by WILL FOLKS
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South Carolina’s upcoming 2028 election cycle will pit an estranged spouse against her cheating husband for a Lowcountry Senate seat.
Charleston County school board trustee Michele Leber announced her intention to campaign against her husband – state senator Matt Leber – at a Voices of Hope conference held in Columbia, S.C. on Friday (October 16, 2026).
She confirmed her intentions in a subsequent interview with FITSNews.
“I’m running on family values and family court reform,” Michele Leber told us.
Michele Leber publicly accused her husband of infidelity last August. Specifically, she accused him of engaging in an extramarital affair with his political consultant, Rebecca Madsen. Michele Leber referred to Madsen as her husband’s “whore” – and claimed there were others with whom she was engaging in extramarital liaisons.
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“There are more married men,” she publicly alleged, referencing Madsen. “She has had multiple affairs and likely blackmail on others. Divorces coming!”
Madsen’s estranged husband, Rob Madsen, echoed the allegations against his now former wife in a comment left on social media at the time.
“Rebecca and I are in the middle of a divorce brought on by these types of issues,” he wrote on Facebook.
Matt Leber has since been accused of engaging in other extramarital relationships – allegedly using taxpayer resources to facilitate some of those rumored affairs.
The Lebers’ bitter breakup is the focus of a sealed family court case in Charleston County. It has also generated criminal charges.
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Last November, Michele Leber was arrested and charged with domestic violence in connection with an incident involving her husband. The school board leader was allegedly “intoxicated and disruptive” during the incident, “prompting the senator to record her behavior,” according to a report from the Carolina Courier.
Michele Leber told us her campaign will center on “modernizing South Carolina divorce law to protect individual liberty while preserving accountability for marital misconduct.” She wants state law to “protect the ability to pursue adultery claims when reconciliation has been attempted” and to “establish clearer boundaries for dating and personal relationships following one year of separation.”
Such reforms would “prevent divorce proceedings from creating indefinite restrictions on personal relationships.”
Michele Leber also said she hoped to help advance legislation targeting coercive control – an issue which gained significant attention following the 2024 death of Myrtle Beach, S.C. worship leader Mica Francis Miller.
Matt Leber is in his first term in the S.C. Senate after serving a single term in the S.C. House of Representatives from 2022-2024. He narrowly edged incumbent senator Sandy Senn in the 2024 GOP primary for S.C. Senate District 41 (.pdf) – and took office in November 2024 following a decisive general election victory. Michele Leber won a seat on Charleston County’s school board that same year, and has focused her efforts on using AI to improve academic outcomes.
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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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