A top strategist on Rep. Nancy Mace’s campaign for South Carolina governor announced his resignation in a fiery missive Monday, accusing the congresswoman of turning her back on President Donald Trump and his “Make America Great Again” movement.
Austin McCubbin, who served as a political polling director for the Republican National Committee in 2024, said in a post on X that his loyalty to Trump outweighed any loyalty he owed to Mace, who he believes has sided with Rep. Thomas Massie and Sen. Rand Paul, two frequent Republican critics of the president.
“I am 100% breaking with her campaign out of loyalty to the President,” McCubbin said in the post. “When I talked to Nancy last Wednesday, it became clear she has fully embraced the Rand Paul PAC … Nancy Mace is wittingly or unwittingly a proxy for Rand Paul’s 2028 presidential campaign.”
McCubbin alleged that Mace had directed “a personal friend to fund a 7-figure check to Rand’s PAC.”
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McCubbin managed Mace’s 2022 congressional campaign, and her campaign named him as a lead consultant earlier this year. He also ran Trump’s campaign efforts in the state during the 2024 election cycle.
A spokesperson for Mace fired back in a statement, burnishing her pro-Trump credentials and lambasting McCubbin for doing a poor job as campaign consultant.
“Mr. McCubbin didn’t raise a dime for the campaign, or better yet, never even bothered showing up. When he demanded $10,000 a month for “services” and was told no, he ran straight to X. Good luck with that,” the spokesperson wrote. “Nancy Mace has stood with President Trump since Day ONE. Mr. McCubbin said it himself: ‘Nancy Mace will be the most pro-Trump and America First Governor in the country.’”
Mace is one of a number of high-profile Republicans who were once considered Trump loyalists that broke ranks to call for the release of files relating to the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Among her contemporaries are Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, who both voted repeatedly to compel the Department of Justice to release the files. The measure was championed by Massie, who attracted Trump’s ire for disregarding his pleas to drop the legislation — that is, before Trump changed his mind and backed the bill, prompting much of the Republican party to do the same.
Mace is running for governor against four other Republicans, including the current Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, who leads most polls. Other candidates include Rep. Ralph Norman and Alan Wilson, the attorney general for the state.
Mace has raised more than $1 million so far, according to the Post and Courier, though her campaign has been beset by a series of bizarre scandals in recent weeks.
One headline-grabbing incident occurred at the Charleston airport last month, where she had a confrontation with police and security. An incident report filed by officers described her as cursing and “berating” officers for failing to promptly provide her a security escort through the airport.
Mace has maintained that she was standing up for her safety amid a perceived security lapse, while official reports and video footage suggest that a mix-up in her arrival details may have led to the confrontation.
That wasn’t the only eyebrow-raising incident involving Mace in recent months. During a nearly hour-long speech on the U.S. House floor in February, the South Carolina congresswoman accused her ex-fiance, Patrick Bryant, and three other men of being “sexual predators” who abused and recorded multiple women nonconsensually, including herself. In November 2023, Mace claimed to have discovered thousands of nonconsensual photos and videos on Bryant’s phone, some allegedly involving underage girls. She also alleged physical assault by Bryant the night before their breakup and presented an alleged nude photo of herself during a House subcommittee hearing that she claimed Bryant took without her knowledge, using a secret camera.
Bryant, a Charleston businessman, has denied all allegations and filed a defamation lawsuit against Mace last month, claiming she fabricated the sexual assault allegations as leverage in a property dispute following their breakup in 2023.
“It is difficult to overstate how appalling this conduct is coming from a sitting Member of Congress,” Bryant wrote. “No responsible representative behaves like this when faced with legitimate legal scrutiny.”
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