Nancy Mace Made Staff Upvote Reddit Posts About Her Being the ‘Hottest’ Woman in Congress

It’s been clear for a while now that Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) is…to use New York Magazine‘s own headline, Not Okay.

Over the past couple of years, Mace has become more and more erratic: she called her constituents “ugly” while refusing to hold town halls; she’s tried to censor Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for things she never said; she used her congressional account to mock a trans teacher, who then received death threats (far from the first trans person she’s bullied); she verbally accosted TSA agents and later justified it by claiming she has “fought the transgender community”; and she used the House floor to accuse her ex-fiancé of drugging and raping her. Now, reporter Jake Lahut, who spoke to a number of former staffers, reveals Mace’s behavior behind the scenes is just as concerning and extreme.

“She’s not okay,” one former staffer told the publication. “There’s nothing here I can point to and say, ‘Oh, this is normal.’” Another ex-staffer said Mace has “deteriorated, and it sucks,” while another added, “Something’s broken. The motherboard’s fried. We’re short-circuiting somewhere.” Austin McCubbin, a former consultant who has “known her for years,” told Lahut that he thinks “the best thing for her is to no longer be in the media all the time, and to enjoy private life outside of electoral politics.”

In addition to these remarks on her seemingly declining mental health, the piece also reveals a number of highly questionable tasks she’s allegedly asked of her staff, including cleaning her Airbnb rentals and upvoting posts about her being the “hottest” woman in Congress on Reddit. New York Mag reports:

She was obsessed with monitoring her reputation online. In addition to reportedly having her staff create burner accounts to defend her, Mace allegedly instructed a staffer to go on Reddit forums about the “hottest women in Congress” to boost her standing in the rankings and comment where needed. Mace was “very adamant” about getting the staffer to upvote any posts about the congresswoman and her attractiveness, according to a second former staffer.

In May, as part of a deposition in the ongoing legal battle between Mace and her ex-fiancé, her former political advisor revealed that Mace stays up “all night” programming social media bots.

According to the magazine, she also made her staff bring her booze late at night during parties. “Look, when I worked for her, our poor scheduler was getting calls at two o’clock in the morning to come bring her bottles of tequila,” one ex-staffer told the magazine of incidents dating back to 2021. And she allegedly once told her staff that she wanted to “get punched in the face by rioters” on the House floor to get media attention.

“Looking at the floor speech and what went on there, it’s very clear that that was the breaking point to me,” another former staffer said of Mace’s bizarre and bombshell speech accusing her ex of rape. “Because you’ve now gone from standing up for people—whether rightfully, wrongfully, performative or not—you were on this mission, and now this is about you. The whole frame shifted, and she centered herself in it all. That’s when it became apparent to me that this is broken.”

That speech was in February 2025, I’d argue it was apparent something was broken long before then…

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