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by WILL FOLKS
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Supporters of the two finalists for the historically decisive South Carolina Republican gubernatorial nomination woke up the morning after their primary victories spitting fire.
Backers of lieutenant governor Pamela Evette and attorney general Alan Wilson – who finished first and second in yesterday’s voting, respectively – made it abundantly clear the two week, head-to-head runoff election between the two statewide candidates would not be a friendly affair.
One camp indicated it planned on “smoking” its opponent – while the other vowed its rival would be “exposed.”
Translation? Buckle up, buttercups… things are about to get testy.
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In South Carolina partisan primaries, if no candidate receives a majority of votes on the first ballot then the top two vote-getters advance to a head-to-head runoff election two weeks later. With all precincts reporting yesterday, Evette received 136,390 votes (or 28.9% of ballots cast) compared to 123,559 votes (or 26.1% of ballots cast) for Wilson.
That means Evette and Wilson will face voters again on Tuesday, June 23, 2026 – with early voting available from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EDT on Wednesday and Thursday of next week (June 17-18, 2026), according to the S.C. State Election Commission (SCVotes). Ordinarily, early voting would have also been held on Friday, June 19 – but former president Joe Biden made Juneteenth a federal holiday five years ago.
Wilson backers believe they are in excellent position to defeat Evette, citing an internal survey from last week which showed the state’s top prosecutor enjoying a wide lead over status quo governor Henry McMaster‘s longtime second-in-command.
Per an Opinion Diagnostics poll taken from June 1-2, 2026, Wilson was backed by 48.3% of likely GOP primary voters in a head-to-head runoff against Evette, who was backed by 29.3% of respondents.
The remaining 22.4% of respondents were unsure of their choice.
Since that survey was taken, Wilson has received endorsements from two former candidates – state senator Josh Kimbrell and first district congresswoman Nancy Mace, who received 12.2% of the vote yesterday.
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“(We’re) gonna smoke her ass,” one Wilson backer told FITSNews.
Not so fast, Evette supporters countered. According to a source close to the lieutenant governor’s campaign, Wilson’s internal polling has been highly inaccurate – whereas data produced by Atlanta, Georgia-based strategist Robert Cahaly (dismissed earlier in the election as an outlier) wound up being “spot on.”
Evette backers added that the endorsement of president Donald Trump – which had a rocky rollout during the primary owing to allegations of a corrupt bargain – would be increasingly valuable to their candidate moving forward.
“They’re consistently underestimating the power of the Trump endorsement,” a source close to the Evette campaign told us. “Which is only going to be more impactful during the runoff.”
That observation was accompanied by this ominous warning…
“Alan Wilson is going to be exposed as the career politician and closet liberal that he is,” the source added. “He’s going to be exposed.”
Wilson and Evette are scheduled to debate next Tuesday evening (June 16, 2026) on the campus of Coastal Carolina University in Conway, S.C. For those of you keeping score at home, the winner of the GOP nomination hasn’t lost a governor’s race since 1998, when Democrat-turned-Republican David Beasley was defeated by Jim Hodges. That’s a streak of 28 years.
Democrats overwhelmingly chose state representative Jermaine Johnson as their nominee during yesterday’s primary. Johnson defeated a pair of wealthy, white challengers and awaits the winner of the Evette/Wilson runoff in the November election.
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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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1 comment
Is Evette actually going to show up at the debate? She chickened out of almost all of the other ones they had. When she speaks, her ignorance shows.