A three-star rear admiral dismissed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last year has secured a spot in a competitive runoff for a South Carolina congressional seat that Republican Nancy Mace is vacating.
Nancy Lacore, who spent 35 years in the Navy and commanded the Navy Reserve before her firing in August, will face Coast Guard veteran Mac Deford on June 23 for the Democratic nomination in South Carolina's first congressional district. The winner advances to November's general election in a district where Mace won by double digits in both of the last two election cycles.
Lacore's campaign has attracted substantial support and funding. She raised $500,000 in her first two weeks as a candidate and over $1.4 million through late May. Endorsements include several veterans' groups and Emily's List, an organization backing pro-choice Democratic women. She also received backing from the Bench, a Democratic strategy group that has selected her as one of 12 House candidates running in districts considered difficult for Democrats to win.
Lacore was among dozens of senior military officers purged by Hegseth since he took over the Pentagon. The removals appear connected to the defense secretary's efforts to reshape the armed forces according to his ideological priorities. In his most recent action, Hegseth removed all women and several Black nominees from a Navy promotion list, resulting in an all-male, overwhelmingly white slate with no public explanation provided.
On the same day Lacore was fired, Hegseth dismissed Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, who headed the Defense Intelligence Agency. Kruse's removal followed his agency's classified assessment of June 2025 military strikes on Iran. The analysis concluded that the operation had set back Iran's nuclear program by only a few months, contradicting Trump administration claims that the strikes had destroyed the country's nuclear capability.
When details of the assessment leaked to media outlets, Hegseth responded angrily at a Pentagon press conference. "You want to call it destroyed, you want to call it defeated, you want to call it obliterated. Choose your word. This was an historically successful attack," he said.
Other high-ranking officers removed under Hegseth include Gen. Tim Haugh, director of the National Security Agency, and Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, a senior NATO official. The Pentagon has offered no public justification for these departures.
The firings have coincided with Hegseth's elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs throughout the military. In a September address to military commanders in Virginia, Hegseth defended the shift. "For too long, we've promoted too many uniform leaders for the wrong reasons based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts," he said. "The sooner we have the right people, the sooner we can advance the right policies."
Since launching her congressional campaign in January, Lacore has cast her candidacy as a continuation of public service rather than an exit from it. On X, she wrote that despite leaving uniform, she remained committed to fighting for her country. "I still have more to give, more to fight for, more work to do and I am not done serving," she said.
Author James Rodriguez: "Lacore's ascent to a runoff shows there's real appetite for challenging Hegseth's ideological purges, though winning a deep-red district will prove infinitely harder than beating Deford in a primary."
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