A three-star navy rear-admiral fired by Pete Hegseth last year in the defense secretary’s purge of senior US military officials advanced to a Democratic runoff in a closely watched congressional race in South Carolina.
Nancy Lacore, who served 35 years in the navy, was chief of the navy reserve when she was ousted by Hegseth in August.
She will contest a 23 June runoff against Mac Deford, a US Coast Guard veteran, for the Democratic nomination for South Carolina’s first congressional district in November’s midterm election. The seat is currently held by the Republican Nancy Mace, who chose to forgo seeking re-election to focus on her failed challenge for governor.
The eventual Democratic candidate faces an uphill battle in a district Mace won by double digits in each of the last two elections.
Lacore is backed by several veterans’ groups, and Emilys List, which supports Democratic pro-choice candidates running for office. She raised $500,000 in her first two weeks as a candidate, and more than $1.4m through late May, according to a New York Times analysis of federal campaign finance records.
She is also one of 12 House candidates backed by the Bench, a Democratic strategy group advising candidates in districts seen as harder to win, the outlet said.
Lacore was among dozens of officers fired during Hegseth’s ongoing elimination from senior military roles of those considered to have crossed the Trump administration, or who do not fit the defense secretary’s vision for the makeup of the armed services.
In his latest move, reported last week, he removed without explanation all women and several Black nominees from a navy promotion list, resulting in an all-male, overwhelmingly white slate.
Lacore lost her job the same day Hegseth fired Lt Gen Jeffrey Kruse, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, for writing a preliminary analysis of US military strikes on Iran in June 2025 that Donald Trump claimed “obliterated” the country’s nuclear sites.
In a report leaked to the media, Kruse’s agency determined the action had set back Iran’s nuclear program only by a few months. It prompted an angry response from Hegseth, who assailed the media at a press conference for reporting it.
“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,” Hegseth said at the time.
No public explanation was given for the dismissal of Lacore, or a slew of other military leaders axed by the Pentagon in previous months, including Gen Tim Haugh, head of the National Security Agency, and Vice Adm Shoshana Chatfield, a senior official at Nato.
But under Hegseth’s direction, the military has eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, and numerous officers perceived as too “woke” have been let go.
“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,” Hegseth claimed during a keynote meeting of military commanders in Virginia in September.
“The sooner we have the right people, the sooner we can advance the right policies.”
Lacore, at her campaign launch in January, said although she was no longer in uniform, she was not leaving public service. “I still have more to give, more to fight for, more work to do – and I am not done serving,” she wrote on X.
