Vice Admiral Nancy Lacore was a year into her command of the Navy Reserve when she was fired by Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, one of roughly two dozen high-ranking military leaders he purged or forced into retirement in the early months of the Trump administration. Unemployed for the first time after 35 years of Navy service, Lacore decided to run for Congress as a Democrat in South Carolina’s 1st District. Or, more precisely, as her own campaign account puts it, she decided to run against Hegseth, using her campaign to criticise his management of the military and to highlight what she presents as his responsibility for an unpopular war in the Middle East.
That framing has turned an open-seat House race in a heavily Republican coastal district into one of the most closely watched contests of the midterm cycle. The district, which runs along the South Carolina coast from Beaufort to Charleston and includes parts of Berkeley, Charleston, Colleton, Dorchester and Jasper counties, voted for Donald Trump by about 13 percentage points in 2024. Its Republican incumbent, Nancy Mace, won her last two elections comfortably before opting to run for governor, a race she lost in the Republican primary. Until recently, the seat was viewed as a Republican stronghold. It is now rated Lean Republican by the Cook Political Report, after a shift from Likely Republican on October 16, and Democratic strategists describe it as very tough, but not unwinnable.
How Nancy Lacore Hegseth firing became a campaign
Lacore’s account of her dismissal is spare and, by her telling, abrupt. She had been chief of the Navy Reserve for roughly a year when Hegseth ordered her removal in August 2025. She later said Admiral James Kilby, then the acting Navy chief, summoned her to the Pentagon and delivered the decision, and that she left the building roughly an hour later and never returned to the Pentagon or wore her uniform again. In an account published by The Bulwark in April, she said Kilby appeared distraught and told her Hegseth wanted her gone immediately. The Pentagon has not publicly given a detailed official explanation for the removal, and it has not publicly said that gender was the reason.
What is on the public record is the context in which the removal happened. Hegseth had criticised what he described as wokeness and diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the armed forces, and a 2022 Navy Reserve document listed Lacore as a flag champion for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Lacore had previously served in that role, but she later implemented the administration’s own orders withdrawing several diversity-related policies, signing a memo in January 2025, while still leading the Reserve, cancelling six Reserve policies covering diversity, equal employment opportunity and military equal opportunity. Supporters of the dismissal point to that record as part of a wider Pentagon overhaul; supporters of Lacore point to the same record as evidence that she followed orders and was removed anyway, as part of a purge of senior officers, including several women, that has left no active-duty four-star female generals or admirals in the United States military.
Readers should be careful about what is established and what is alleged here. That Lacore was removed, that she was a three-star admiral and chief of the Navy Reserve, and that she had served more than three decades, including as a helicopter pilot who qualified as a naval aviator in 1993, are matters of public record. Why Hegseth removed her, beyond the general Pentagon overhaul, is not publicly established in detail, and Lacore’s own interpretation, that the dismissal was political and tied to the administration’s campaign against diversity policies, is her account, not a Pentagon admission. Her campaign leans heavily on that interpretation, and her opponent leans equally heavily against it, which is why the race has become, in part, a referendum on Hegseth himself.
The South Carolina First District race: Lacore versus Honeycutt
Lacore’s opponent is Jenny Costa Honeycutt, a Republican Charleston County Council member since 2018, attorney and business owner, whom Trump endorsed in July. The two women each won runoffs in June and met in a debate in which, according to Honeycutt’s account, Lacore said three times that she did not like Hegseth and considered him the worst defence secretary in the nation’s history. Honeycutt’s argument, made on television and on the campaign trail, is that Lacore is stuck on being fired, and that the Lowcountry, where she hopes to represent voters, deserves a representative focused on local concerns rather than on a grievance against the Pentagon chief.
Lacore’s answer, in effect, is that the grievance is the point. She has said the story of her abrupt firing has come up organically in almost every room she has campaigned in, and she has used it to argue for a broader principle: that politics should not interfere with the military, including with promotion lists, an issue on which she has publicly criticised Hegseth again this year. She has also drawn a direct line from Hegseth’s leadership to the war in the Middle East, which she and other Democrats present as deeply unpopular and as a defining issue of the midterms. In a district home to many retirees and service members, that argument lands differently than it might elsewhere: voters here include people who served, people whose children serve, and people who follow Pentagon leadership as a local issue, not an abstraction.
The money and the endorsements tell the same story of a race that has become competitive. Lacore has drawn support from veterans’ groups and from EMILY’s List, and she has held a fundraising edge in the contest. She has also drawn national Democratic attention: Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, himself a naval aviator, highlighted her on the October 4 edition of Face the Nation while campaigning in South Carolina, describing her as a fellow naval aviator fired by Hegseth early in the administration, and saying the race can be critical to Democrats winning back the House. A survey conducted October 21-22 by Public Policy Polling for the Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC found Lacore at 47 percent and Honeycutt at 45 percent, with 8 percent undecided, a result that should be read with the poll’s sponsorship in mind, but which is consistent with the race’s move in forecasters’ ratings.
Why a Republican district is suddenly in play
Three forces have combined to make the 1st District competitive. The first is the open seat: Mace’s departure removed the incumbency advantage that had made the district look safe, and her failed gubernatorial bid, in which she finished fifth in the Republican primary, weakened the sense that the district’s Republican establishment speaks with one voice. The second is the national environment: Democrats lead the generic congressional ballot by about eight points in the RealClearPolling average, and forecasters give them a strong chance of winning the House, which lifts Democratic challengers even in districts Trump carried. The third is Lacore herself: a candidate with a distinctive biography, a clear grievance, and a message that connects Pentagon politics to the daily lives of a military-heavy district.
Honeycutt’s campaign is betting that those forces are not enough. Her platform, in her own telling, emphasises support for the rule of law and for making America healthy again, along with the standard Republican midterm themes, and she has Trump’s endorsement, which in South Carolina remains a powerful asset. Her argument that Lacore is defined by her firing rather than by a local agenda is designed to test whether voters want a representative who will fight the Pentagon chief from Congress, or one who will work with the administration. Lacore’s retort, that she would sooner vote to impeach Hegseth than send him a thank-you card if she wins, is designed to test the opposite proposition: whether voters in a district that respects the military are angry enough at how its leaders have been treated to send one of those leaders to Washington to hold the Pentagon to account.
Either way, the race will be decided on November 3, and its result will be read nationally for what it says about the limits of the Pentagon purge as a political strategy. If Lacore wins a district Trump carried by 13 points, Democrats will present it as proof that the purge created its own opposition. If Honeycutt wins, Republicans will present it as proof that a local campaign beats a national grievance. Both readings will overstate what a single district can prove, but neither will be wrong about the stakes: the House majority may well be decided by a handful of seats like this one, and South Carolina’s 1st District, which few expected to matter, now matters a great deal. For the national picture, see USN’s coverage of the Senate battlegrounds shaping control of Congress.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from USA Today, Newsmax and MEAWW.