SPARTANBURG — Trey Gowdy was getting blood drawn recently in Spartanburg by a woman who recognized him. She had a question.

“I am almost positive that she was the mother of a victim in a case I prosecuted, just the way she talked to me, and she asked me if I was still in the courthouse,” Gowdy said.

The Spartanburg native had served four terms in Congress since last prosecuting a case as 7th Circuit solicitor in 2010. Those years in D.C. included prominent stints as chairman of the House Oversight Committee and heading up a $7 million inquiry into the deaths of four Americans at the embassy in Benghazi, Libya.

The woman Gowdy bumped into in Spartanburg had no idea about all that, he said. It was the latest reminder of the courtroom career that most defines who Gowdy is — but also,

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