After a 30 year career as a helicopter pilot, culminating in her promotion to chief of Navy Reserve, Nancy Lacore was unceremoniously fired. Six months later, she’s forging a new path — running for the seat in Congress currently occupied by Rep. Nancy Mace.
“I spent 35 years defending the Constitution and upholding the rights and freedoms that are in it,” Lacore told Reserve + National Guard Magazine. “I’m concerned that is at risk right now.”
Lacore attended Holy Cross on a ROTC scholarship. Upon graduating in 1990, she went into aviation, which she considered the most exciting and challenging career path available to her.
“It’s an aviation mentality,” she said about the role of female pilots in the Navy. “You were accepted. We were always there. It was not a problem.”
Ten years of active duty later, now part of a dual military marriage and with four of her eventual five children in tow, she transitioned to the Navy Reserve and began a civilian career at General Dynamics.
Initially her time in the Navy Reserve was simply a good paying part-time job that allowed her to spend time with her kids. But after returning from a deployment to Afghanistan in 2012, “I was like, I really like this thing,” she laughed.
She began putting in up to 200 days a year of reserve time, while also serving as the president of Valor Run, a small nonprofit that held running events in honor of women who were killed in combat during the Global War on Terror. She moved up the ladder in the chain of command, eventually being promoted to vice admiral and assigned chief of Navy Reserve in August 2024.
But almost exactly one year later, Lacore was relieved of duty.
“It was very abrupt,” she said. “I felt like I was going 100 miles an hour, then all of a sudden going zero. I went home, and that was it. I never went back to the Pentagon. That’s the last time I wore a uniform.”
No reason was given by the Navy for her firing, but Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has openly stated his belief that years of “DEI promotion” has left the military “effeminate,” as he termed it in his book “The War on Warriors.”
Lacore rejects this position with regard to the aviation field where she spent her career.
“I’ve done more promotion boards than is almost humanly possible,” she said firmly. “It is 100% merit based promotion, and the fact that anybody would question that hasn’t seen how it works.”
Lacore and her husband moved back to their home in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, where she began considering a run for office in her district, SC-01.
She believes her time in the Navy gives her the perspective necessary to be an effective representative. “I was working at an executive level as part of our government,” she said. “I was used to getting stuff done. We need [congresspeople] who are going to go in there and work with everybody, regardless of where those people sit, on which side of the aisle.”
Her family supported her immediately.
“When I started talking about it, I think they saw the change in me,” she said of her four daughters and one son. “They know I’ve always been service oriented, so it just took root.”
Quality of life for service members is a primary focus of her campaign, having seen firsthand how they struggle to pay bills and create a healthy work/life balance. She was moved by the resilience her kids showed during her time in the military, especially when she was deployed to Djibouti only four years after her deployment to Afghanistan.
“My youngest was around eight at that point, and she just lost it,” Lacore recalled. “And then she looked up, and she stopped crying, and she goes, ‘I’m really proud of you.’ Which says so much about the sense of service that kids can take on just by observing it.”
That daughter nearly became the second of Lacore’s children to join the military, receiving a Navy Nurse Corps Scholarship to attend the University of Pittsburgh. She spent last summer at basic training.
“And then the night I got fired, she dropped her scholarship,” said Lacore. “I’m sure she’s not alone. I’m sure there’s plenty of other young girls who have seen what’s happening.”
Lacore is now laser focused on her campaign and optimistic about her chances in the Democratic primary on June 9th.
“My goal is to win.”
