The story of Nancy Mace is merely another variation of the same sequence of events that led to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation from Congress in January.
Despite the exceptionally low standards of the present-day House of Representatives, the conduct of Representative Nancy Mace (R., S.C.) still managed to shock the conscience.
The representative began her time in Washington, D.C., by positioning herself as a staunch critic of President Trump: Just three days into office, she reportedly strove to get punched in the face by protestors at the January 6 Capitol riot in order to become the “face of anti-Trump Republicans.” She celebrated Pride Month, promoted “transgender equality,” voted to codify same-sex marriage into federal law, and argued that Trump’s legacy had been “wiped out” on January 6 and that the Republican Party had to “start over” without him.
Just a few years later, Mace was yelling “tranny, tranny, tranny” at university events, railing against “groomers,” tweeting “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” and describing Trump as a “fatherly figure” whose “approval” she constantly sought.
In between her political reinvention, Mace built a reputation on Capitol Hill as someone who would say and do just about anything for attention — as someone who could be counted on to always make herself the story, and for whom truly no publicity was bad publicity.
She wore a scarlet letter to the Capitol after voting to oust Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker; rented a party bus to return to Washington to vote on the president’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act; showed up to cast her vote on that bill in pink pajamas; went viral for telling a prayer breakfast that she gave up morning sex with her fiancé to be in attendance; made sure she was videotaped crying after meeting with victims of Jeffrey Epstein; shouted profanities at a constituent in a supermarket; delivered a speech on the House floor accusing, without specific evidence, four men (including her ex-fiancé) of various sex crimes; and had a profanity-laden meltdown toward police officers at Charleston International Airport, an incident that drew national headlines and pointed rebukes from both of South Carolina’s Republican U.S. senators.
But the saga of Nancy Mace has come to a close, at least for now. Last night, Mace placed a distant fifth place in the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary. Because she couldn’t seek reelection to her Charleston-area House seat while running for governor, Mace will be leaving Congress at the end of the year.
Mace’s crushing defeat came after President Trump endorsed a rival in the race, South Carolina Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette. Despite Mace’s enormous name-recognition advantage; solid fundraising; shameless attempts to pander (including by proposing cutting taxes on boat-loan interest and eliminating property taxes, but only for seniors); bizarre claims that Evette was not endorsed by Trump; and AI-generated posts of herself with the president, she took just 12 percent of the vote to Evette’s 29 percent and second-place finisher state Attorney General Alan Wilson’s 26 percent.
But while the president’s endorsement was surely significant in pushing Evette to the top of the field, surveys indicate that Mace’s initial co-frontrunner status with Evette deteriorated months before Trump weighed in on Evette’s behalf on May 29. It seems that Trump’s refusal to endorse Mace didn’t deliver the deathblow — her campaign was already in a downward spiral when the president stepped in to play kingmaker among the rest of the field.
Did voters’ growing familiarity with her pathological pattern of unhinged behavior and publicity-driven antics have something to do with Mace’s demise? Possibly, though it’s not entirely supported by the evidence; Mace was still performing well in surveys even after embarrassing and (theoretically) politically damaging scandals, such as the airport meltdown, had been widely publicized by the media and her fellow Republicans throughout South Carolina.
Instead, there’s another, more consistent factor that might explain Mace’s downfall. From her decision in September to join — against the president’s wishes — just three other House Republicans in forcing a vote on Representative Thomas Massie (R., Ky.)’s Epstein Files Transparency Act, she shifted her political brand to be one centered on Epstein and Epstein-related conspiracies. In various appearances, she insisted that there were various unnamed co-conspirators involved in Epstein’s abuse of minors; argued that the handling of the Epstein files would go down as “one of the greatest cover-ups in American history”; and stood alongside Democrats to criticize the Trump administration’s actions in the case.
Implicit in Mace’s approach to the Epstein case was that President Trump and high-ranking members of his administration were either directly complicit in Epstein’s sex crimes or were seeking to cover up the disgraced sex offender’s wrongdoing. In other words, for the past year, a Republican representative seeking to win a Republican primary in South Carolina was barnstorming the airwaves insinuating — without evidence — that Donald Trump and his administration were conspiring to sweep sex crimes against children under the rug.
In her typical sordid fashion, Mace used the Epstein saga to further burnish her own public profile. But while some Republican voters are still no doubt interested in the outstanding questions surrounding the Epstein scandal, they don’t take kindly to suggestions that the president and his administration — for which they voted and continue to by and large support — are a cabal of conniving, malicious elites plotting to conceal sex crimes.
It’s very likely that what hamstrung Mace was ultimately not her personal scandals; it was rather her refusal to be someone a bit more boring — someone perhaps less immediately newsworthy to the progressive media but who Republican voters would be more inclined to trust.
If Mace’s political transformation had involved a turn from performative anti-Trump rebel to team-player dutifully supporting the president’s agenda in Congress, her campaign for governor may have gone quite differently. Instead, Mace realized the path to continued media stardom was to be a persistent thorn in Trump’s side, attempting to attack and humiliate members of his administration on a daily basis.
To be sure, Mace is not alone among Republican House members in suffering a bruising defeat in a quest for higher office this cycle. Voters — including Republicans — are deeply dissatisfied with Congress’s performance and haven’t seemed keen to reward with promotions members of what are perceived to be do-nothing, totally dysfunctional institutions.
But the story of Nancy Mace is merely another variation of the same sequence of events that led to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation from Congress in January. The truth is that there are Republicans who did not know how to handle the shift from headline-catching, firebrand antagonist of the Biden administration to foot soldier in Trump’s Washington. They came to Congress to chase fame; when Trump returned and once again dominated the media’s attention, they lashed out. Now these people — B-list celebrities in another life — are being forced out. Congress, the Republican Party, and the American public are better off as a result.