bluffton BBQ. “I’ve never seen Nancy Mace.”

During a Summerville occasion with Nikki Haley, the previous South Carolina governor, Ms. Mace gave a stump speech that ran down a listing of right-wing speaking factors: excessive inflation pushed by President Biden’s financial agenda, an inflow of immigrants on the Southern border, assist for navy veterans. She didn’t point out Mr. Trump.

Ms. Mace predicts a decisive main win in opposition to Ms. Arrington, who has positioned her Trump endorsement on the heart of her marketing campaign message. A victory in the face of that, Ms. Mace stated, would show “the weakness of any endorsement.”

“Typically I don’t put too much weight into endorsements because they don’t matter,” she stated. “It’s really the candidate. It’s the person people are voting for — that’s what matters.”

Speaking from her entrance porch in Moncks Corner, S.C., Deidre Stechmeyer, a 42-year-old stay-at-home mom, stated she was not intently following Ms. Mace’s race. But when requested concerning the congresswoman’s feedback condemning the Jan. 6 riot, she shifted.

“That’s something that I agree with her on,” she stated, including that she supported Ms. Mace’s resolution to certify the Electoral College vote — a transfer that some in the G.O.P. have pointed to as a definitive betrayal of Mr. Trump. “There was just so much conflict and uncertainty. I feel like it should’ve been certified.”

Mr. Rice’s impeachment vote, however, presents a extra identifiable turnabout.

It’s half of the rationale Ms. Mace has a snug lead in her race, according to recent polls, whereas Mr. Rice faces much more main challengers and is most probably headed to a runoff with a Trump-endorsed state consultant, Russell Fry, after Tuesday.

Mr. Fry’s marketing campaign has centered Mr. Rice’s impeachment vote in its message, turning the vote right into a referendum on Mr. Rice’s 5 phrases in Congress.

“It’s about more than Donald Trump. It’s about an incumbent congressman losing the trust of a very conservative district,” stated Matt Moore, former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party and an adviser to Mr. Fry’s marketing campaign.

Still, Mr. Rice is betting on his hyper-conservative financial file and once-unapologetic assist of the previous president to win him a sixth time period in one of South Carolina’s most pro-Trump congressional districts.

In an interview, Mr. Rice famous the Republican Party’s shift towards pushing social points over coverage — one thing he stated had been pushed in half by the previous president’s wing of the get together, which helped redefine it.

He additionally laid out what the Republican Party ought to stand for: “less taxes, less government, more freedom, individual responsibility, the American Dream,” he stated. “If we’re not for that, then, gosh, I don’t know what the Republican Party’s about.”

The impeachment vote has additionally received him favor with some voters. Rick Giles, a Rice supporter in Conway, S.C., stated he admired Mr. Rice for his vote.

“He stood up to Trump when a lot of people didn’t,” Mr. Giles stated. “He stood on his values. He didn’t go with the party line. I like that.”

Mr. Rice’s district, in South Carolina’s northeast nook alongside the North Carolina border, is one of the state’s most conservative, favoring Republicans by almost 30 factors. And earlier than the impeachment vote, Mr. Rice was one of Mr. Trump’s most staunch supporters, with a voting file that matched Mr. Trump’s stance greater than 90 p.c of the time.

“It’s not about my voting record. It’s not about my support of Trump. It’s not about my ideology. It’s not because this other guy’s any good,” Mr. Rice stated. “There’s only one reason why he’s doing this. And it’s just for revenge.”

Mr. Trump has had much less success in the states on the root of his main challenger push. In Georgia, two of his most distinguished perceived enemies, Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, handily received their primaries in opposition to challengers backed by the previous president. The two House races the place he didn’t endorse incumbents have gone to a runoff.

Mark Sanford, a former congressman who was bested by Ms. Arrington in 2018 after Mr. Trump backed her main problem, predicted that Ms. Mace would prevail.

“I think she’ll be fine,” he stated, pointing to the state’s rising quantity of transplants from northern states who are inclined to favor institution candidates. “That bodes well for Nancy, it doesn’t bode well for Katie.”

Still, he stated, Tuesday’s final result is unlikely to alter the previous president’s method to politics.

“It’s binary with Trump,” Mr. Sanford stated. “You’re not halfway in, halfway out — you’re either in or out.”