Nancy Mace is one of the most mixed-up, confused members of Congress. When she won her seat the Charleston-centric district she beat a centrist Democrat in a swing district. The legislature removed some Black neighborhoods and put in some white ones and the district is much safer for a Republican. So she kind of flipped from a centrist to a MAGA nut overnight. She was even one of the Gaetz-8 who voted to depose Kevin McCarthy. That earned her a tough primary this cycle. She’ll be facing Catherine Templeton on June 11. Although Templeton has only raised $461,277, several groups have come into the district to support her and beat up on Mace. A brand new PAC, Lowcountry Conservatives, has spent $411,695 bolstering Templeton. Another brand new PAC, South Carolina Patriots spent $367,472 touting Templeton— and $1,126,090 slamming Mace. And bllionaire backed WFW (Ken Griffin, Paul Singer another Wall Street types) spent $494,671 singing Templeton’s praises.
People who know Mace say the pressure is more than she can handle and that she’s in a downward emotional-mental spiral and… well, cuckoo. The Daily Mail reported that “The Republican congresswoman fired or lost nine staffers from her Washington D.C. office in three months— and many of them trashed her to the media on the way out. Now, the South Carolina lawmaker has dramatically hit back and accused the former aides of sabotage in an extraordinary interview with DailyMail.com. Mace, 46, says the departed staffers mismanaged $1million, hacked her phone, spied on medical records, and even submerged electronic devices in water and deleted files to cover their tracks… Mace claims her old staff was plotting against her, and she's found relief in a new group of aides she can trust. But former Mace employees have described a 'toxic' worked environment. A source familiar with the daily operations of the office shot back: 'The swamp has truly gotten to Nancy Mace.”
Ex-staffers, and some of her colleagues, describe her as paranoid and everyone says she’s a Marjorie Traitor Greene wanna-be, motivated by media coverage. After the Daily Mail piece came out yesterday, Patrick Svitek and Jacqueline Alemany spoke with some of the ex-staffers Mace smeared. They “vehemently disputed her claims that they ‘sabotaged’ her office by hacking her phone, mismanaging the office budget, spying on her children and trying to destroy electronic devices with water… Members of Congress rarely take aim at ex-aides so publicly and with such specific allegations. But the turmoil between Mace and former staffers has played out in public view over the past year as staff has cycled through her office.”
Six former Mace staffers, speaking on the condition of anonymity to preserve their future employment prospects on Capitol Hill, said that Mace mischaracterized normal office functions as part of a staff conspiracy against her. They said that like most staffers serving members of Congress, some people in the office had access to her personal, political and official calendars to coordinate her schedule and manage daily operations.
Mace also claimed in the interview that her staff did not spend nearly $1 million in congressionally allocated funding for the office in 2022 and 2023. Money that congressional offices don’t spend is returned to the U.S. Treasury, but Mace believed the funds could have been better spent on constituent communications or boosting staff salaries.
Her former staffers were bewildered by the complaint, considering that Mace presents herself as a fiscal hawk.
“I have never seen an article about a member of Congress complaining that all the tax dollars weren’t spent,” a former staffer noted.
Two former staffers said that the leftover money was a result of Mace missing deadlines to approve of a mass-mailer program that members typically send to constituents at the end of every year. “She was very bad at pulling the trigger on decisions,” one of the former staffers said.
…One group that repeatedly endorsed Mace before McCarthy’s ouster has now turned on her. Winning for Women, which works to elect GOP women, began running pro-Templeton TV ads last month, touting her as a “consistent conservative.” Mace’s campaign argued the group’s reversal was payback for her anti-McCarthy vote, saying the former speaker was out for revenge and “hiding behind the skirts of W4W.”
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