A shocking profile of a South Carolina congresswoman who has waged an on-again, off-again alliance with President Donald Trump threatens to affect her reputation at a moment when she is battling to stay among the leading candidates in a hotly contested gubernatorial primary.
Rep. Nancy Mace made headlines throughout 2025 as the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency was the background for her own personal crisis, one that played out publicly across television screens in Washington and around the country. In February 2025, the congresswoman accused her ex-fiancé Patrick Bryant in a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives of a number of criminal acts including physical assault and filming her naked without her consent. Bryant swiftly denied the accusations.
She also caused a scene in October of last year when, at Charleston’s airport, Mace (according to a police report) berated and cursed at officers who allegedly failed to meet her upon her arrival. Also a candidate for governor in the state in a Republican primary, the congresswoman saw her support dwindle as Republicans in the state when Sen. Tim Scott and others rebuked or condemned her actions.
And after a New York Magazine profile out on Monday headlined, “Nancy Mace is Not Okay,” Mace’s reputation could be further at risk. The publication cites several former staffers, including a former top consultant to her gubernatorial campaign, who described her behavior as erratic and accused her of being abusive. Mace’s office fiercely denied the claims made in the piece, and trashed its author in a statement to NYMag.
The picture painted by the former employees detailed some of their concerns with Mace, who was first elected as a representative in 2021. Supporters of the congresswoman argue that Mace instead is a victim of ex-staffers’ axe grinding.
“We were scared of her,” one former staffer told NYMag. “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.”
Another former staffer detailed how early in her career Mace would push for appearances on national and local TV to help her brand. Her staffers thought she had potential, even if her behavior had them questioning her actions.
“Something’s broken. The motherboard’s fried. We’re short-circuiting somewhere,” a staffer told the magazine.
According to former staffers, Mace allegedly abused alcohol and marijuana during her time in office and was described as “befuddled” on a 2022 trip to Europe by staff who say that the congresswoman demanded the firing of a staffer for releasing the same travel details to reporters that Mace herself had told a roomful of journalists a day prior.
“She would definitely do it excessively,” a staffer with Mace on the Europe trip alleged to NYMag about her travels. “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.”
Another alleged: “Look, when I worked for her, our poor scheduler was getting calls at 2 o’clock in the morning to come bring her bottles of tequila.”
But sources close to Mace disputed this to The Independent on Monday, and claimed that Mace suffers from hemochromatosis, a disease that prevents her from ingesting hard liquor or abusing alcohol.
Other staffers claimed that Mace would use them for housework and cleaning duties at her D.C. townhouse and other properties she was renting out as AirBnBs, according to the magazine. The congresswoman is generally described in the piece as verbally abusive, and increasingly consumed by personal vendettas that have consumed part of her focus in Congress since her floor speech last year. Supporters of the congresswoman mockingly reject these insinuations, and claimed that ex-staffers were mischaracterizing typical duties of congressional or campaign staffers.
Ex-staffers also said they were concerned about her repeated use of her office to go after Bryant, all the while engaged in a separate legal battle over the allegations. In May of 2025, she displayed a nude image of herself at a subcommittee hearing that she claimed was taken by Bryant without her consent.
Mace’s office referred to the claims in the article as “ridiculous” in a response to NYMag.
Over the summer of 2025, her relationship with Trump splintered. She has log had a roller-coaster relationship with the president. After the January 6 riots, she spoke out against them, but didn’t vote to impeach Trump. Then, over the years, she became one of his biggest backers.
Last year, Mace joined several other Republican women as lone GOP signatures on the discharge petition to demand the release of the Epstein files from the Department of Justice, lead by Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie. That act severed her relationship with the White House, along with the relationships of other rebel Republicans such as Marjorie Taylor Greene.
It wouldn’t be the first time Mace lost out on Donald Trump’s endorsement. The president endorsed against her in 2022, when she faced a primary opponent, only to see Mace prevail by refusing to take it personally and remaining vocally supportive of the MAGA brand. By 2024, she was back in the MAGA fold and won Trump’s endorsement for another term. Now she stands accused of drifting from Trump’s side yet again, and in a Trafalgar Group poll of the GOP primary for governor in South Carolina had slipped to third place out of four leading contenders as of mid-January. Just a few percentage points separate the candidates, with a wide portion of the electorate undecided.
But Mace’s bid for governor is a test of her statewide appeal, and the first time she’s run outside of her congressional district. Donald Trump has yet to endorse in the primary. A poll put out by Stratus Intelligence on behalf of Mace’s campaign still showed the congresswoman leading the field, by four points, in January. Generally, polls show a tight field with just a few points separating the candidates.
In an interview with NYMag, Mace claimed that she would forgo hiring senior staff in the future to avoid barriers between her and her staff.
“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,” she said.
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