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by MARK POWELL
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And then there were five…
Upstate state Sen. Josh Kimbrell suspended his longshot bid for the Republican gubernatorial nomination just six days before the state primary election.
In a brief video posted on Facebook Wednesday night (June 3, 2026), the second-term lawmaker from Boiling Springs, S.C. acknowledged his candidacy was cooked – bemoaning the current contest’s lack of civility and blaming “absolutely libelous attacks” for his failure to launch.
“Didn’t work out for me this time because of a myriad of factors, including some of the nastiest politics I’ve ever experienced in my life,” Kimbrell said. “Total slander and absolute libelous attacks against my family and me from the day I decided to get into this race back in early June of 2025.”
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Kimbrell’s campaign was hamstrung from the very outset. Shortly after announcing his bid, a nasty spat with a former business partner in a private aviation company Kimbrell once managed became public. Allegations of financial misconduct led to a messy lawsuit, with Kimbrell filing an official complaint against two high-profile attorneys in the matter. Then, this news outlet reported late last month that agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had conducted at least one interview in a criminal aspect reportedly connected with the situation.
“It was like running with a piano chained to his back,” one long-time Palmetto politico observed. “He never could get out from under its shadow. It’s hard to win votes at the same time you’re trying to convince folks you didn’t do anything wrong.”
Kimbrell’s polling and fundraising were lackluster from the beginning. Invited to participate in the first two of the three SCGOP candidate debates this spring, he was excluded from the third because his campaign did not meet the qualifying criteria. He did appear in a debate last Monday hosted by SCETV along with two of his opponents; three others skipped it.
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Normally, the exit of a candidate polling only in the single digits (and the low single digits at that) would barely be a blip on the political radar. But this is no normal primary campaign. Less than a week out, none of the five remaining candidates seems to have a path to winning the gubernatorial nomination outright. Additionally, polling shows an unusually large bloc of undecided Republican voters just days before Primary Day, and a myriad of polling results showing a more or less dead heat among the remaining pack.
Meaning that even a group as small as Kimbrell’s base now takes on outsized significance.
“I’m assessing where I go and who I support for governor next, who I think will carry forward an agenda of pro-family, pro-free markets, pro-limited government in our state.”
Whichever candidate secures that backing could find themselves the recipient of a small but crucial voter windfall that could very well come in handy on Tuesday 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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1 comment
This falls squarely into the “better late than never” category. I doubt, however, that Mr. Kimbrell’s time in the spotlight has ended … see all those “lawfare” (is that REALLY a word?) issues still pending.