Nancy Mace may say she fights for the people, but it seems that all she really cares about is being famous, the internal handbook for her congressional staff shows.
In a report published Thursday, The Daily Beast examined the South Carolina representative’s staff handbook and interviewed several of her former staffers. The main message was clear: all eyes should be on Mace at all times.
“Are we in a PR firm, or working for a member of Congress?” a former senior aide said they repeatedly asked themselves while working for Mace.
The handbook, which Mace reportedly wrote herself, includes clear instructions for making sure the congresswoman gets the most attention possible.
Staffers are also expected to book Mace at least 15 television appearances per week: a minimum of nine spots on national channels (between one and three times a day) and six or more times on local outlets. And to get on television, she’ll pull stunts—like strip the House speaker of his gavel.
Former staffers criticized Mace’s decision to vote to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Mace later used her vote to cast herself as a maverick, fundraising aggressively off of the move.
But according to a former senior aide, she didn’t actually care all that much. “She saw the votes on the board and said, ‘Fuck it, I’m just gonna vote for it just so I can go on TV and talk about it.”
Mace also has other staff metrics with the hope of getting her on television. Staff are required to send out at least one press release per day, an unusually high rate.
Mace also set the highly unrealistic goal of filing 25 new bills per year. She expected 10 of those bills to pass the House per year, and one to be signed into law annually. It’s incredibly rare for almost any member to see a major bill that they wrote become law. Mace has introduced 62 bills since she took office in 2021, and only one—renaming a local post office in her South Carolina district—has actually become law.
The Daily Beast reviewed other internal documents from Mace’s office, including her office budget. She has dedicated more than a third of her office’s annual $500,000 budget for “marketing,” a word almost unseen on Capitol Hill.
“It is not normal for a member to prioritize media and comms over actual legislation like that,” a second former Mace staffer told The Daily Beast. “In my experience with and in other offices, comms serves to promote what the member is doing legislatively. In Mace’s office, legislation served to get her more media opportunities.”
Mace has already shown how willing she is to grab the spotlight. She calls herself a moderate and advocates for more “centrist” approaches to issues such as abortion, but she appears on far-right outlets and votes against abortion protections.