Last winter, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) lost all nine of her congressional staffers. On November 1, 2023, she fired her chief of staff, Dan Hanlon. In the next three months, the other eight quit. The reviews were not good. Mace earned a reputation as an erratic boss — which added to the general belief she has a screw loose.
It is a reputation she acquired with a series of bizarre stunts. In one instance, she videoed a campaign commercial in front of the Fifth Avenue Trump Tower, despite Trump endorsing her opponent in the 2022 GOP primary for her seat. It was so cringe that even Trump mocked her at a rally in her home state.
In another poor decision, she strutted around Congress wearing a white t-shirt with a big red “A” to illustrate her pariah status after she voted to dethrone ex-speaker Kevin McCarthy.
The original scarlet letter stood for “adulteress.” God only knows what Mace thought it stood for.
It is easy to question your political opponents’ sanity. The charges are often hot air. But sometimes, the subject provides the evidence for their mental defects — frequently in an interview.
Kristi Noem’s autobiographical admission of animal assassinations caused an uproar among pet-loving Americans — just about all of us. But even that scandal would have lost its edge had Noem not insisted, in a series of disastrous TV appearances, to keep reminding people she was a canicidal maniac. It finally occurred to her to stop talking.
Mace has learned no lessons. She has given the British bum-wipe scandal rag, the Daily Mail, an interview to present her side of the office debacle. She must have assumed that the paper would give her a free run. Unfortunately for her, in a rare attempt at objective journalism, the Mail presented both sides of the story.
It reports the Congresswoman’s case thus:
Mace, 46, says the departed staffers mismanaged $1 million, hacked her phone, spied on medical records, and even submerged electronic devices in water and deleted files to cover their tracks.
The mother-of-two claims they even went as far as snooping on her children's calendars and would monitor doctor appointments.
I have never wanted to know my bosses’s medical history, what their kids were up to, or what was on their phone. And if a boss had accused me of being interested in that stuff, I would have thought they were nuts.
There is more. Mace told the Mail her new team is still trying to repair the damage. Adding:
“I knew that they were sabotaging the office for a while. I didn't know to the extent that they were doing it.”
“They were signing my name on documents they didn't have permission to do — one of them submerged their electronic devices underwater so we couldn't access their files. They deleted files, some of them deleted files off our server, so there'd be no documentation for the new staff that were coming in.”
“We had another former staffer that would leak the names of the new employees we were hiring so that negative stories could be written about them.”
“We even had interns quit because old staff threatened the interns, threatened that they would never get a job on the hill if they worked in my office.”
Did the interns quit because of the ex-staffers? Or was the source of workplace hostility higher up the pecking order?
Mace added that another former staff member had hacked her devices and was tracking her for nine months.
“Literally, they could see where I was at all times. They could see my kids' calendars, my doctors' appointments, my medical information.”
“The stories I have from some of my former staff are horrific, and were a massive invasion of my privacy.”
I am not a psychiatrist. I cannot diagnose paranoia. But if I were to write a story with a paranoid protagonist, those are the words I would put in their mouth.
Mace also illuminates her hypocrisy. In her congressional biography, she embraces fiscal conservatism.
“Her dedication extends to curbing wasteful government spending, earning her the 2023 White Coat Waste Warrior Award.”
Yet the Mail reports:
Mace was miffed to find out that her staff had left close to $1 million on the table in her office budget. 'It was $400,000 in 2022 and close to half a million in 2023,' she said.
Money that a Representative does not spend returns to the U.S. Treasury. But Mace does not celebrate this. She says she is upset because this fiscal prudence impacted her constituent services.
“It's our job to manage our office, be fiscally responsible, but to use everything we have to communicate our constituent services.”
“If people don't know that, hey, you didn't get your IRS refund in 2020, we'll help you or if you need an appointment at the VA, and you've waited for six months and you need assistance, we'll get that appointment for you. Heck, I'll even call the DMV if you can't get in the DMV.”
“That money could have also gone toward salaries, bonuses — especially if you're entry-level, it's really hard to get by in D.C. It was really outrageous.'
This list seems like a noble set of priorities. But the truth is not what Mace says it is. Her self-authored office handbook shows that her priority is herself.
The Daily Beast reports:
Beyond drafting press releases, website posts, and tweets, staffers on the communications team were told they needed to book Mace on a national TV outlet between one and three times per day—a staggering nine times per week, at a minimum, according to former staffers who had seen past handbooks—and on local TV channels at least six times per week.
Mace’s ex-staffers also disagreed with Mace’s version of reality. They offered their thoughts.
“The swamp has truly gotten to Nancy Mace. A 'fiscally conservative' congresswoman is upset that staff saved her constituents money?”
‘I guess she never understood that the office budget is not a personal bank account. Ask her mentor, Senator Paul. Every year he sends unspent funds back to the Treasury to pay down the debt. Rep. Mace would rather spend tax money on vanity mail pieces than return a dime back to the American people.”
Bad bosses blame their team for an office’s poor performance. But the team knows where the fault lies. Two ex-staffers blamed Mace for missing the deadline to approve a $400,000 mailing program in 2022. They denied that her personal devices had been hacked, and said it was standard routine for elected officials to share their personal calendars with staff.
“She had a personal calendar, a political calendar, and an official calendar. All three of those calendars were managed and shared with senior staff so that we could go about the daily operations. No one hacked her accounts. She set them all up.'
“She routinely would try to revoke access, be like 'you can no longer see my calendar' for a couple of weeks. And you know what, we couldn't do our jobs.”
“Everything the staff had access to was granted by her.”
As for signing her name without her permission,
“she's talking about the run-of-the-mill, every office has the hand stamp of a member. This is a stamp that she had directed our team to use for clerical tasks that she didn't want to be bothered with.”
One former staffer has a different explanation for Mace’s accusation that a some peon sabotaged a computer by dunking it in water. They say the 'submerged device' allegation stemmed from a staff member who dropped water on their computer. And took it to the tech team. “This wasn't espionage or something.”
Another ex-employee points to a possible cause of Mace’s hyperbolic laceration of past staffers.
“This seems to be stemming from paranoia and trust issues. She's clearly unwell and I hope she gets help.”
Congress has a House and a Senate Chaplain (with annual taxpayer-funded salaries and office allowances nudging $1 million). It would better meet Congress’s needs if they fired them and hired a psychiatric staff.