🍻 In This Week's Hill Spill Newsletter: Mace Endorses the Man She Called a Pedo Protector, Grayson's Back and the GOP's Sixth Straight Win

🍹 Welcome to this week's Hill Spill! I am currently on vacation in Aruba — hence sending this newsletter out on island time — but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been texting with sources and keeping tabs on the tea back in D.C.

We also have some very exciting news: Cailyn, our new intern, is officially starting! So add her to your press lists, hill folk!

This issue may be a tad abbreviated from our usual dispatch since we are, in theory, OOO. But despite being away, we still have plenty of drama to fill you in on and some absolute bangers in the works for next week.

So grab a bev and let’s get to it… 🌴🌊👙

Nancy Mace spent nearly a year calling Alan Wilson a pedophile protector, a predator enabler and the man who turned South Carolina into a pedophile paradise.

Then she finished fifth and endorsed him anyway.

Mace, who placed a distant fifth in Tuesday's Republican gubernatorial primary, walked offstage and immediately threw her support behind the state's attorney general — the same man she had stood on the floor of the United States House of Representatives and accused of failing to prosecute her ex-fiance and three other men, plastering their pictures on a poster beneath the word "predators." Wilson's office called those accusations categorically false.

Mace is no stranger to controversy — the airport meltdown, the scarlet letter she wore after she voted to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the AI-generated fake Trump photo she posted after Trump snubbed her and threw his support behind Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette. But endorsing the man she spent nearly a year calling a pedo protector might be the most Mace thing she has ever done.

"What many of you do not know is that in the last couple of weeks, Alan Wilson and I have buried the hatchet," she told supporters. "I want a law-and-order governor, and that law-and-order governor is going to be Alan Wilson." Wilson, in turn, said they'd buried the hatchet and accepted her backing.

"I am grateful for Congresswoman Mace's support as we move forward into this runoff. Nancy ran a hard-fought campaign, and her voters share our deep commitment to securing a safe, prosperous, and law-and-order future for South Carolina,” he said in a statement.

The irony was apparently lost on no one except maybe Mace.

The reaction from inside the party wasn’t exactly warm... One GOP operative told us: "Nancy Mace spent nearly a year viciously smearing Alan Wilson as a sleazy protector of child sex offenders, a do-nothing hack who betrayed victims, and a pathetic political opportunist who embodied everything rotten in government. Then, after crashing and burning in a humiliating distant fifth-place finish, this same woman slithered onto the stage and endorsed him anyway — for 'law and order.' Either her original attacks were nothing but disgusting, fabricated lies peddled for cheap political gain that blew up in her face…or she actually believed every vile thing she said about him and still sold her soul to endorse him anyway.”

“Either way, Nancy Mace stands exposed as a completely worthless, spineless, hypocritical politician. Her words are worthless weapons of convenience, tossed aside the second they stop serving her ambition,” they added.

Another South Carolina GOP source just laughed when we asked about the pivot. "Are you surprised?" they told us.

Mace appears to be taking the loss relatively well. She posted photos of herself eating beans, said she's heading back to the private sector and cracked on X that she could still win if only Mike Pence had the courage.

Mace did not respond to our request for comment.

Meanwhile, the runoff between Wilson and Trump-endorsed Evette is set for June 23.

Just when you thought Florida politics couldn't get any more unhinged, the universe handed us a potential matchup that would make for amazing reality TV content.

Progressive firebrand and former Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson is officially jumping into the Democratic primary in Florida's 7th district, and if he wins it, he'll get the chance to go mano-a-mano with Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) in the general, that is, if Mills can survive his own primary while juggling a whole slew of controversies.

Grayson is the guy who famously stood on the House floor and said the GOP healthcare plan was "die quickly," called a federal adviser a "K Street whore" and exited Congress under a massive Ethics cloud over an offshore hedge fund.

Grayson is eyeing a seat held by a guy who some might argue makes him look like a Boy Scout. Mills is currently facing serious allegations that he solicited sex workers during a 2021 Afghanistan evacuation trip, an active Ethics probe, a cyberstalking restraining order and a freshly finalized divorce. The Office of Congressional Ethics also found that 94 government contracts have been awarded to entities Mills has owned since January 2024.

Cook Political Report has already shifted the seat from "Safe Republican" to "Likely Republican."

Mills has company on his own ballot. A local news anchor, a businesswoman and a guy named Don Johnson are all taking a shot at him in the primary. His $805K war chest gives him an edge, but that Ethics cloud has a way of following a candidate into every voting booth.

On the other side, Grayson has to get through a crowded Democratic primary first. The DCCC has already thrown its weight behind Navy aviator Bale Dalton, who we interviewed on the pod a few weeks back. Dalton has $692K in the bank, and the establishment has zero appetite for a Grayson comeback tour.

After leaving Congress in 2016 for a Senate run he lost to Patrick Murphy, Grayson tried and failed to reclaim his old House seat in 2018. He's since dropped out of a 2022 Senate race, lost Democratic primaries for a congressional seat and two separate state Senate districts and last year couldn't even clear the qualifying threshold for a U.S. Senate special election. A string of unsuccessful comeback attempts has not deterred him.

It's unclear whether Grayson or Mills makes it through their respective primaries, but if there is one thing we have learned over the years, it's that politics can always get weirder.

Primary Election Day is August 18.

We have a very fun episode with Byron Donalds coming up next week, so stay tuned! But in the meantime, here is a scenic picture of the beach. 🌴

Republicans walked into Nationals Park Wednesday night and walked out with their sixth straight congressional baseball title.

The GOP built an 11-0 lead before Democrats managed to score.

Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) threw a complete game and took home MVP honors alongside Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), who earned his the hard way. A diving catch in the fourth inning sent him face-first into the outfield grass, leaving him with a bloody nose. He commendably stayed in the game.

We caught some of the action on C-SPAN, which is not a sentence we expected to type this week.

We’re told a record-breaking 32,000 tickets were sold and $3.2 million was raised.

We got a preview last week when we crashed practice at 5:45 in the morning with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) and coach Roger Williams (R-Texas). Scalise was nursing an injury and had gone four for five in a scrimmage anyway. Williams, nine years coaching and nine years undefeated, offered his scouting report on the Democrats: "I don't know any of their talent so I couldn't say."

Democrats tell us they feel better about their odds in the midterms than they did about the game.

Since I am currently on vacation and had a few of these today before I opened my laptop (plz ignore any rum-inflicted typos), a Piña Colada felt like the only responsible choice for this week's cocktail pick. 

Ernest Hemingway is often credited with saying write drunk, edit sober, though I'm fairly certain it was actually a guy named Henry DeVries, but we'll Google that later. Unfortunately for all of you, half this newsletter was written during happy hour!

I am significantly better at drinking these than making them, but if you are feeling brave, tropical and have already made peace with consuming your entire week's worth of calories in one glass, here's a recipe.

Put it in a blender and enjoy! See you all next week!