South Carolina Republican Representative Nancy Mace is getting dragged after a damning New York Magazine profile revealed she forced staffers to create burner Reddit accounts to boost her standing in a "hottest women in Congress" forum.
According to sources, Mace was so "obsessed" with monitoring her online reputation that she "instructed" one staffer to “go on Reddit forums about the ‘hottest women in Congress’ to boost her standing in the rankings and comment where needed.”
One staffer told the publication that Mace was “very adamant” about having that staffer “upvote any posts about the congresswoman and her attractiveness.”
The revelations in the magazine profile showcase an office run by a tempestuous woman who, sources said, created a hostile work environment.
One aide said:
“We were scared of her. She would make staffers cry. She would threaten to fire them, take their money away, not give them raises, not to give them days off, religious days. The closer you get to her, the harder she messes up your brain. It’s a classic story of ‘never meet your heroes.’”
Mace also likes to drink a fair amount and one unnamed ex-staffer said she would make her “poor scheduler” go out and buy bottles of tequila at 2 a.m. During her first term in office, Mace would also “command” staffers to “bring her liquor after midnight to keep parties going at her home.”
Of Mace's drinking and marijuana usage, one staffer said:
“She would definitely do it excessively. And again, not to say that most members don’t or most staff don’t, but it got to the point where it was an issue.”
Mace abused the powers of her office in another way: having her staffers clean for her. According to the profile, she ordered aides to “clean multiple properties” that she had on Airbnb, rather than paying for cleaners herself. A staffer said she made aides clean her $3.9 million South Carolina beach home for a watch party on Election Night 2022.
Mace's office ranked among the highest in staff turnover in Congress between 2021 and 2024, and she is currently operating without a chief of staff in Washington or a campaign manager in South Carolina.
But Mace apparently told journalist Jake Lahut that she doesn't want to hire a chief of staff at all:
“I’ll never have a chief of staff again. I’ll never have a campaign manager. I run a pretty flat organization because I don’t believe in gatekeepers. Those positions become such filters that you can’t even get a drip of coffee through.”
People were not impressed.
According to former staffers, alarm over Mace’s well-being grew after her breakup with ex-fiancé Patrick Bryant, against whom she has made allegations including physical abuse, covert filming, and a conspiracy to drug, rape, and record other women.
These latest revelations follow more damning details from those who've worked for her: last year, several of her former staffers relayed that she ordered them to create fake social media accounts to monitor chatter about her online and to "bolster her image," among other surface-level digital tactics.
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