Nancy Mace remade herself as an anti-trans culture warrior. Trump chose her opponent for governor

South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace shifted her positions on transgender rights and rebranded herself from a moderate Republican to a MAGA culture warrior. In the end, it didn’t help her secure President Donald Trump’s endorsement in South Carolina’s race for governor. In popular terms, a leopard ate her face. After reshaping her political identity around Trump and the grievances that animate his base, she discovered that loyalty runs only one way.

Instead of supporting Mace, Trump threw his support behind South Carolina Lt. Gov. Pam Evette in the Republican primary. “She never wavered, never let me down, and was the only South Carolina Gubernatorial Candidate to Endorse me as soon as I launched my 2024 Presidential Campaign,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.

Apparently, that loyalty mattered more to Trump than Mace’s yearslong effort to reinvent herself as one of Congress’s most visible anti-trans politicians. Mace has referred to LGBTQ+ people as “tr***ny protesters” through a megaphone outside the Capitol. She also chased a cisgender woman from a public restroom, wrongly believing she caught Delaware Rep. Sarah McBride, the first out transgender member of Congress, daring to use the women’s room.

Related: Nancy Mace considers quitting Congress to take her transphobia statewide in South Carolina

During the 2024 Republican presidential primary, Mace initially tried to “stay out of it” as other Republicans challenged Trump for the nomination. She ultimately endorsed Trump in January 2024, according to POLITICO, but only after previously suggesting his legacy had been “wiped out” by the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Her evolution on LGBTQ+ issues has been equally dramatic. In 2021, she told CBS News she was “pro-transgender rights, pro-LGBTQ.” A year later, she successfully pressured House Republican leadership to restrict restroom access based on sex assigned at birth and later introduced legislation to impose a nationwide bathroom ban targeting transgender people.

Related: Nancy Mace goes after nonexistent ‘trans mice’ research with new bill

She also abandoned her previous support for marriage equality, at one point invoking the old “Adam and Steve” slur while embracing increasingly hardline social conservative positions. Along the way, she transformed from a Trump skeptic into one of his most vocal allies.

It wasn’t enough.

The political consequences of Trump backing Evette instead of Mace remain uncertain. Trump endorsed Mace’s Republican primary opponent, Katie Arrington, in 2022, only to watch Mace win renomination anyway. Two years later, he endorsed Mace’s reelection bid as she was moving sharply to the right on cultural issues and distancing herself from her earlier LGBTQ-friendly positions.

Related: Gay man Nancy Mace cursed out in South Carolina Ulta says ‘a fire was lit’ from Republican's ‘meltdown’

Still, Trump was not president when he last unsuccessfully tried to derail Mace’s political future. This time, he carries the weight of the White House. A recent poll from the Trafalgar Group found Evette’s support rising after Trump’s endorsement, while Mace placed fifth in a crowded but competitive field.

Republican voters will decide Tuesday who they want as their nominee for governor. Following Trump’s endorsement of Evette, Mace issued a statement praising the president while insisting she remained confident in her own campaign.

“I have enormous respect for President Trump and everything he has done for our country and for South Carolina. That respect is genuine and it is unchanged,” she said. “We have a state that’s corrupt. A system that’s broken. And an establishment who wants to stay in the shadows. It’s been that way for the last decade since Pam Evette’s been in office.”