Just under two weeks before the Republican primary for governor, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette of South Carolina clinched what she had long worked for: an endorsement from President Trump.
But in a crowded field of ambitious conservatives who had similar platforms, that was not enough for an outright victory on Tuesday night. Ms. Evette will now face Alan Wilson, the state attorney general who has prioritized his messaging around affordability, in a runoff later this month, according to The Associated Press.
The second round, on June 23, pits a Trump-backed candidate against a popular attorney general in a state that voted for the president three times in the general election, and was quick to embrace his Make America Great Again movement a decade ago. It will be another high-profile test of Mr. Trump’s political sway, which has had mixed results in races elsewhere in the country.
In South Carolina, voters appeared to be more concerned about who could steer their state and its ballooning population through infrastructure troubles and rising costs. And in interviews, they made a distinction between state and federal leadership. At Ms. Evette’s watch party on Tuesday night, one of the loudest cheers from the audience came after her pledge to fix roads.
As of Tuesday night, her portion of the vote hovered just below 30 percent. Mr. Wilson was not far behind, with about 26 percent. South Carolina has elected only Republican governors since 2002, meaning the winner of the runoff is likely to become governor.
Ms. Evette said that Mr. Trump called her on Tuesday evening, telling her that “we are going to fight, and we are going to win this runoff” — a sentiment she echoed to supporters at the watch party in Greenville. And she was quick to take aim at Mr. Wilson, framing their runoff as a contest between “a Trump-endorsed businesswoman” and a “career politician who won’t take a stand.”
Mr. Wilson has also made his loyalty to the president abundantly clear. He has a “Trump Tough” section on his campaign website, and he frequently praised the president during appearances on the trail. But Ms. Evette had gone even further throughout her campaign, regularly sharing photos of herself with Mr. Trump in dispatches. Some voters believed she had gotten his support before it was actually official.
Representative Nancy Mace, whose political shape-shifting and name-calling earned her national notoriety, had also courted Trump supporters but fell short in her quest for the governorship. A second sitting member of the House, Ralph Norman, who belongs to the conservative House Freedom Caucus, also failed to make the runoff, as did Rom Reddy, a millionaire who had pitched himself as a political outsider.
Mr. Wilson wasted no time trying to win their support on Tuesday night, saying that his campaign “is your team” and adding that “I will fight for you and your family.”
Mr. Reddy said at his watch party in Mount Pleasant, S.C., on Tuesday night that he would not make an endorsement.
An Ohio-born businesswoman, Ms. Evette has served as lieutenant governor alongside Gov. Henry McMaster since 2019. Mr. McMaster, the state’s longest-serving governor, cannot run again because of term limits. Ms. Evette has sought to present herself as the obvious successor to help manage the state’s growth.
Mr. McMaster also endorsed her, and the president suggested in his endorsement announcement that Ms. Evette tap the governor’s son, Henry McMaster Jr., as her second in command.
That fueled backlash among Ms. Evette’s opponents, who accused her of negotiating a backroom deal. Ms. Evette denied those claims and said she would not pick her running mate until after the primary. The younger Mr. McMaster later removed himself from consideration.
Mr. Wilson, a National Guard veteran, said in an interview this month that while South Carolinians loved the president and his agenda, “they’re not going to vote for someone simply because they were able to orchestrate an endorsement based on a deal.”
The crowded primary became ugly and personal at times. But at least one losing candidate, Ms. Mace, said on Tuesday that she had “buried the hatchet” with Mr. Wilson as she endorsed him in the runoff.
“I want a law-and-order governor, and that law-and-order governor is going to be Alan Wilson,” she told supporters at a watch party in Charleston.
Mr. Wilson, who had tussled with Ms. Mace early on in the campaign, asked her to help his prospective administration deal with cases involving accused sexual predators, she said. Ms. Mace, who has been open about being a trauma survivor, had been a key figure pushing for the release of the Epstein files.
She repeatedly suggested that she had lost Mr. Trump’s support because of the Epstein files. On Tuesday night, she doubled down.
“I chose to expose the abusers of children and, apparently, I chose wrong if the goal was winning an election,” she told supporters. “I’m at peace with that.”
The winner of the runoff will face State Representative Jermaine Johnson, who clinched the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.
Tiffany Tan contributed reporting from Charleston, S.C.
