Nancy Mace: the fairest of them all

“Trump in high heels” is how Congresswoman Nancy Mace described herself earlier this week when she announced her candidacy for governor of her home state, South Carolina. We don’t know whether Trump in high heels already exists because we still haven’t seen the Epstein Files. But let’s not assume the worst, and let’s examine Mace’s claim at face value. Does she really have Trumpian qualities? 

Like Trump, Mace has some idiosyncratic political views, while also going hard in the paint with the antiwoke rhetoric that has helped restore the Republicans to national dominance. Mace was the first female Corps of Cadets graduate from the military college The Citadel, where her father was on the faculty, and published a memoir about the experience in 2001. She’s fervently pro-life, but also fervently pro-exception in the cases of rape and incest. Mace is a sexual assault survivor herself, and has generally been a strong advocate for the rights of victims of sexual assault, but has also cleverly tied that into anti-immigrant sentiment by sponsoring something called the “Preventing Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act.”

Though Mace has significant detractors on the left, who try to lump her in with other controversial Republican congresswomen such as Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Lauren Boebert, she isn’t necessarily an empty pantsuit. As chair of the House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee on cybersecurity, information technology and government innovation, she presided over a remarkable public hearing last fall that claimed the Pentagon was hiding the truth about advanced aerospace technology and has been operating a UFO-crash-retrieval program for decades. “Are they keeping the president of the United States in the dark?” she asked. 

This X-Files component is missing, however, from Mace’s South Carolina platform, which, judging by her campaign announcement, will center around popular Republican ideas such as expanding school choice and eliminating the state personal income tax. She faces a phalanx of Republican opponents in the primary, but doesn’t seem worried. In Trumpian style, she said, “I’m not the establishment’s pick. I don’t listen to political consultants. I never have.”

That’s because Mace is her own best political consultant. She has a master’s degree in journalism and, before becoming a politician, ran her own public-relations agency. She knows exactly how the news business and publicity works. Her most Trumpian quality is her ability to make herself the center of any news story, at any cost. She’ll break any egg to get into the headlines. 

A Washingtonian magazine profile of Mace last year led with an anecdote of her speaking at a prayer breakfast of conservative Christians, discussing how she had to rebuff her fiancé’s sexual overtures to get there. “No, baby, we don’t got time for that this morning,” she said. “I’ve got to get to the prayer breakfast, and I’ve got to be on time.” The profile quotes several disgruntled former staffers, including one who says, “She’s not a real legislator. She’s not a legitimate or serious member of Congress – she’s just using her office to get on TV.”

In particular, that story highlights Mace’s publicity-seeking role in the ouster of former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. She received a lot of criticism for her anti-McCarthyism, including her response to the “backlash,” during which she wore a red “A” on her shirt, not to indicate that anyone had accused her of adultery, but because she meant she’d been unfairly persecuted by the media, by Democrats, and even by fellow Republicans. 

After January 6, Mace spoke up strongly against President Trump, but in the Washingtonian profile, her staffers say it wasn’t out of principle. “She was begging senior staff, including myself, to let her leave the office so she could,” as one ex-senior staffer remembers Mace saying, “go get punched in the face by the rioters.” 

More recently, Mace has placed herself in the hot center of trans politics, becoming a strong advocate for banning trans women from federal bathroom facilities and openly mocking the first trans member of Congress. In a highly publicized (by Mace) incident last year, she appeared with her arm in a sling after a House reception for the 25^th anniversary of a foster-care act, claiming that “a PRO-TRANS MAN chose violence and threats, costing me an injured wrist,” though witnesses say that this person merely shook her hand and said trans people in foster care “need your support.” 

It sounded suspiciously like a 2021 incident when Mace claimed “Antifa vandals” had spray-painted anarchist symbols outside her Charleston home, as well as slogans such as “no gods, no masters” and “all politicians are bastards.” A Mace fundraising email soon followed. All this put together would make Nancy Mace the only politician on Earth to have been attacked by Antifa, a trans man and, potentially, January 6 rioters. It’s a seemingly dubious galère because, frankly, she’s not that controversial. 

But though she lacks Trump’s distinct politics, she is – like Trump would be if he wore heels – incredibly solipsistic, with a level of self-regarding narcissism that her political opponents would be foolish to ignore. She’s put together and nobody’s fool. One can imagine her as the electoral equivalent of the queen in Snow White, gazing into her mirror and asking if anyone else is getting more publicity than her today. If she doesn’t like the answer, and you’re in the way, be very careful when taking a bite from that apple. “I’ll never apologize for putting South Carolina first,” she said this week. But South Carolina is where Nancy Mace lives, and she’s the fairest politician of them all.