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by MARK POWELL
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Want to play a fun game? For the next twelve days, count how many times South Carolina lieutenant governor Pamela Evette says the name “Trump” in her speeches and commercials. You’ll need a NASA calculator to keep track of a number that big.
Henry McMaster‘s No. 2 – who wants the top job herself – has made the president a perpetual presence in her campaign from the moment she entered the contest for the GOP nomination.
“She brings him up so often,” one political operative quipped, “I’m surprised she hasn’t legally changed her name to Pamela ‘I’m Trump’s Gal’ Evette. That would save her a lot of time on the stump.”
After securing his coveted endorsement in the run-up to Tuesday’s primary election, Evette has played the ‘Trump Card’ relentlessly ever since. Donald Trump, in turn, has amply rewarded her steadfast ring kissing with such largesse as participating in a tele-town hall meeting with her supporters Monday afternoon (something he hasn’t done often in 2026).
While Trump’s backing is a very big deal, it’s not the be-all some might think, either.
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“Here’s Evette’s problem,” a Washington D.C. pollster unaffiliated with any South Carolina campaign explained. “She’s at risk of becoming a one-trick pony. By now, her Trump endorsement has reached saturation among GOP voters. If she keeps on repeating it ad infinitum as she’s done the past two weeks, she runs the real risk of turning off the very people whose votes she needs now, more than ever. Because at this point, Evette is in danger of her message becoming, ‘president Trump blah-blah-blah; president Trump blah blah blah.’ A ‘been there, heard that before’ factor is coming into play. She needs to bolster her Trump messaging with a new element to make sure voters keep paying attention to her.”
That has some political pros now wondering: could that ‘new element’ be announcing her choice of running mate?
Her reported first choice, Henry McMaster, Jr. – the current governor’s son and namesake – imploded with the ferocity of the Hindenburg explosion. Burned by that debacle, Evette is said to be gun-shy of choosing a No. 2 of her own so close to the runoff election.
But the political landscape (and the dynamics that shape it) changed Tuesday night when the primary votes were counted.
State representative Jermaine Johnson not only clinched the Democrat Party’s gubernatorial nomination without a runoff, he totally obliterated his two wealthy, white opponents in the process.
“It wasn’t a primary,” one veteran Palmetto political observer told us; “it was a political tour de force.”
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RELATED | JERMAINE JOHNSON WINS DEMOCRAT NOMINATION
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Johnson is now the second black Democrat to secure his party’s gubernatorial nomination. The first was former state senator Theo Mitchell, who was easily dispatched by governor Carroll Campbell in 1990.
If Evette were facing just Johnson, that would be one thing. But race is now a quiet issue in the GOP camp as well. Attorney general Alan Wilson – who advanced to the runoff against Evette on Tuesday – named his running mate back in January. Wilson chose state senator Mike Reichenbach of Florence, who is also black.
“Race isn’t supposed to be a factor in this day and age,” the political strategist shared with us, “But the blunt truth is, it all too often still is.”
It also potentially impacts the calculus for Evette – who touted the value of diversity in her 2018 campaign for lieutenant governor.
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DEI “scourge”? Will the Real Lt. Governor please stand up… pic.twitter.com/WXmd16wRym
— Justin Bamberg, Esq. (@JustinBamberg) June 3, 2026
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“Does she, a white woman, want to face two minority rivals with a white running mate at her side?” the strategist mused.
There are also lingering headaches from the last lieutenant gubernatorial fiasco to consider.
“A bad aftertaste remains in the mouths of many South Carolina voters after the Evette-McMaster fiasco,” the pollster explained. “If she names her pick for lieutenant governor now, before the runoff, some voters will ask, ‘I wonder what kind of deal was struck this time around?’ Given how badly Evette and her campaign bungled the first go around, that would be a fair question.”
With little-known Lowcountry lawmakers Gil Gatch and James Teeple reportedly topping Evette’s list of contenders, she also must consider whether her choice will move the needle politically – especially with Wilson making a solid pick and Johnson reportedly contemplating a groundbreaking selection of his own in the general election.
Whatever she decides to do, time is not Evette’s friend. With the runoff’s one and only debate between her and Wilson scheduled for next Tuesday night (June 16, 2026) at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, the clock is ticking if she wants to make a move.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
J. Mark Powell is an award-winning former TV journalist, government communications veteran, and a political consultant. He is also an author and an avid Civil War enthusiast. Got a tip or a story idea for Mark? Email him at mark@fitsnews.com.
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3 comments
I hate to vote for Alan Wilson but like Nancy Mace, I will do anything to stop this person (and McMaster) being Governor.
At this point, an endorsement from Trump should be a campaign ender for a candidate, for any thinking person. Long before the current f’d up economy and uncalled for war that sent said economy into a tailspin, I was getting sick of Donald Trump selecting our state leaders for us. He fulfilled any obligation, real or imagined, to Henry McMaster when he appointed Haley as UN Ambassador. That got Henry two years inside the Governor’s Mansion he would never have seen, otherwise. Debt, real or imagined, PAID IN FULL.
But that wasn’t enough. Trump went on to endorse McMaster in two additional elections, sticking us with this retarded clown for a total of ten years. I have had enough of McMaster being the lapdog of Big Energy and the South Carolina Police State, which grows more powerful and omnipotent with each passing year. Hopefully, by now, many of the obedient sheep who dutifully voted for anyone Trump endorsed, will see his endorsements for what they are, an extension of his wannabe dictatorship or Kingdom.
Given the disaster that is Trump’s current term, I would never vote for someone he endorsed. Look at some of the turds he has endorsed in the past. John McCain, Doc Oz, Kevin McCarthy (for House Speaker), Lindsey Graham, and many others. Pam Evette and her followers, such as Gil Gatch and Luke Rankin, have the same dictatorial, “my way or the highway” attitude as Trumpstein. They want to punish SC State financially for daring to reject her as a commencement speaker when the graduating class understandably decided they wanted someone else to speak at their graduation. Seriously, what would a wrinkled old white woman with a Duby Bush blank stare, whose claim to fame was that she obediently sat quietly in the corner licking herself like a good lapdog for Henry McMaster, have to say that would inspire young Black students, as they prepare to enter the world with degrees they spent the last few years working hard to earn? She thought she had a captive audience which she could convince to vote for her, if they just listened to her prattle on about whatever at THEIR graduation. Now Pam and her crew want SC State punished for daring to work with the students on that issue.
No wonder Trump supports her. She wants to rule like him. “Absolute loyalty to me, or out you go!”
Good riddance to Nancy Mace and her flash-for-cash style.
There is such thing as a willing prostitute; and some, perhaps most, do it for sheer greed or to feed addictions.
As far as we know, NONE of Jeffrey Epstein’s “victims” was kidnapped or PHYSICALLY coerced into “service.”
NOT a defense of Jeffrey Epstein, but a realistic analysis of the whole sordid saga and of Nancy Mace’s cynical and hypocritical pushing for the release of the Epstein files under false pretext of defending his “survivors.”
Realistically, it appears that Jeffrey Epstein was more of a cold-eyed spy master than a compulsive pedophile.
The use of sex to extract one warrior’s secrets for the benefit of the opposing camp is as ancient as Delilah pillow-talking Samson into revealing the secret of his strength; and no state intelligence agency of ANY country ever disavowed it.
Perhaps those miffed at Nancy Mace’s obsession with release of the Epstein files were more worried about revelations of spy rings than sex rings.
And the release of the call wherein Nancy Mace tries to recruit a woman who never thought of herself as raped or as videotaped while being raped after being drugged COMPLETELY eliminates the idea that Nancy Mace is herself a rape survivor who is trying to protect other rape survivors.
A TRUE rape survivor would NOT be pushing other women to confabulate rape stories knowing that it inevitably CHEAPENS the suffering of REAL rape victims and prevents other rape allegations from being taken seriously.
And look at how quickly Nancy Mace threw herself at the feet of Alan Wilson, whom she had accused of being a pedophile-enabler.
That taped phone call trying to manufacture rape cases against Nancy Mace’s former fiance’s business associates is CLEARLY criminal and NOT protected by the speech-and-debate clause. The revelation of that call IF there really is NO VIDEO of the other woman being raped should, in an honest system, subject Nancy Mace to a criminal probe and to expulsion from Congress.
And who, in an honest world, would lead such efforts? Alan Wilson while still SCAG and Joe Wilson while still functioning in Congress after his stroke.
Is it any wonder that Nancy Mace’s concession announcement was preceded by her call “burying the hatchet” with Alan Wilson?
Nancy Mace is not a courageous survivor-protector; she is a cowardly and opportunistic survivor manipulator.