The Associated Press on Friday called South Carolina's 1st Congressional District for Democrat Nancy Lacore, a retired three-star Navy vice admiral who was removed as Chief of the Navy Reserve by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last year, flipping a Charleston-area seat that Republicans had held for years.
Lacore defeated Republican Jenny Costa Honeycutt with 49.7 percent of the vote to 48.6 percent, according to the Associated Press, which called the race at 6:51 p.m. Friday. With all 374 precincts reporting, Lacore led by 162,103 votes to 158,751, a margin of about 3,350 votes. Libertarian Bill Reeside drew 5,346 votes, more than the gap between the two leading candidates. Honeycutt's campaign emailed Lacore early Wednesday morning to concede the race, according to The Post and Courier. The results remain unofficial until the state Board of Canvassers certifies them.
The result turns a firing by the Trump administration into a political rebuke. Hegseth removed Lacore as Chief of the Navy Reserve in August 2025 without giving a public reason, ending a 35-year military career that included two deployments. She then moved to South Carolina and entered politics, and the dismissal became a central theme of her campaign in a district that has long favored Republicans.
The scale of the flip is striking. President Donald Trump carried the district by 13 points in 2024, and Representative Nancy Mace, the Republican who held the seat, won reelection that year by 17 points before leaving Congress for a failed run for governor. The Cook Political Report moved the race from lean Republican to toss-up on October 30, citing Lacore's fundraising advantage. A ballot issue in Dorchester County delayed the count for days; Lacore said the latest returns from the county had widened her lead beyond the threshold that triggers an automatic recount under South Carolina law.
Lacore defeated six other Democrats in the primary, while Honeycutt, a two-term Charleston County Council member, outlasted nine other Republicans to win her party's nomination.
The victory is among the most striking results of the midterm elections, in which Democrats also won control of both chambers of Congress. Lacore's campaign said she would be the highest-ranking military officer ever to serve in Congress. She is set to be sworn in with the 120th Congress in January 2027.
