Rep. Nancy Mace’s trouncing in Tuesday’s South Carolina gubernatorial primary dealt a blunt defeat to a once rising GOP star, a politician who had basked in national attention during her dramatic political transformation.
Mace had real political talent and promise, but her downfall and isolation followed years of brazen political opportunism, a hunger for media attention at any cost, rejecting advisers’ counsel and turning on many allies, more than a dozen former aides, colleagues and supporters in both South Carolina and Washington said in interviews.
She finished fifth in the contest, according to unofficial returns, solidly losing even her own home county and district.
Mace arrived in Congress after flipping a Charleston-area district in 2020 and built a reputation as a moderate who appealed to swing voters. She voted to codify same-sex marriage rights, called herself “pro transgender rights” and urged her party to “meet in the middle” with Democrats on abortion. By last year, Mace had begun repeatedly mocking transgender people as “trannies” and disparaged gay relationships on social media. In recent days, Mace suggested a Republican opponent in the governor’s race came from “a slum in India.”
Her relationship with President Donald Trump was similarly mercurial. She distanced herself from him soon after taking office, survived his attempt to oust her in 2022, rebranded herself as a MAGA warrior, defied Trump on the Epstein files and sought his endorsement in the governor’s race, only to watch him back a rival. No high-profile Republican endorsed her campaign.
The spectacle of Mace’s transformation often unfolded on the cameras she gravitated toward in television interviews, selfie videos posted on social media and dramatic exchanges in committee hearings. Her public appearances grew increasingly combative and bizarre.
“The only thing I hope is she gets the help she needs,” former Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy told The Washington Post, saying he watched as her “political and personal life unraveled” in recent years.
Mace, whom McCarthy had helped unseat Democrat Joe Cunningham in 2020, cast an unexpected vote for his ouster as speaker in 2023, joining right-wing hard-liners and Democrats as she abruptly turned on him. She later walked around the Capitol wearing a large scarlet “A” on her shirt, because she said she had been “demonized” for that vote.
“I helped her win. But I just watched her change along the way,” said McCarthy, who supported an unsuccessful primary challenge to Mace in 2024. “Some people warned when she was an early candidate, ‘Watch out, she’s not all there.’ I didn’t.”
Former staff said Mace embraced stories about her being a “caucus of one”on a “lonely political island.”
Mace and her campaign did not return requests for comment. She previously accused her former staff of mismanaging money and spying on her, and has dismissed criticism that she is overly focused on getting attention.
“I will always be grateful for the people of South Carolina who trusted me, fought with me, and refused to look the other way,” Mace posted on social mediaafter her loss Tuesday evening. “This isn’t the end of the fight. It’s just the end of this chapter.”
Public outbursts
Mace raised eyebrows in Washington year after year for drawing attention to herself, such as wearing an arm sling after accusing a foster care activist of “trans violence” during a handshake — having him arrested on assault charges only for prosecutors to drop the case. Her behavior in the months preceding her gubernatorial run became even more confounding to those observing it.
In the throes of her split from her ex-fiancé, Mace in February 2025 spoke on the House floor for nearly an hour, accusing him and three other men of rape and other sex crimes, which the men denied. During a congressional hearing on surveillance months later, she showed a “naked silhouette” photo of herself, saying it was taken without her consent.
In April 2025, Mace posted a video she took at a makeup store where she repeatedly cursed out a constituent who asked when she planned to host her next town hall.
A week and a half later, Mace confronted her nephew John Mace McGrath as he sat next to local elected officials during Vice President JD Vance‘s visit to a steel plant in Huger, South Carolina. She stood over him and pointed her finger in his face as she upbraided him for accepting an endorsement in a local party chairman race from state Attorney General Alan Wilson, whom she had also criticized during her lengthy House floor speech and would later run against her for governor.
“You f—ed up taking Alan’s endorsement, and you’re going to pay for that someday,” Mace said to the 26-year-old, according to two people who witnessed the May 1, 2025, scene, which has not previously been reported. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying they did not want to attract any additional wrath from Mace.
After conceding Tuesday, Mace endorsed Wilson in the gubernatorial runoff, despite repeatedly accusing him in the last year of being a “pedophile protector.”
The highest-profile eruption took place in October, when officials at Charleston airport reported that Mace had berated airport staff and police after a misunderstanding about her security escort preferences. A police report of the encounter described an expletive-laced tirade where she called airport police “F—ing incompetent.”
Dozens of local elected officials in her district signed a letter condemning her behavior, and the state’s Republican senators, Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham, criticized her actions. Mace refused to apologize, threatening to sue the airport for defamation and claiming the incident report had been “fabricated.”
“People can say she’s crazy, but they’re still talking about her,” said Austin McCubbin, Mace’s former political adviser who resigned in December after disagreements about campaign decisions and compensation. “It’s kind of one of those things where just so long as you spell my name correctly, that’s all that matters.”
Shifting political persona
Days after the former state lawmaker entered Congress, Mace criticized Trump in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, saying she did not believe he had a future in the Republican Party.
As the insurrection unfolded, Mace told aides she wanted to go out and get punched by rioters “so she could get on TV,” Natalie Johnson, her communications director at the time, told The Post. But Mace months later decided to pare back criticisms of Trump after a poll she commissioned showed they were unpopular in her district, Johnson said.
“I don’t know of anybody who puts their finger in the wind and tries to see which way it’s blowing more than Nancy Mace,” said Justin Evans, a longtime GOP political operative in the state who supported her state House run and now works for Pam Evette, the Trump-endorsed candidate who placed first in Tuesday’s gubernatorial primary. “She was a good-looking, talented communicator, had the social media following, had all the ingredients that a successful candidate should have. It’s just her moral compass was completely missing.”
Soon after entering office, Mace had shown herself to be a powerful force in politics who told a compelling backstory. A rape survivor at 16 and high school dropout who once worked as a Waffle House waitress, she became the first woman to graduate from The Citadel.
CJ Westfall, chairman of the Dorchester County Republican Party who worked on Mace’s 2022 general election campaign, described her as inspiring and hardworking. He credited her win that year to Republicans believing she was an “independent voice,” despite Trump’s opposition.
Since then, Westfall said her penchant for drama became clear and described her as a “crybully” who liked to provoke controversy and then “play the victim” when someone pushed back.
After her defeat, Mace said she challenged the powerful even if it cost her politically.
“Every vote I cast, every hearing I called, every fight I picked — it was always for you,” she wrote in a social media post. “I’ve seen what happens when good people stay quiet. And I’ve seen what happens when they don’t. I would choose the latter every single time.”
Strained alliances in Congress
Soon after Mace’s vote to oust McCarthy in fall 2023, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) greeted several of Mace’s congressional staff eating lunch at the Rayburn cafeteria and asked who they worked for.
“I used to really like her,” Bacon replied. “Not anymore. We can’t work with her.”
He told The Post he got along with her during her early time in the House, but her vote to push the speaker out “was a tough pill for many of us to swallow.”
At times, Mace allied with liberal Democrats including Reps. Ro Khanna of California and Jamie Raskin of Maryland.
“She would interact with Democrats in a way very few Republicans do, because she has sided with victims of sexual violence and sexual harassment,” Raskin said. “A lot of the people on the GOP side want to quickly brush those subjects under the rug, and Nancy, in her more freethinking, uninhibited moments, is willing to side with Democrats.”
Mace and Khanna, who had founded a joint caucus focusing on affordable child care, largely stopped their joint appearances after Mace fixated on transgender people. Mace introduced a resolution to ban transgender women from using women’s restrooms in the Capitol, in response to the 2024 election of Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Delaware) as the first openly transgender member.
Mace, however, signed on to a successful petition last year by Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) to release federal investigation files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
She said she wanted justice for Epstein’s victims, even though Trump initially opposed the release of the files. But Mace’s decision surprised her own dwindling team of aides because she was bent on getting the president’s endorsement for her gubernatorial run.
Wooing Trump
A few days before Mace announced her run for governor in August 2025, she tried calling Trump to give him a heads-up. She left a voicemail for the president, who later texted her with well wishes, according to a person familiar with their communication who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. But Mace panicked when Trump also passed along two polls that showed her struggling in a hypothetical race. Mace commissioned her own poll days later that showed her leading the field and with the highest name recognition.
Mace sent the poll to the president, who then posted it to Truth Social that month without comment — which political operatives said lent credibility to her nascent campaign.
In the final days of the race, Mace repeatedly said her support for releasing the Epstein files was the reason Trump did not endorse her. The president did not publicly criticize her for supporting the effort.
Mace’s congressional office frequently shed staff, some of whom she forced out, while others resigned citing difficult work conditions. At one point, in a three-month span after her McCarthy vote, her entire nine-member staff had turned over.
Mace also struggled to maintain political allies. She spoke of her love for former governor Nikki Haley, who backed Mace in the difficult 2022 reelection primary. But Mace went silent the next year when Haley sought her endorsement in her 2024 presidential run, and proceeded to blast Haley while campaigning for Trump.
“I don’t think Nancy Mace has ever seen a bridge in her life that she hasn’t burned down,” said Will Hampson, one of her former communications directors.
Hampson said his former boss was self aware that she was on an island. But he’s not sure if she recognizes she put herself there.
“She was her own best weapon,” he said, “and own worst enemy.”
Erin Cox contributed to this report.
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