2026 is proving to be Bubba Wallace's best year in NASCAR yet. He's third on the point table and has four top-10 finishes in the first six races. But some people still aren't over how angry they got over him more than half a decade ago.
South Carolina will be having a U.S. Senate seat election in 2026 and politician Paul Dans is taking aim at Wallace to try and flip a few extra votes in a stillborn campaign. At the recent NASCAR race in Darlington, Dans pledged to force NASCAR to allow fans to fly the Confederate flag at races again.
“As your next U.S. Senator from South Carolina, my first call is gonna be to the CEO of NASCAR, Jim France. Sir, we wanna fly our flags again at NASCAR, and we don’t give a crap what Bubba Wallace thinks. South Carolina will rise again,” Dans said.
Back in 2020, Wallace was a major voice in calling for NASCAR to do away with its longstanding tradition of letting fans fly the Confederate flag at races. In the aftermath of the George Floyd protests and other social justice protests, NASCAR decided to implement a formal ban of the flag being flown at events.
A contingent of NASCAR fans still despise Wallace for his role in that and pretty much any social media post about him will have a few of those fans criticizing him for something that happened over a half a decade ago.
The Senate Race
While Dans has secured endorsements from media figures such as Tucker Carlson, Dans is currently polling in a distant third behind incumbent Senator Lindsey Graham and businessman Mark Lynch.
Graham is already a top supporter of President Donald Trump and has his official endorsement in the U.S. Senate race. Polling has him above or only just below the majority heading into the June primary. Whoever wins the primary is a lock to win the Senate seat, which has voted firmly Republican for decades.
"Senator Lindsey Graham has my Complete and Total Endorsement for Re-Election," President Trump wrote in March last year. "HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN. Everyone in South Carolina should help Lindsey have a BIG WIN next year."
So while Dans may have no shortage of gripes with Wallace and NASCAR's Confederate flag rules, he may have to find some other way to get what he wants.
