Crossroads 2026: Nancy Mace Boasts $1.1 Million Haul

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by WILL FOLKS

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South Carolina congresswoman Nancy Mace – the current frontrunner to claim the Palmetto State’s governor’s mansion in 2026 – is the early favorite on the fundraising front as well.

Mace’s campaign announced raising $1 million in eight weeks from 19,000 donors, according to a release.

“This campaign is powered by the people,” Mace said in a statement announcing her massive haul. “From day one, we started at zero, no self-funding, no loans, no transfers, just normal, everyday hard-working people. In just two months, more than 19,000 donations have massively fueled our run for governor.”

Updated reports put her total at $1.1 million with contributions received from more than 20,000 donors, according to campaign spokeswoman Piper Gifford. That bodes well for a candidate who already enjoys a substantial edge over her rivals in name identification amongst GOP primary voters, if early polls are to be believed.

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Mace’s numbers are for the third quarter of 2025 – or the period running from the beginning of July through the end of September. As our audience will recall, Mace did not formally launch her candidacy for governor until early August – the last major candidate to throw her hat in the ring. That means she had just two months during which to raise funds, unlike her announced opponents.

“They had all year to raise,” one Mace backer told us. “She was not allowed to make the first donor call until she got in.”

Joining Mace in the race for governor are fourth-term S.C. attorney general Alan Wilson, veteran fifth district congressman Ralph Norman and lieutenant governor Pamela Evette. So far, none of those campaigns have released any news related to their third quarter fundraising totals. State senator Josh Kimbrell is also running for governor, but he has been mired in scandal and has thus far reported raising only a few thousand dollars.

Official campaign finance reports for the third quarter are due to the S.C. State Ethics Commission (SCSEC) by October 10, 2025. Those documents will show how much money candidates raise, who contributed to them, how much they spent and to whom they cut checks. They will also show how much money each campaign has on hand for the remaining eight months of the election.

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What won’t they show? Dark money… or spending on behalf of candidates by various political action committees. This secretive spending was in sharp focus last week when a committee supporting Evette’s candidacy was forced to pull a television advertisement from the airwaves amid alleged dishonesty over an implied endorsement from governor Henry McMaster.

McMaster, a status quo politician who has held the governor’s office since January 2017, has not endorsed anyone in the race – and has no immediate plans to do so, sources familiar with his thinking have confirmed to FITSNews.

Sources close to several of Mace’s rivals said they believed each of the four major campaigns would post “solid numbers” for the third quarter. They also speculated Mace’s official report would reveal a higher “burn rate” – i.e. that her campaign would show more expenses and less cash on hand than her competitors.

Is that speculation accurate? We shall see when the official reports are filed next week…

While Mace does have the early edge in name identification and support, per early polls, it is worth noting both Evette and Norman are independently wealthy and have the ability to self-fund their campaigns should they choose to do so. Wilson also has an impressive national network given his leadership role with various national attorneys general organizations – and the fact his father, congressman Joe Wilson, has been in the U.S. congress for a quarter century.

The formal filing period for next spring’s partisan primary elections begins in March, with the primary itself scheduled for June 9, 2026. If no candidate wins a majority of votes in that election, a runoff race would be held two weeks later (on June 23, 2026). As noted, the GOP primary is the race to watch in South Carolina. Democrats haven’t won a gubernatorial race in the Palmetto State since 1998 – and haven’t won a statewide election since 2006. In other words, the GOP nominee is all but assured of prevailing in the general election next November.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…

Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.

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