BEAUFORT — The day after Republican Nancy Mace narrowly won a South Carolina congressional seat back for the GOP in 2020, she called the chairman of the Beaufort County Republican Party.
Mace was overjoyed, the local party leader said, as she told him she had Beaufort County to thank, comparing the conservative stronghold to "an oasis" and saying Republican voters there had "made the difference."
"You'd think it was right outside the Pearly Gates, the way she described it," said Kevin Hennelly, the Beaufort County Republican Party chairman. Then, with a knowing chuckle, he added, "But I already knew that."
Located about 70 miles southwest of Charleston, Beaufort County is home to booming waterfront communities and popular resort areas packed with conservative retirees, golf courses, gated communities and military families and veterans. And on June 14, in one of this year's most closely watched Republican congressional primaries, Beaufort County might play a surprisingly influential role in determining whether Mace survives a challenge from the right led by her Trump-backed Republican challenger Katie Arrington.
A newly redrawn 1st Congressional District map left Beaufort County fully intact while cutting out some Charleston suburbs with more moderate voters. That, combined with a massive and well-organized county GOP, might finally transform Beaufort from a reliable conservative voting bloc into an outcome-defining roar.
"It tends to be overlooked, but Beaufort County offers a distinct opportunity," S.C. GOP Chairman Drew McKissick said.
With its combination of retiree havens in fast-growing areas like Bluffton and Hilton Head, politics — much like pickleball — isn't just an interest or casual hobby; it's what people do in Beaufort County, McKissick said.
"I know several personal friend groups down there who get together before every primary cycle and will basically all decide and bring to the table which candidates in other races around the country they want to get involved in and all max out (donations) to," McKissick said. He noted one group raised close to $100,000 in 2014 for Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton's first U.S. Senate bid.
"They're just that politically minded down there," McKissick said.
Beaufort County Republicans aren't sitting on the sidelines for the upcoming GOP congressional primary either, Hennelly said. Since becoming the county's GOP chairman in early 2019, Hennelly has been laser-focused on fortifying Beaufort County as a GOP powerhouse he hopes will soon rival the conservative clout of Greenville and Myrtle Beach.
To drive home the party's mission, he began showing a slide at committee meetings with just two words on it: "Grow" and "Win."
It's working.
In 2019, the Beaufort County Republican Party had 185 dues-paying members. Today, it has 951 — a more than 400 percent increase in less than three years.Â
And those members, Hennelly said, are engaged in the current congressional race. They're phone-banking, sending postcards, talking to friends, hosting candidates in their homes and encouraging other Republicans to not only hear from Arrington and Mace, but to then go out and vote in the June 14 primary just over a week away.
Had Beaufort been this organized in 2018, Hennelly said the seat would never have fallen out of Republican control and into the hands of one-term congressional Democrat Joe Cunningham.
This time, he's certain Beaufort County will be the decider.
"The candidate that wins Beaufort, I believe, wins this race," he said.
Both candidates camping in Beaufort
There are outward signs both candidates are recognizing Beaufort's political power.Â
During the Memorial Day weekend, Mace and Arrington were getting facetime with voters in Beaufort County.
On the holiday itself, Mace attended the Sun City Veterans Association Memorial Day event in the morning and American Legion Post 205 in Bluffton in the afternoon. The same day, Arrington addressed voters at private homes in Berkeley Hall and Hampton Hall, two private golf communities.
While standing on a debate stage two weeks ago in downtown Charleston, Arrington made at least four direct appeals to Beaufort County during the only televised debate of the primary.Â
She thanked "the Beaufort group," referring to Friends for Liberty, for their role in advocating for South Carolina's election reform legislation that makes voting more secure, restricts voting by mail and establishes early in-person voting. (The grassroots group has also endorsed Arrington in the contest.)
When asked how she would represent a diverse population, Arrington name-dropped St. Helena Island, a Beaufort County sea island, and held up the African American leader of the Beaufort County Young Republicans as an example of how the GOP base is "not determined by someone's race or their sex."
Arrington, a former state lawmaker from Summerville who made history when she unseated Republican congressman Mark Sanford, already knows the kind of power this county can hold in a GOP primary.Â
In 2018, Beaufort County was where Arrington ran up her margins against Sanford, besting the incumbent here by nearly 11 percentage points despite the region being home to Coosaw Plantation, the Sanford family farm. This go-round, Arrington's campaign confirmed they are betting on the county to deliver again.
"Beaufort County is without a doubt critical to winning this election," Arrington campaign spokesman Chris D'Anna said. "The voters in Beaufort tend to be more conservative than other parts of the district, and they are very in tune with what is going on politically. They are too smart to believe the D.C. Doublespeak Nancy Mace spews to them."
While far from scientific, D'Anna pointed to a straw poll conducted by the Beaufort County Republican Party ahead of a candidate forum last month. When the results came in, some 80 percent of the nearly 300 people in the room said they'd vote for Arrington if the election were held today.Â
That could spell trouble for Mace.
Mace needs Beaufort
Though Mace easily secured her party's nomination in 2020 in a crowded four-person contest, Beaufort emerged as the lone trouble spot in her overwhelming GOP primary victory.Â
The 7,908 votes she collected across Beaufort County that year was more than her three opponents combined. But Mace also won 1,343 fewer votes than Arrington received in that county in 2018, suggesting her 2020 GOP win didn't shore up the same level of support and excitement that Arrington's 2018 message did.
But in the general election contests of 2018 and 2020, both Arrington and Mace enjoyed the same 9 percentage point advantage over Democrat Joe Cunningham in Beaufort County. Arrington lost her race by 3,982 votes. Mace won it by 5,415 votes.
Austin McCubbin, Mace's campaign manager, said he is confident the congresswoman will win in Beaufort County, citing a strong grassroots turnout effort across all counties in the district.
"We've been door-knocking for months," McCubbin said, adding that the Mace team has knocked at least 20,000 doors in Beaufort County. "And the results at the door in Beaufort County and across the district all reflect that Lowcountry voters know Nancy Mace is the conservative they can trust to win to reflect our Lowcountry values in Congress overwhelmingly."
But with new district lines, this year's fight is new ground for both candidates since Beaufort Republicans tend to be more socially conservative than their more moderate Charleston counterparts, which could shake up the GOP primary in a district where Mace's loyalty to former President Donald Trump has been thrown into question.
While public polling has been limited in the race, a recent independent poll from the Atlanta-based Trafalgar Group shows the contest in a near dead-heat. The poll of 556 likely 1st District GOP primary voters showed Mace with a narrow 5.9-point lead over Arrington, with Mace attracting 46.4 percent of the total to Arrington's 40.5 percent. The poll carried a margin of error or plus or minus 4.1 percent.
It also found that Trump is still a major factor for GOP voters here, with Trump's favorability in the district at 62 percent.Â
"Which is not the highest that there is in South Carolina, but it’s not the lowest either," said Robert Cahaly, chief pollster at Trafalgar Group.
Mace's campaign has cast doubt on the poll since it failed to include Lynz Piper-Loomis, a third candidate whose name will still appear on the primary ballot despite dropping out of the race and supporting Arrington.
"Mace is in a fight, but she hasn’t lost that fight. But there's no doubt this race is very competitive," Cahaly said. "Whoever finishes strongest and gets out the vote will be the next congresswoman. But you've got to know who your voters are."
Hennelly, the Beaufort County GOP leader, has pledged public neutrality in the contest, but he did offer advice on what he thinks could be effective to sway GOP voters.
"This is an 'America First' district," he said.
