Lowcountry businesswoman Nancy Mace came within a half of a percentage point of winning the GOP primary election for South Carolina House District 99 (map) on Tuesday.
With all precincts in Berkeley and Charleston counties reporting, Mace received 1,290 votes – or 49.5 percent of all ballots cast for this vacant seat in the S.C. State House. Just thirteen more votes and she would have won the GOP nomination for this seat outright.
As it stands, Mace is headed for a runoff on November 28 against Mount Pleasant, S.C. undertaker and town councilman Mark M. Smith – who finished a distant second in the race with 714 votes (27.4 percent of all ballots cast).
According to state election law, partisan primary contests in which no candidate receives a majority of the votes cast on the first ballot advance to a runoff election two weeks later.
“Thankful. Grateful. Humble. Eager,” Mace said in a statement. “I’m ready to get to work on the next phase of the race and continue advancing the positive, substantive message of common sense conservatism.”
As noted on several previous occasions, we’re obviously biased towards Mace – a former co-owner of this news site.
As we wrote in our endorsement of her candidacy last week, “we’ve seen her skills at work, and we know how hard she works.”
Mace is perhaps best known around the state as the first woman to graduate from The Citadel, South Carolina’s prestigious government-run military academy. Since then she’s defined herself on multiple occasions as a badass businesswoman – erecting successful marketing and real estate practices from the ground up.
We know very little about Smith (aside from his longstanding relationship with former governor Nikki Haley) but we’ve got nothing bad to say about the guy.
He’s in a tough position, though …
Trailing Mace by 22 percentage points, he’ll need to go into her backyard in Berkeley County and pick up considerable support … while at the same time building on his smaller-than-expected lead in the Charleston County portion of this district.
Impossible? No. But exceedingly difficult considering the geography of this race.
Stay tuned … we’ll be interested in seeing how this runoff election unfolds.
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