It was simply after Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, had fired off a blunt textual content to the No. 3 House G.O.P. chief — that includes two f-bombs and 4 calls for that wanted to be met to realize her vote for the get together’s debt restrict plan — that she skilled a momentary flash of dread.
“Now I’ll look like a flip-flopper,” Ms. Mace apprehensive aloud.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy was planning inside hours to carry a vote on his proposal to carry the debt ceiling for a 12 months in change for spending cuts and coverage modifications, and Ms. Mace had simply printed an op-ed declaring herself a tough no. Now the second-term congresswoman from a swing district, who had already established one thing of a popularity for publicly breaking together with her get together however finally falling in line behind its insurance policies, was privately negotiating her technique to sure.
Ms. Mace would, the truth is, vote for the invoice after assembly with Mr. McCarthy and extracting a number of guarantees from him, together with to carry future votes on two of her prime priorities: addressing gun violence and ladies’s points associated to contraceptives and adoption. She anticipated criticism for the turnabout, however consoled herself with the truth that she had leveraged her vote to pressure her get together to tackle points she cared about.
“This is a way I can drive the debate,” she mentioned as she walked again to her workplace. “It’s a way of using my position to push those issues.”
It was a typical day for Ms. Mace, 45, who represents Charleston and the Lowcountry alongside South Carolina’s coast, and whose political profile — she is a fiscal conservative however leans towards the middle on some social points — places her at odds with the hard-right Republicans who now dominate the House.
Ms. Mace, who final 12 months beat a Trump-backed candidate in a major, is consistently pivoting as she figures out find out how to survive and play a significant function as a mainstream Republican in immediately’s MAGA-heavy House G.O.P., the place excessive members of the get together have higher energy than ever.
She typically kinds herself as a maverick unbiased within the mildew of Senator Joe Manchin III, the West Virginia Democrat whose tendency to buck his get together has earned him outsize energy within the carefully divided chamber — and the political fame that goes with it. But she has constructed the voting document of a largely dependable Republican foot soldier, at the same time as she publicly criticizes her personal get together and racks up tv hits and social media clicks. And Ms. Mace — savvy and irreverent — has turn into fluent within the artwork of the political troll, discovering methods to sign to the MAGA base that she hasn’t forsaken it.
She has repeatedly, and baselessly, accused the Biden household of being concerned in “prostitution rings.”
Above all, Ms. Mace, a highschool dropout and former Waffle House waitress who went on to turn into the primary girl to graduate from the Citadel, is hyper-aware of how she is perceived and of her precarious place in her get together.
During Mr. McCarthy’s extended combat for this job, Ms. Mace and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene — who’ve publicly feuded — huddled collectively on the House ground chatting about find out how to safe his victory. When a male lawmaker observed them and mentioned their joint effort was one thing Republicans wish to see extra of, Ms. Mace dryly disagreed.
“Who do you think you’re kidding?” she mentioned. “The only thing people want to see of me and Marjorie is if we’re wrestling in Jell-O.”
Behind all of the tacking backwards and forwards, Ms. Mace insisted, an even bigger mission is at work. She mentioned she was attempting to create a mannequin for a “reasonable” and re-electable Republican in a purple district, and demonstrating that there was a path to profitable again reasonable and unbiased voters.
“I’m trying to show how you can bring conservatives and independents along to be on the same page,” she mentioned. “Americans want us to work together. That’s not what’s happening. There’s very little that we’ve done that’s going to get across the finish line to Biden’s desk to sign.”
Ms. Mace has but to show that it’s potential.
The debt ceiling vote was the third time in 4 months that Ms. Mace had publicly threatened to interrupt together with her get together on a problem the place her vote was crucial, earlier than finally falling in line. In January, Ms. Mace had threatened to oppose the House guidelines package deal for the brand new Republican majority, however ended up supporting it. She had mentioned she would oppose eradicating Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, from the Foreign Affairs Committee, however reversed course.
In each cases, she insisted that she had pried guarantees from Mr. McCarthy in change for her help, comparable to a vow to institute due course of for committee removals sooner or later. She is conscious of the hazard of changing into the congresswoman who cried wolf.
“Every handshake I’ve taken with Kevin has been legit,” she mentioned of the speaker. “I haven’t gotten rolled. If I were to get rolled, I’d go nuclear. I’m just trying to move the ball in the right direction — that’s what matters to me.”
Some of her constituents view her techniques in a much less flattering gentle.
“You live around Nancy long enough, she will talk about being bipartisan and reaching across the aisle and working together until the cows come home,” mentioned David Rubin, a Democrat and a retiree who moved to the district six years in the past and attended a “coffee with your congresswoman” occasion with Ms. Mace final week in Summerville. “When it comes down to the actual votes, she always sticks with the party.”
A Strategy to ‘Shut Up’
Ms. Mace voted to certify the 2020 election and vociferously condemned President Donald J. Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, however she didn’t be a part of the small group of Republicans who supported his impeachment. These days, she avoids the topic of Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, in any respect prices.
“I’ll support the nominee — that’s what I say,” she mentioned whereas speaking on the cellphone in her automotive between occasions in her district. “And then I shut up.”
That silence is a deliberate distinction to former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, one other Republican who tried to maneuver her get together — and failed miserably, finally shedding her seat as a result of she refused to remain quiet about her unrelenting opposition to Mr. Trump and his election lies. In reality, Ms. Mace finally joined Republicans in voting to oust Ms. Cheney from her management submit.
Still, as Ms. Cheney did in her ultimate days in Congress, Ms. Mace usually warns her get together that it’s susceptible to shedding its manner. She argues that Republicans will lose management of the House in the event that they fail to mood their most excessive stances on abortion and weapons.
“Signing a six-week ban that puts women who are victims of rape and girls who are victims of incest in a hard spot isn’t the way to change hearts and minds,” Ms. Mace mentioned final month on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” responding to a brand new six-week abortion ban instituted by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. “It’s not compassionate.”
On weapons, she helps improved alert programs and stronger background checks.
But Ms. Mace has additionally co-sponsored laws that will ban transgender ladies and ladies from collaborating in athletic applications designated for girls. On fiscal points, she is aligned with the hard-right Freedom Caucus.
And whereas she criticized Republicans for selecting an abortion-related invoice as considered one of their first acts within the majority, saying it could harm the get together and alienate lots of her constituents, she voted for the laws, which may topic medical doctors who carry out abortions to legal penalties.
Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, who serves with Ms. Mace on the Oversight Committee, mentioned he discovered her efficient in looking for widespread floor whereas working inside the constraints of her get together.
“She doesn’t do things that would marginalize her and make her completely ineffective in her party,” Mr. Khanna mentioned. “There’s only so much she can do to push the party. If the Republican conference had everyone of Nancy Mace’s temperament and ideology, we’d be in a much better place in our country.”
Yet Ms. Mace’s strategy comes with political dangers.
In 2020, she gained election to Congress by narrowly defeating a Democrat. Last 12 months, she gained by 14 factors, after her district was redrawn to make the voters extra conservative. But the seat may shift once more in 2024; federal judges ordered South Carolina to redraw its congressional maps after ruling that the strains cut up Black neighborhoods and diluted their votes within the final election.
Conservative voters in her district are more and more skeptical of Ms. Mace.
“Sometimes I think she speaks out, particularly on the abortion thing, she needs to let that go,” mentioned Paula Arrington, a retiree who attended an occasion with Ms. Mace in her district final week and who’s of no relation to Ms. Mace’s former Trump-backed challenger, Katie Arrington. “We’re real conservatives and we support the Republican Party.”
‘Nasty,’ ‘Disloyal’ and Victorious
Over a thin margarita and tacos at a waterside restaurant in Mount Pleasant close to her district workplace, Ms. Mace credited Mr. Trump with fueling her political rise, however not like different Republicans, it was his wrath — not his backing — that made the distinction.
She labored for Mr. Trump’s 2016 marketing campaign, however after she broke sharply with him after the Jan. 6 assault, the previous president referred to as her “nasty” and “disloyal.” He supported her opponent in final 12 months’s Republican major, by which he savaged Ms. Mace for combating together with her personal get together and mentioned she was “despised by almost everyone.”
“He defined me as an independent voice in a way that I couldn’t have,” she mentioned. “I would not have won by 14 points had Donald Trump not come after me, and had I not been outspoken when Roe v. Wade was overturned.”
Ms. Mace, who bought business actual property earlier than being elected to the statehouse after which to Congress, is obsessed together with her work and has enormous ambitions.
She solely halfheartedly denies that she’s eager about a run for Senate sooner or later — “La la la la la,” she mentioned, placing her fingers in her ears, when requested about operating for a statewide workplace — whereas her aides half-jokingly move alongside an article that floats her as a possible presidential operating mate to former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.
In a celebration formed by extremists who view the center floor with disdain, the day-to-day may be fairly “lonely,” she mentioned, noting that she has few mates on Capitol Hill. She acquired a canine in the course of the pandemic, a Havanese named Liberty, and began carrying a gun always when threats towards her elevated after she voted to certify the election. She mentioned that solely “emboldens me,” as does the truth that she’s not the favored woman on the lunch desk. She calls herself “a caucus of one.”
Her hardened exterior is partly the results of private trauma. She was molested at a swimming pool when she was 14 and mentioned that for years she blamed herself, as a result of she had been carrying a two-piece bathing go well with. She was raped when she was 16, main her to drop out of highschool.
“I was in a really bad situation for a long time,” she mentioned. She was on Prozac after which self-medicated with marijuana, which she credit with lowering her anxiousness and saving her life.
“You carry it for a lifetime,” she mentioned. “When I want to punch a bully in the face, it’s all still there. I’ll bring a gun to a knife fight, and that’s overkill. It’s still there.”
Yet Ms. Mace is something however aloof. As she took conferences throughout her district on a latest Wednesday, she shared private particulars, joking with a reporter about doing the “walk of shame” residence from her fiancé’s home and speaking overtly about her wrestle with lengthy Covid.
“I overshare because I do want to connect with people on a personal level,” she mentioned, explaining why she had informed a number of teams all through the day that she had gained the “freshman 15” throughout her first time period in Congress and subsequently reduce out bread. “Everyone struggles with their weight.”
Ms. Mace, who has two teenage youngsters, mentioned she doesn’t learn books or have any hobbies. She not often takes holidays. She is divorced and engaged to be married to an entrepreneur, however has set no marriage ceremony date.
The grind is value it, she mentioned, if she will be able to shift her get together even a contact.
“The message matters,” Ms. Mace mentioned. “I’m trying to move the national narrative.”
Source: www.nytimes.com