CHARLESTON — U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, the outspoken South Carolina Republican whose political rise has defied easy categorization and made her one of the GOP’s most unpredictable figures, is entering the state’s 2026 governor’s race.

About an hour after sunrise on Aug. 4, Mace declared her candidacy at The Citadel, the storied military college where she made history in 1999 as the first woman to graduate from its Corps of Cadets.

The setting was a deliberate choice, an evocative return to where her rise to prominence began, and a site that still anchors both her self-image and her political persona. Mace, 47, has long drawn on her time at the military college to frame herself as a fighter, a rule-breaker, a trailblazer and someone who always resisted the roles others tried to assign her.

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