Future SC congresswoman Nancy Mace says she’s already been ‘blacklisted’ by Democrats
South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace promised to be an independent voice for the Lowcountry if voters sent her to Congress, but the representative-elect says she’s already facing partisan obstacles before she’s even been sworn into office.
In an extensive one-on-one interview with The State newspaper at her home, the future U.S. House member for South Carolina’s coastal 1st District said a congressional member informed her that Democrats are being told not to work with Mace on legislation.
“I’ve already been told that I’m going to be blacklisted by the other side and won’t be able to get anything done because they spent so much money — millions of dollars — to beat me and did not,” Mace said while sitting on the back porch of her Daniel Island home on Tuesday morning. “There are going to be challenges on both sides of the aisle, particularly when you have an independent streak and it’s how you operate.”
Mace declined to say who told her she had been blacklisted, calling it “a private conversation.” However, Mace said she was not wholly surprised because she said “both sides” deploy these tactics.
“It’s not just one side or the other. This is both sides doing it. That is enormously problematic when you’re someone that sees the value in reaching across the aisle. As a freshman, it’s going to be hard for me to get anything done, and especially when we’re in the minority party in the House it’s an even larger challenge ahead. But when that is the playing field going into it, and you haven’t even been sworn in, it’s a problem,” Mace said.
If true, the effort amounts to an early attempt at a political blockade of Mace, an incoming freshman GOP lawmaker who narrowly defeated Charleston Democrat Joe Cunningham in the November election.
With her election, Mace, 42, made history as the first Republican woman elected to Congress from South Carolina. No stranger to blazing her own path, she was also the first woman to graduate from The Citadel Corps of Cadets.
South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District has in recent elections showed signs that it is becoming more split between Republicans and Democrats, despite its traditionally Republican voting history. The district includes parts of Charleston, Berkeley, Dorchester, Colleton and Beaufort counties.
Mace, a former state lawmaker, secured her victory over Cunningham by 5,415 votes, edging her Democratic opponent out of office by a 1.27 percentage point margin.
Citing that narrow win, which was the tightest margin of victory in all of South Carolina’s congressional races this year, Mace said she considers it her responsibility to represent the entire district when she begins serving in Washington — not just the people who voted for her.
“I look at the turnout of this election, with massive turnout on both sides of the aisle, and the love and hate on the fringes of both sides, too. I really think it was a referendum,” Mace said of the 2020 election nationwide. “People are saying, ‘I’m tired of the bulls---.’ Stop allowing disagreements to be divisive. Even if we disagree on 80% of the things, let’s find 20% of things that we can move forward on and do something together.”
Some of the priorities Mace said she has already identified include securing COVID-19 relief for small businesses and finding federal dollars to send back home in an upcoming infrastructure package to help the district’s roads and bridges, which must also contend with frequent flooding.
However, one of Mace’s first public appearances as a newly elected member of Congress was to stand with members of South Carolina’s Republican congressional delegation in support of President Donald Trump’s decision to not concede in the presidential election.
“My message that day was about voter integrity and having a nonpartisan approach to it. I can’t speak to other members of the delegation,” said Mace, who in the interview called the Trump administration’s legal efforts to overturn the election results “futile” and affirmed, “It will be a Joe Biden presidency.”
Mace confirmed she will be also be hitting the campaign trail in Georgia next month to help Republicans where she can in the two high-stakes U.S. Senate runoffs.
Broadly speaking, Mace said her five top policy priorities when she is in Washington will be addressing issues related to jobs and the economy, health care, infrastructure, the environment and the military.
Mace said the GOP needs to work on how it connects with voters if they want to recapture a majority in 2022.
“I think Republicans over the last several years and decades have had a problem explaining things in a way that is attractive. Entrepreneurship is sexy because that gives you the freedom to start your own businesses to live, work and retire and make your own rules and make your own money. I want to redefine the conversation and how we talk about some of these subjects,” Mace said.
For the last couple of weeks, which included attending orientation for newly elected Congress members, Mace has been balancing her time between media requests, hiring staff and researching legislation.
Making history
When she is sworn into office in 2021, Mace will be one of at least 141 women in Congress, according to tracking by Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics.
Much of that growth is attributed to gains made by Republican women. This year, voters elected at least 36 Republican women to Congress, setting a new record for GOP women in Congress and shattering the previously held record of 30 that was set in 2016.
Mace’s story and how it fits into the rise of Republican women has resulted in national media taking notice of her. When she arrived for orientation in Washington, reporters wanted to talk to her.
Mace wants to see more women running for office. As women increase their numbers, Mace said it also increases their odds of rising to leadership positions.
“This isn’t a one time deal,” she said. “If we want to really reflect the faces of America, we’re going to do have to do it again every two years until about half the body is women.”
“It’s not just Democrat women who break glass ceilings, it’s Republican women, too, but we just don’t get as much recognition of it. ‘Glamour’ magazine is never going to write about us, maybe because our ideology isn’t socialist,” Mace said. “I think socialism is sexy right now for some fringes, but that’s not mainstream America. I’m talking about fiscal policy and small businesses, and it’s not quite as sexy, you know.”
Mace said she does not plan to move to Washington and will instead commute back and forth. Her two children, she said, will continue to attend school in South Carolina. Because of her new role in Washington, Mace will give up her work in commercial real estate.
Her work now will be focused squarely on serving as congresswoman for the 1st Congressional District.
The weight of the moment
To do this work, Mace decided to keep April Derr, the longtime constituent services director for Cunningham and an aide to former Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford. Mace said she also decided to hire Cunningham’s entire constituent services staff.
“Constituent services is totally nonpartisan, so it’s important to make sure we maintain that and move forward with the folks that have been doing the work and have been doing a great job,” she said.
On Friday, Mace was unanimously elected to serve on the House Republican Policy Committee.
The committee was established in 1949, and serves as an advisory group to House Republicans where members can discuss policy ideas and current legislation before the body. Mace will serve as the policy representative for the South Carolina and Georgia delegations. Mace has lived in both states.
Though freshman members do not get to pick which committees they serve on, Mace said she hopes to be put on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, “along with anything to do with our military or our environment.”
In that moment, Mace said, she felt the weight of all she had accomplished as the first Republican woman elected to Congress from South Carolina and also as Nancy Mace, the former high school dropout who was a waitress at Waffle House before she became the first woman to graduate from South Carolina’s military school.
She remembered all the people who told her she could never achieve her goals and reflected on how far she had come since losing her first political race in 2014.
Mace said she wished she could hold onto that feeling on the plane that day, and put it in a jar so that she could open it and feel it wash over her on the difficult days she knows lie ahead of her.
“I’m just this girl from Goose Creek who dropped out of school. That I’ve made it this far at this level, it still blows my mind. But I take it seriously. I’m going to work hard. I’m going to go up there do my job, and then I’m going to come home and be in the district,” Mace said.
Mace will take office in January.
This story was originally published November 25, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
