Alan Wilson, South Carolina’s longtime GOP attorney general, set to enter 2026 governor’s race

CHAPIN, S.C. (AP) —

Alan Wilson, the four-term Republican attorney general of South Carolina, is set to enter the state’s open gubernatorial race in 2026, setting up a primary contest likely to be a multi-candidate competition for President Donald Trump’s endorsement.

Long expected to run, Wilson will officially launch his campaign at an event on Monday, according to a person familiar with Wilson’s political plans who was not authorized to speak about them publicly. The Associated Press viewed an invitation sent out this week, inviting backers to an “Alan Wilson for South Carolina Campaign Rally.”

Official filing for the state’s 2026 elections doesn’t open until March, but several other Republicans have already made moves toward running. That includes Rep. Nancy Mace, who told the AP earlier this year she was “seriously considering” a run, as well as Lt. Gov. Pam Evette, who has made similar statements.

All three potential Republican hopefuls have supported Trump in his own campaigns, and while Trump’s role in 2026 races is yet to be known, it could have sway in the state where he’s remained popular since his 2016 South Carolina GOP primary win helped cement him as the party’s nominee. In 2018, Trump helped Gov. Henry McMaster secure a primary runoff win that set him on the path to becoming South Carolina’s longest-serving governor.

As South Carolina’s top prosecutor, Wilson has taken actions to support Trump’s political and personal moves. In 2020, he was lead signatory on a letter decrying impeachment proceedings against Trump as “fundamentally flawed as a matter of constitutional law.” Last year, Wilson traveled to New York to support Trump as he stood trial in a hush money case.

Republicans have in recent decades dominated South Carolina’s statewide-elected positions, including governor, meaning that some of the most intense political competition has taken place in GOP primaries. With McMaster — in office since Nikki Haley’s 2017 departure to serve as Trump’s United Nations Ambassador — term-limited, next year’s Republican primary is expected to be intense.

Like his predecessor in the attorney general’s office, McMaster, Wilson has been part of dozens of lawsuits against Democratic presidents, suing the Biden administration over issues including vaccine mandates and environmental regulations.

Wilson, who has served three times as chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association, has spearheaded other national efforts, including wrangling top prosecutors in all 50 states to urge Congress to craft legislation to guard against the use of artificial intelligence in exploiting children through pornography. In addition, he has led his GOP colleagues in pressing federal lawmakers for a bill allowing state prisons to jam the signals of cellphones smuggled to inmates.

On the state level, he defended South Carolina’s restrictive abortion law — which bans the practice around six weeks after conception — against constitutional challenges. Wilson recused himself from a wide-ranging, multi-year state ethics probe into lawmakers including then-House Speaker Bobby Harrell, due to a connection with a political consultant entangled in the case.

Wilson was in the national spotlight throughout 2023, as his office prosecuted Alex Murdaugh, the disgraced attorney currently serving two life prison sentences for the 2021 murders of his wife and son at the family’s rural home. Attention on the six-week trial swirled into cult-like status, with daily events live-streamed by a number of outlets, and true-crime influencers giving regular updates to their followers from the environs near a small-town courthouse in South Carolina’s Lowcountry.

The son of Rep. Joe Wilson, a longtime South Carolina congressman, Wilson, his wife and their two children live in Lexington, South Carolina. First elected attorney general in 2010, he has served for nearly three decades in the Army National Guard, with the current rank of colonel.

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Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP