Pete Hegseth fired her. Now she's running for Congress.
Nancy Lacore, a retired three-star Navy vice admiral, has advanced to a June 23 Democratic primary runoff in South Carolina's 1st District - the House seat Rep. Nancy Mace is vacating to run for governor. Lacore was abruptly dismissed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last August, part of a wave of senior military removals on Aug. 22, 2025. She has called her firing "without cause."
To be clear about where this stands: Lacore hasn't won anything yet. She's headed to a runoff against attorney Mac Deford on June 23 to decide who becomes the Democratic nominee. The winner of that contest moves on to November for a long-shot run at the seat - which the Cook Political Report rates as solidly Republican.
But the storyline writing itself is hard to miss. A career officer pushed out by the sitting Defense Secretary is now asking voters to send her to Washington, where she'd have a say over the very Pentagon that showed her the door.
Her campaign leans directly into that history - framing the dismissal as exactly the kind of accountability gap she wants to challenge from inside Congress. Mace, meanwhile, is stepping up to a statewide race, leaving one of the most Republican-leaning seats in the state suddenly without an incumbent.
It's an uphill climb in a district drawn to stay red. But a fired admiral on the ballot is the kind of race that makes people pay attention.