Shocker: No One Wants to Work for Rep. Nancy Mace

It turns out there’s yet another reason Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) sucks. On top of her moral grandstanding about ~moderate~ abortion bans and her recent, almost comical, 180 about Donald Trump, Mace is also a terrible boss, per a new Daily Beast report. Since November 1 (about three months ago), Mace’s entire D.C. office staff has quit and been replaced—except her former chief of staff, Dan Hanlon, who was fired on December 1 and has since filed to run against Mace in her district, which would be wild even as a Veep storyline.

Mace’s eight staffers who have quit since November include her “deputy chief of staff Richard Chalkey, her legislative director Randal Meyer, communications director Will Hampson, a financial adviser, a staff assistant, two legislative assistants, and her military legislative assistant,” the Daily Beast reports. And former staffers offered up an earful about their former boss, accusing her of fostering a “toxic” work environment,” and calling her “abusive” and “delusional as a boss.”

“All this is why pretty much every staffer and fellow member on the Hill thinks she’s a joke,” an ex-employee said. “Also a big reason why she’s only able to hire former George Santos staffers right now,” they added, in reference to Mace’s new communications director.

Another former staffer said Mace “says nothing publicly without her consultants or senior staffers telling her to, but takes credit for everything,” which… honestly sounds pretty standard among Congress members, but I did enjoy this little line from them: “She’s a walking teleprompter.” Ex-staffers also railed against Mace’s generally unrealistic expectations of them, including her “eight-minute rule,” wherein “if she needed us, we had to answer within eight minutes.” Former staffers even allege that Mace wouldn’t allow them to take off an hour on Good Friday to go to Mass: “For Mace it was all about control. She didn’t see the staff as people but as property.” They also accused Mace of incessantly using Monday.com to “micromanage the office all day,” which, on top of being an annoyance, could also be in violation of House rules given that the Daily Beast notes Monday.com is an “unauthorized software system.”

Some former staffers recounted being present when Mace’s new chief of staff, Lori Khatod, allegedly called the police on Hanlon when he came to the office to return his keys. “At that moment, I felt the most unsafe I ever had on the Hill, when I realized she was using the Capitol Police to intimidate staff,” one ex-staffer who witnessed the scene said.

Speaking of Khatod, she called the extensive allegations laid out in the report a “non-issue,” explaining, “​​New coach, new team in the DC office,” and declining to elaborate further because “like most offices, we do not discuss internal processes.”

My default assumption is that members of Congress are unpleasant to work for. But having had the displeasure of following Mace’s varying shenanigans over the last couple of years—during which, mind you, she’s had one single bill signed into law (to rename a post office)—I am not surprised that a grown adult who exudes this much theater kid energy is a terrible boss. On top of her alleged problems managing people, there’s also everything else about her. Mace staffers who were drawn to work for her, lured by her conservative family values, probably weren’t best pleased when she addressed a prayer breakfast with a pretty raunchy reference to her sex life with a man who was not her husband. Diligent, self-identified moderates who respected her sharp critiques of Trump a couple of years ago were probably frustrated when she voted to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and, last month, endorsed Trump after once accusing him of getting people killed by inciting the January 6 insurrection. And anyone across the political spectrum who wants to work for a serious person was probably put off by her scarlet “A” bit last October, too. Good luck to Mace’s entirely new staff this year, I guess!