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by MARK POWELL
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Elections are, like history, 20/20 in hindsight. Looking back, it all seems so apparent what would happen. Because once the outcome is known, the pieces retroactively all fall into place.
Yet, as is so often the case in life, things are seldom that obvious at first glance. Skill, determination, discipline, and let’s face it — basic blind luck — all come into play.
This first contest in 16 years in which an incumbent wasn’t seeking reelection as governor of South Carolina promised to be a doozy. And it certainly delivered. Though not in ways many folks could have imagined 18 months back. So, how did Alan Wilson do it? What was the secret sauce that enabled him to overcome a quintet of Republican rivals, some quite wealthy, others who were political powerhouses and a few who were both?
“It was a combination of factors,” a national GOP strategist in Washington unaffiliated with any campaign told us.
“There are the obvious nuts and bolts things,” the strategist said. “Statewide name recognition from having been attorney general for 15 years. A political organization of his own, bolstered by that of his father (congressman Joe Wilson) in the Midlands. Proven ability as a fundraiser. A solid campaign structure — all those fundamentals were in place and served him well in the primary.”
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But these alone don’t explain his eventual triumph. Because if you hop into the Wayback Machine and revisit the first weeks of 2025, Wilson’s candidacy was far from a sure thing.
The South Carolina GOP was (and is) in a restive mood. Nearly a full decade of Henry McMaster’s lackluster leadership had many Republicans itching for change. Not just change of the people at the top of the totem pole, but change in the state’s direction as well. Decades of inactivity in Columbia had produced little more than lip service on essential issues such as government reform and transparency, deteriorating roads and infrastructure, judicial reform, and the General Assembly’s increasing sense of entitlement.
In short, many folks were in the mood for something different. And at that very moment, up rode congresswoman Nancy Mace. However, Mace brought with her a variety of “different” that went far beyond anything Palmetto politics had ever seen.
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Mace fired the campaign’s opening shot in the most unlikely way – and in the most unlikely setting. Her so-called “scorched earth” speech – delivered on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington – was a first for South Carolina. Widely viewed at the time as a preemptive strike aimed at crippling Wilson before he could even come out of the starting gate, she accused him of failing to prosecute sexual assault cases, allegations the attorney general described as “categorically false.”
Mace continued beating the drum throughout that spring and summer, even going so far as saying, “Alan Wilson protects pedophiles, not children.”
“She plunged into the deep end with sheer ferocity,” the strategist explained. “She didn’t know when to say ‘when,’ so she went too far. And it boomeranged on her. She wound up creating a backlash of sympathy for Wilson. Then she had her early meltdown at the Charleston airport that fall. Once word of that embarrassing incident got out, the Fat Lady began singing for Mace’s campaign.”
Around the same time, Lowcountry multi-millionaire Rom Reddy was staying remarkably busy. Inspired by the Trump Administration’s DOGE efforts in Washington, the diminutive Indian-Italian spearheaded the creation of a DOGESC to replicate reforms in the Palmetto State. At first, it appeared poised to produce practical results for the reform movement.
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But then, toward the close of the March 2026 filing window, Reddy switched gears and suddenly plunged into the GOP gubernatorial race.
“That left a big swath of initial DOGESC supporters feeling like they’d been duped and played for fools,” the strategist explained. “However, Reddy hung on to just enough of them to give his candidacy a foothold among the party’s right flank. And he had — and readily used — his immense personal resources to win over new converts while largely escaping unassailed himself.”
Reddy’s entry into the race seriously upset the political calculus of another gubernatorial aspirant. Congressman Ralph Norman, a staunch member of the congressional Freedom Caucus and guiding force in the creation of the S.C. Freedom Caucus, staked out an early claim to the party’s right flank.
“It was a stake Wilson couldn’t erode because of having been in Columbia for so long, but Reddy could,” the strategist pointed out. “In the end, Reddy’s quixotic candidacy was one of the decisive factors in this campaign. Because when the primary votes were counted on June 9, Reddy had peeled away just enough of Norman’s supporters to deny him a shot at making it to the runoff.”
(It should be noted that another conservative contender, state senator Josh Kimbrell, also fought for support among the right. However, Kimbrell quickly became mired in litigation surrounding personal business matters, and his campaign never got off the ground.)
That left just one challenger, the one Wilson would ultimately face in the June 23 runoff: incumbent lieutenant governor Pamela Evette. She was openly the candidate of the GOP establishment. She didn’t distance herself from governor McMaster’s result-challenged record as governor; she openly embraced it. Her message essentially boiled down to, “If you like what you’ve got for the last 10 years from Henry, you’ll love what you’ll get from me.”
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Broadly implying from the very outset that she was running as the Donald Trump and McMaster-backed candidate in the race, Evette eventually came to be viewed as such.
“So much so that when those endorsements finally came, neither carried much of a wallop,” the strategist said. “They landed like wet noodles on the kitchen floor.”
Then there were the Evette campaign’s tactical mistakes. She skipped the first and third encounters in the trio of SCGOP-sponsored debates during the spring, the very time voters were focusing on the upcoming election.
“The thinking likely was to keep her undamaged above the fray so she would be in a good position to run the ball to the end zone once she officially got Trump’s endorsement,” the strategist added.
The story of how badly Evette’s campaign bungled the rollout of Trump’s seal of approval, which finally came on May 29, is so widely known it need not be repeated here. Suffice it to say that it ultimately left Evette in a weakened position; there was nothing new to propel her candidacy forward into the final stretch. Additionally, the clumsily inept handling of the reported Henry McMaster, Jr. running-mate debacle left a large chunk of GOP voters at least soured on her and, at worst, angrily mistrustful of her.
“Then, just when it mattered most, the breaks all started coming Alan Wilson’s way,” the strategist continued.
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The acrimony that had been seething between Norman and Reddy spilled into the open in the race’s last weeks. Mace had long since toned down her vilification of Wilson, even thanking him during the second debate for calling her after her father had passed away.
“Especially important,” the strategist continued, “was how he kept his cool when Trump finally endorsed Evette. He merely shrugged and essentially said, ‘I’m going to keep fighting for Donald Trump’s agenda.’ That was an especially smart move, because candidates who blast him after he endorses their opponent get the unpleasant task of discovering just how cold and lonely life can instantly become in a Republican Party controlled by Trump. Wilson steered clear of that trap.”
That approach paid off for him, too, when he received Trump’s “co-endorsement” the Friday evening before the runoff, pulling the final rug out from under Evette.
However, by that point, it didn’t matter. Kimbrell had endorsed Wilson when he suspended his campaign before the primary. Mace endorsed him when she conceded on the primary night; Norman followed suit a few days later.
Only Reddy refused to back anyone…
By then, “Big Mo,” as George H.W. Bush once famously labeled campaign momentum, was in Wilson’s favor.
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RELATED | ALAN WILSON STORMS TO S.C. GOP GUBERNATORIAL NOMINATION
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So just what, exactly, was the secret to Wilson’s success? The strategist attributed it to two things.
“First and foremost, he was the adult in the room throughout the majority of the 18-month campaign. He didn’t get down in the mud and respond in kind when Mace was repeatedly disparaging him. He didn’t take the bait and fire back when others snidely derided him as a ‘Low T’ (low testosterone) candidate. True, he threw a few elbows here and there along the way. But for the most part, he avoided tit-for-tat name-calling, and that worked to his advantage.”
Another approach, the strategist concluded, was critical.
“It should be Politics 101 in states that have a runoff, but you’d be surprised by how very often this simple basic fact is overlooked. Wilson’s people superbly positioned him to be the second choice among many Kimbrell, Mace, Norman, and Reddy supporters. They looked at him and thought, ‘I’m still with my candidate, but I see things in Wilson I like. I can get part of what I had hoped for from my candidate with Wilson.’ So when their candidate endorsed, it was easy for them to get behind Wilson.”
“And that,” the strategist concluded, “is how you wind up with a 68.56% victory margin on runoff night.”
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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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