COLUMBIA, S.C. — Gov. Henry McMaster won reelection Tuesday to a second four-year term as South Carolina’s chief executive, a historic win that puts the Columbia Republican on track to become the longest-serving governor in state history.
McMaster, 75, ran against Democrat Joe Cunningham, a former Lowcountry congressman who flipped the 1st Congressional District in 2018 and served one term.
The election-night win is the latest victory in a 40-year-plus political career for McMaster, a former prosecutor, who served as President Ronald Reagan’s U.S. attorney in South Carolina and first held public office when he was elected the state’s attorney general in 2002. McMaster was elected lieutenant governor in 2014, a position that previously presided over the state Senate, before he was elevated to governor in 2017 when then-Gov. Nikki Haley became U.N. ambassador for the Trump administration.
