Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., conceded the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary Tuesday night and endorsed state Attorney General Alan Wilson, a longtime political rival she had spent months attacking, in his June 23 runoff against Trump-backed Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette.

Mace finished fifth in a crowded field with roughly 11% of the vote, trailing Evette at about 29% and Wilson at about 26%, according to results reported by the Associated Press as of Tuesday night.

Neither front-runner cleared 50%, sending the race to a two-week runoff campaign to decide who faces Democrat state Rep. Jermaine Johnson in November to succeed term-limited Gov. Henry McMaster, R-S.C.

The endorsement marked a sharp reversal.

Wilson had branded Mace an "entitled, spoiled brat" during an earlier clash over a Charleston airport police report that Mace called a political "hit job," and Mace had previously accused Wilson of failing to prosecute crimes against women, charging that he had turned "a blind eye to women and girls for the last 15 years."

Wilson called those accusations "categorically false."

"What many of you do not know is that in the last couple of weeks, Alan Wilson and I have buried the hatchet," Mace told supporters in Charleston. "I want a law-and-order governor, and that law-and-order governor is going to be Alan Wilson."

She predicted Wilson would "mop the floor with Pamela Evette" in the runoff and pledged to help his campaign as a private citizen.

Mace tied her defeat to her February vote, alongside three other House Republicans, to force the Justice Department to release files on Jeffrey Epstein, a move that ruptured her standing with President Donald Trump.

Trump endorsed Evette in late May after publicly cooling on Mace, who had cast herself as "Trump in high heels" and resurfaced old photos of herself with the president after the snub.

"I voted to release the Epstein files and lost some support for that. As a survivor, I chose to stand on principle and stand against the Epstein cover-up," Mace wrote on X, adding that she had "chose[n] wrong if the goal was winning an election." She said she stood by the vote.

The realignment scrambles a race Trump's team had hoped to lock down on the first ballot.

Evette led the field but fell well short of an outright win, and she now confronts a consolidating anti-Trump-pick bloc behind Wilson.

Both candidates are running on cutting the state income tax; Wilson has paired that with a stronger law-and-order pitch. The two have agreed to a June 16 debate in Conway before voters return to the polls a week later.

The most recent measure of the contest is Tuesday's primary itself: Evette finished at 28.9% and Wilson at 26.2% of nearly 465,000 votes cast, a margin of about 2.7 points, according to unofficial results compiled by The Center Square from state returns.