Goodbye, Nancy Mace

T he South Carolina primary — which I bet most of you forgot was even happening, unless you particularly love or loathe Senator Lindsey Graham — has come and gone. And there’s a good reason you forgot: It’s a blessedly sleepy primary season in the Palmetto State, one where nothing much of note really happened. The state’s Republican primary voters rewarded Graham for years of service as a faithful political ally to President Donald Trump, despite his internal enemies within South Carolina politics, while the governor’s race (equally predictably) went to a runoff between Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette and state Attorney General Alan Wilson.

So why bother even commenting about it? Because I’m fairly certain this is also the last occasion I shall ever have to write about Nancy Mace, the representative from South Carolina’s first district and one of the more disturbed politicians I have ever encountered during my professional career.

Mace dropped out of her House race (which she would have been threatened in, in a primary) to run for governor in a sharply divided field. She appealed (directly, sometimes manically, and occasionally fraudulently) to Donald Trump for his endorsement, which she perceived as her only path to November. She did not get it, and last night she finished a humiliating fifth place in what was essentially a five-way race, despite her political celebrity and fundraising. The winds of change blow fickle as ever, and they have now swept Nancy Mace away from elected office entirely — and hopefully politics as well.

What went wrong? Matthew Wilson already summed up the entire debacle better than I ever will be able to with his post this morning, the vividly titled “How Nancy Mace Self-Immolated.” Read it to truly fill in the blanks of how misbegotten Mace’s public career has been, and how quickly it went off the rails.

As for me, well . . . there’s a reason you haven’t heard me say more than a word or two about Mace since 2024: because she falls into that rare class of politicians whose mental well-being I am genuinely concerned for. It felt shameful to draw attention to her or indulge her in her unhealthy fantasias. It felt almost cruel: like the paparazzi swarming around Britney Spears back during that era when she shaved her head. Now that Mace has lost and is out of Congress in January, I sincerely hope she will go and spend an extended amount of time quietly seeking the help she needs, as opposed to the attention she desires.

I am not indulging in hyperbole. Nor do I wish to get specific in any way about some of my reasons. Instead, I want to explain only by reference to the four pieces I’ve written about Mace. In their evolving tone, it quickly becomes apparent why — as a writer hungry for content in the politically absurd — I quickly ceased writing about an endlessly publicity-hungry, attention-seeking fruitcake otherwise seemingly made for the Carnival of Fools.

When she voted to topple Kevin McCarthy in 2023 — for no reason other than to elbow her way into the group photograph of a lynching – I reacted as any lover of the politically absurd would: with a mixture of perplexity and joy at what a hapless opportunist she had revealed herself to be. When she pushed for even more attention in the aftermath, inexplicably parading around Congress in a tight T-shirt with a scarlet “A” crudely taped atop it, the game had become pathetically clear to me. A year later, my suspicions of her had curdled over into revulsion, and after September 2024 I decided I would write no longer about someone who set off every single red flag it was possible to in my mind, short of open criminal conduct.

Last year, in response to one of her serial provocations, a friend asked about why I didn’t write about Mace anymore, and it moved me to break my own rule and write an update. But I’m glad for it, because it excused me from ever even having to engage seriously with her gubernatorial run. I could simply sit in silence and let her flame out naturally.

Something simply felt wrong with her, on a level of basic human judgment — a wild card, not in a pleasant way but more in a “Charlie Kelly cuts the brake lines” way. Back then, I had a fine Renaissance analogy I could deploy as a cloak for these deeper misgivings, but eventually I felt hypocritical if I even wrote about her to mock or dismiss her: Why give her what she (so foolishly and self-destructively) seemed to want? Beyond the fact that nobody likes playing the patsy for a politician’s PR attempts, I felt like I would also be encouraging her unhealthy obsession, the downward spiral of a brittle, fragile mind. Nancy Mace is a person who, if anything, needs to learn the value of being ignored and forgotten for a long time — and after this I intend to do just that, for her sake as much as ours.

Here I am breaking my vow again, I suppose. But this time it will truly be the end. I am happy to write about fools and clowns like Jasmine Crockett or Marjorie Taylor Greene — as long as they survive in elected office, that is. I will not, however, willingly supply a self-destructive personality with the fuel for her own self-immolation. If nothing else, it simply began to feel irresponsible as a commentator, sort of like wittingly selling several cans of gasoline to a suicidal pyromaniac. I confess that I have never met Nancy Mace myself, but I wish her the best in what hopefully — for her own health — will be a very private life.