How Capitol Hill drama messed up Nancy Mace ahead of her next election

Two years ago, things seemed to be going well for Nancy Mace. The South Carolina Republican was a rising star in Congress and had just fended off a primary against a Trump-backed opponent. She was on TV a lot. And that winter, Mace delivered one the scorching roast of her colleagues at DC’s annual press club dinner, wearing a semi-sheer floor-length black dress.

But since her unexpected vote to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House of Representatives in October, Mace has been on a losing streak. She has become embroiled in a nasty public feud with the now former speaker. Many of Mace’s staffers abandoned her and then brutally exposed her to the media. Her former chief of staff weighed in trying to make her too primal.

Congress is a place where lawmakers with big egos take purely self-interested risks to become famous. But Mace can be an example of what happens when the springboard to fame goes wrong.

The two-term Republican, known as the first woman to graduate from the once all-male Citadel military college, took a chance when she joined Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and the other six attention-seeking Republicans from the House of Representatives who forced a vote. about McCarthy’s speakership. The move plunged the House of Representatives into leaderless chaos for three weeks — and set off a staff revolt for Mace, a seemingly endless cycle of bad press and now a tough reelection bid.

Mace faces Tuesday’s primary, which will test how much goodwill all this has cost her in lower coastal South Carolina. Mace is locked in a race against Catherine Templeton, an official in former Gov. Nikki Haley’s administration who came in with a boost from McCarthy’s advisers. Templeton claims Mace is “flip-flopped for fame.”

The former speaker, who retired late last year, has made no secret of his opposition to the members responsible for ending his career. McCarthy told CNN in November that Mace did not deserve another term because of her “flip-flopping.” In April, a McCarthy-affiliated super PAC spent $700,000 on ads targeting Mace and Reps. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) and Bob Good (R-Va.) — all of whom voted against McCarthy.

It’s Mace’s second serious primary as an incumbent president who turned the swing in 2020 — but her first as an incumbent president with the support of Donald Trump. After criticizing the former president, she now fully embraces the MAGA movement. But her transformation doesn’t ring true for some Republican activists in the district, who don’t understand what this version of Nancy Mace stands for.

“Less than a year ago she said she was a party of one, that she was independent. Then suddenly she’s ultra-MAGA. So which way are you? People are confused,” said Xiaodan Li, the founder of Friends of Liberty, a conservative group that supports Templeton.

Mace’s critics also point to how just two years ago, McCarthy helped Mace defeat Katie Arrington, Trump’s pick in the Republican Party primaries, after Mace was critical of Trump for his support of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. McCarthy did significant fundraising for Mace. She returned the favor and generally supported McCarthy – until she voted to get rid of him.

Mace justified her vote against McCarthy by saying she did so to advance her own legislative priorities on issues like access to contraception and rape kits, which she said were being sidelined by then-Speaker.

Observers like Matt Wylie, a national Republican consultant who lives and votes in Hilton Head, Mace’s district, said it seemed like just another way for Mace to make a name for himself in Congress. “She ultimately decided not to vote for McCarthy as speaker because this was another opportunity to be on TV,” Wylie said. “I think within minutes of that vote I put out a fundraising appeal.”

After Mace’s chief of staff was caught trying to negotiate between McCarthy and Mace during what ex-staffers described to HuffPost as a particularly tense time, Mace’s vote against McCarthy threw her office into disarray.

“(Mace) was always a paranoid person, but then things went sideways,” said a former employee.

Mace did not respond to a request for comment about the campaign or revenue at her office.

Mace parted ways with her longtime chief of staff, Dan Hanlon, in December, prompting an exodus of key staffers. Aggrieved former assistants of Mace leaked unflattering stories to the press about their ex-boss, including that she said she wanted to be punched on January 6, 2021, so she could be on TV. A month after his departure, Hanlon filed the paperwork to challenge Mace for her seat.

It’s virtually unheard of on the Hill for a staffer to bump into his boss. But Hanlon ultimately did not follow through on his threat to the Mace primary when it became clear that Templeton was a real challenger, with access to donors and a line to McCarthy’s advisers.

“At the end of the day, she is my congresswoman. I am a resident of Hilton Head. As a voter, I lost confidence in Nancy Mace,” Hanlon told HuffPost. “The race was never about me. It was always about having a serious person for a serious job.”

It’s not clear how much Mace’s DC drama matters to voters. Mace was ahead of Templeton by more than 25 points in a recent public poll and is favored to win re-election if she wins the nomination. And while Templeton managed to slightly outpace Mace in its last quarter of fundraising, Mace has spent nearly $1.6 million since the start of the election cycle, to Templeton’s $400,000, according to FEC reports (though these don’t cover the home stretch of the race or the show main results). external expenditure paid into the district).

In the final weeks of the campaign, Templeton, who was endorsed by Republican South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson, has gone after Mace over a Washington Post report alleging that Mace may have overcharged the House in within the framework of a programme. allowing members to reimburse themselves for living expenses. During the campaign, Mace Templeton, who did not respond to requests for comment for this piece, called McCarthy’s “puppet.”

But even the former staffers who left during the McCarthy episode don’t see Mace’s primary as an end to their careers.

“Last cycle she thought Donald Trump should go to prison. This cycle she is the most MAGA person around. She’s not ashamed and she doesn’t care at all. All that matters to her is that she wins. She enjoys the fight, and she’s super smart and I think she can pull off what a lot of people couldn’t do because she understands the dynamics of where she needs to be,” said another former staffer.

Will Folks, Mace’s former business partner and an ex-GOP operative who is a South Carolina digital news outletpraised Mace for her “independence” on the McCarthy vote and said she has always been her own best advisor when it comes to her image.

“A lot of people, you’re not your best PR advisor. But I think she has always been her best PR advisor,” Folks said. “She definitely has a little bit of an edge, and you want someone who might be a little bit willing to have a knee-jerk reaction from time to time.”

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