A retired three-star Navy admiral fired by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has flipped a Republican-held South Carolina House seat that President Trump carried by 13 points just two years ago.
Quick Take
- Nancy Lacore, a former Navy vice admiral, won South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District after being released from her Pentagon-linked position in December
- She beat Republican Jenny Costa Honeycutt by roughly one percentage point in official returns
- A ballot-scanning issue in Dorchester County held up the final count and raised the possibility of a recount
- The district had been solidly Republican, with Trump winning it by double digits in 2024
A Three-Star Career Ends, A Campaign Begins
Lacore spent decades rising through Navy ranks before reaching vice admiral, a three-star position few officers ever achieve. Reporting from WSAV confirmed she served until December, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth removed her from her post. Within months, she was running for Congress in a district she had little public connection to six months earlier, campaigning as an outsider unafraid of Washington.
Lacore leaned hard into her military identity on the trail, telling voters she understood how the Pentagon and Congress actually function. “First and foremost, I’m not a career politician,” she said in a campaign interview, framing her candidacy as accountability-driven rather than ideological. That message, paired with her rank and resume, became the central pitch of her bid in South Carolina’s 1st District.
The Vote Count That Stunned a Red District
National Public Radio reported Lacore finished with 161,878 votes, or 49.6 percent, narrowly edging Honeycutt’s 158,570 votes, or 48.6 percent. The gap amounted to roughly one percentage point in a district Republicans had held comfortably for years. Her path there began months earlier, when she won a crowded Democratic primary runoff with 12,825 votes, or 52.1 percent, against Mac Deford.
After her projected win, Lacore told supporters that “Republicans, Democrats, and Independents came together” to carry her campaign across the finish line, according to WSAV. That claim reflects her own characterization of the coalition rather than a formal voter-file analysis, but the raw vote totals confirm a genuinely close, hard-fought contest in territory Trump won by 13 points in 2024.
A Margin Thin Enough to Trigger a Recount
The Post and Courier reported a certified margin of just 3,308 votes separating the two candidates, a gap thin enough to draw scrutiny. A technical problem forced election officials to rescan more than 5,000 ballots in Dorchester County before the count could be finalized. Research on statewide recounts shows reversals almost never happen unless the initial margin falls below six-hundredths of one percent, a threshold this race did not cross.
What History Says About Veterans on the Ballot
Political scientists have long debated whether military service actually moves voters. Recent research found that Democratic veterans, unlike their Republican counterparts, can draw crossover support from independents and moderate Republicans, especially when voters see them as steady on defense issues rather than partisan. Lacore’s rank and her public dispute with Hegseth gave her campaign a built-in contrast with typical Washington politicians.
JUST IN: A retired U.S. Navy admiral, removed by the Pentagon in 2025, has won a GOP-held House seat representing South Carolina.
Retired Vice Admiral Democrat Nancy Lacore won 49.65 percent, of the votes in the race to represent South Carolina’s First Congressional District,…
— The Epoch Times (@EpochTimes) November 5, 2026
Her win now heads toward certification, with South Carolina election officials confirming the final tally before Lacore can be formally seated in Congress. The outcome puts a fired Pentagon official directly into the chamber that oversees defense spending and military personnel policy, a twist not lost on voters or national commentators watching the race unfold in real time.
Sources:
military.com, npr.org, postandcourier.com, wsav.com, journals.sagepub.com
