The current frontrunner for the South Carolina governor’s office became the first candidate to declare his running mate this week.
Early Friday morning (January 9, 2026), S.C. attorney general Alan Wilson tapped state senator Mike Reichenbach of Florence to be his lieutenant governor in the event Wilson captures the Republican nomination this spring.
Reichenbach, 54, originally of Lima, Ohio, is a car dealer who won a 2022 special election to fill the Florence County seat vacated by the death of the late Hugh Leatherman, one of the most powerful lawmakers in state history. He has emerged as one of the more conservative members of the uniparty-controlled S.C. Senate – a chamber which, like the S.C. House, tends to veer decidedly to the left of the more conservative Republican primary electorate.