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by DYLAN NOLAN
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Four Republican candidates vying for South Carolina’s governorship laid out their visions for the state’s future at the Dorchester County GOP‘s annual Faith, Family, and Freedom dinner on Saturday (August 16, 2025). The event featured stump-speeches from most of the race’s top contenders, but conspicuously failed to feature Lowcountry congresswoman Nancy Mace, arguably the frontrunner in the race.
Lieutenant governor Pamela Evette began the night by emphasizing her business background.
“I’m a conservative businesswoman, I’m a mom of three, and I’m the only one that hasn’t spent my life in the political arena,” she stated.
Evette highlighted her support for president Donald Trump noting, “I was the only person standing right by his side,” when he announced his 2023 presidential candidacy in South Carolina.
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“For six and a half years, I’ve traveled the state, I’ve listened more than I spoke,” Evette told FITSNews in an interview prior to the event. “I’ve been impactful. I’ve come up with initiatives. I haven’t sat on a table and beat my chest about the things that I’ve accomplished, but I’ll talk about that in the months to come and hope to earn everybody’s vote.”
FITSNews asked Evette whether she believed South Carolinian’s notorious dislike of people from her home state of Ohio would hold her back.
“So this came up eight years ago when I first started to run,” she said, recalling a joke made at the time by governor Henry McMaster.
“The governor kind of laughed when somebody asked him, and he said, ‘you know what, you can’t blame her for that – she just wanted to be born wherever her mother was, and she just happened to be in Ohio,’ and everybody laughed,” Evette recalled. “But what I’m telling you is, out of all the places in the world I could have come, I came to South Carolina.”
“I built my business here,” she continued. “I turned it into a national company here. I created good paying jobs here. I raised my children here, and then I left my business that was thriving and growing to serve the people of South Carolina, and that was all by my choice, not because I needed to do it, and so I think that earned me my Palmetto tree.”
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Upstate senator and gubernatorial hopeful Josh Kimbrell took the stage after Evette, bringing the ardor and energy of an impassioned preacher to his political rhetoric.
“This is a spiritual battle going in this country,” Kimbrell said. “This is now good versus evil, liberty versus tyranny, right versus wrong. If you don’t have faith, you cannot maintain freedom. Because freedom requires us to believe in something greater than ourselves.”
While Evette took political pot-shots at the upcoming speakers, Kimbrell took the opposite approach and renounced negative campaigning.
“One of the reasons I have refused to be nasty in this campaign to anybody else is because I know what it’s like to be shot at,” he said.
Kimbrell is well aware of what it’s like to take political, and legal, fire having recently been accused of fraud by a former business partner.
Kimbrell declined FITSNews‘ request to speak at the event. Kimbrell did however appear in the our studio prior to to these allegations to discuss his vision for the state in a full length interview.
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Next up, South Carolina attorney general Alan Wilson began his address by recounting his experience commanding a convoy through an improvised explosive device (IED) attack in Iraq as a U.S. Army officer.
“The IED went off and it destroyed the vehicle behind me, and it sent shrapnel through my vehicle,” he said. “As the commander, I got on the radio and began to call out for soldiers to come in and secure the vehicle so we could get the soldiers out before it exploded. Soot and smoke enveloped the entire Humvee. My ears were ringing. There was total pandemonium on the radios, and as I began to bark orders, I watched as three young soldiers entered the kill zone and pulled those drivers out of that vehicle.”
Wilson told the audience the truck exploded less than a minute after his men got the driver out of the cab.
Wilson, who told the story at the tail end of his gubernatorial announcement speech, moved it to the front of his stump speech in order to emphasize his experience as a leader in high-stakes situations.
“When you have made decisions that are life and death decisions, making political decisions or making policy decisions or legislative decisions, pales in comparison,” he said. “I have actually been in combat and led soldiers. I know what it I know what it takes to be a leader and make the decisions that people are not willing to make.”
Wilson spoke at the event despite having lost his voice just days before, and told FITSNews that even though he sounded rough he is “feeling good” and “in this race for the long haul.”
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??Foul language warning: An intoxicated tirade aimed at a man’s dog? That’s a new low, even for South Carolina Democrats. @fitsnews pic.twitter.com/fIWYAhrGD5
— Alan Wilson (@AGAlanWilson) August 15, 2025
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FITSNews also followed up with Wilson about an explicative-laced tirade leveled against him by top Democratic candidate Mullins McLeod when he was arrested earlier this year for screaming psychotically on the Charleston battery.
“First off, I am honored that I’m being attacked by Democrats who are going to be running against me in the general election – that means they’re thinking about me in the general election,” Wilson said.
McLeod’s rant also hilariously implied that Wilson’s German Shepherd is not really his dog, but a mere political prop.
“Lucy is our German Shepherd,” Wilson said. “She’ll be seven years old in two weeks, if you want to see a picture of her and our three legged cat Danger sleeping on the couch last night they were snuggling, so I took a picture of it. I have that to show the viewers at home if they don’t believe that I actually have a German Shepherd.”
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Fifth district congressman Ralph Norman was the last gubernatorial hopeful to speak, emphasizing both his business successes and his willingness to slaughter the sacred cows of Columbia’s political class.
“I am the only candidate in this race that’s got a solid business career and a solid conservative record,” Norman began.
Norman argued his financial independence allows for his resistance to the entities that most politicians are beholden to.
“I owe nothing to lobbyists,” he said. “I owe nothing to the political elite that have ruled this state.”
Norman then decried “how a group of trial lawyers through the judicial merit selection committee are picking our judges.”
FITSNews asked Norman what he believes sets him apart from his rivals prior to the event.
“What separates me from anybody else is conservatism: less taxes, less government, less regulations – what Republicans campaign on and then falter once they get in office,” he said. “I’ve stood the test of time. I don’t talk the talk, I walk the walk. I’m a business guy. I didn’t make a living getting a paycheck from the government.”
“All of my campaign will be based on getting South Carolina ready to compete and really be ready for the flood of people that are coming to our area – it’s got to be conservative government,” Norman added.
We also asked Norman, who threatened to primary recalcitrant Republicans to effect his agenda if need be, specifically what he believes lawmakers need to do differently in Columbia.
“Let me give you a prime example, recently in Congress I said that we need to redistrict Jim Clyburn’s district. We have six conservative Republicans, one Jim Clyburn, who I like – he’s a friend of mine, but he votes wrong for his people, he voted for Joe Biden, who let in illegals across the country that not only killed Americans, but took jobs from Americans. He was cognitively impaired. He basically derailed this country. He appointed a Supreme Court justice that couldn’t define what a woman was. All that to say is his votes are just opposite what South Carolina is, so let’s get seven Republicans,” Norman argued.
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RELATED | NANCY MACE LAUNCHES GUBERNATORIAL CAMPAIGN
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As noted, conspicuously absent from the event was congresswoman Nancy Mace, who was disinvited from the event after criticizing Dorchester County sheriff Sam Richardson on social media. We asked DCGOP chairman C.J. Westfall about the decision not to invite Mace after he proclaimed “the next governor of South Carolina is in the room tonight,” multiple times throughout the event.
“The main thing that unites Republicans in Dorchester County is our support for our law enforcement and our overwhelming support for our sheriff Sam Richardson, who earned 74% of the vote – the widest margin by any sheriff in the history of our county, and was also recently awarded local elected official of the year by the SCGOP,” Westfall told FITSNews.
“We do not tolerate attacks on law enforcement in our community, and when Nancy Mace decided to attack our sheriff and our hard working law enforcement officers in Dorchester County, we made a decision that we wanted to skip the drama that she brings and not invite her to this year’s event,” Westfall explained.
Westfall emphasized that “in years past, we rolled out the red carpet for Nancy, even when it wasn’t a popular thing to do, we have treated her with nothing but respect.”
“She is welcome to re-attend Dorchester County Republican Party functions when she publicly apologizes to Sam Richardson on every social media platform that she attacked him on,” Westfall said. “Once that’s done, we’ll be happy to welcome her back where she’s always been welcomed.”
Mace’s campaign disputed Westfall’s contention.
“Congresswoman Mace has never criticized sheriff Richardson on social media,” her spokeswoman, Sydney Long, told us. “To claim otherwise is false. This is just another example of a mid-level, establishment insider inventing drama to attack her while voters across South Carolina continue to rally behind Nancy Mace – the candidate leading in the polls and the candidate who will put South Carolina first.”
Count on FITSNews to continue tracking the latest developments in the upcoming governor’s race as part of our Crossroads 2026 coverage…
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
(Via: Travis Bell)
Dylan Nolan is the director of special projects at FITSNews. He graduated from the Darla Moore school of business in 2021 with an accounting degree. Got a tip or story idea for Dylan? Email him here. You can also engage him socially @DNolan2000.
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4 comments
Whoever gets elected will do so kneeling at the feet of a sexual abuser, convicted felon, friend of a convicted pedophile and sex trafficker, and a perv who brags about walking into a teen pageant dressing room while girls are changing because he owns the pageant.
Tell us again how you are all for the “rule of law” and want to protect girls.
Spineless shameless hypocritical weasels, all of them.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Does Alan Wilson have permanent RBF?
McMaster steps down as Governor cause he is term limited and old as dirt, the current AG (son of an old as dirt congressman) wants to be governor and the son of the old as dirt governor wants to be AG. All without leaving the same box seat of first presbyterian church, where the earth is 5,000 years old, god doesnt want women to talk to men and everyone else is definitely going to hell. How could this go wrong for the little guy?
My take:
1) Evette is the only true business person who built an empire from the ground up. She is not a career politician like most of the others. She has a proven track record as a businessperson and a leader. Well suited to be a governor.
2) Norman is a career politician who hasn’t accomplished JACK in SC or DC. Never passed a bill. Most of all, when he had a chance to do something, he left investors holding the bag- no respect. Career politician. Nothing accomplished. Doesn’t fight for those who took an investment risk. His only vision is growing his ego. Just because dad gave you success doesn’t mean you succeeded. 3) Alan Wilson is a veteran with numerous years fighting for taxpayers. Sincere. But does he have the intellectual capacity to succeed? 4) Kimbrell can be a nice guy, but you can’t run a state if you can’t run a company and get sued by partners. 5) Nancy Mace has been planning her political career for a decade. Destroying others needlessly. Posing in questionable videos, etc. 6) Norman will pick the little Cromer girl as his running mate. She has zero credibility in Columbia. She has failed so often in real life, her insecurities are visible in her rude behavior. Therapy would be her best decision.
You tell me the safe bet. More than likely the proven business leader, Pam Evette, who built an enormous business with her husband and seems to build consensus everywhere she goes. Wilson would be second do to fighting in the courts on behalf of the state. Mace, undeserving would fall third bc of name idea for political stunts. Kimbrell has no chance. Norman’s lack of success and being an opportunist will undo his bid quickly.