Nancy Mace: A Biography
The life and public record of Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, from her 1999 Citadel cadet years to her third term in the U.S. House. Each section below opens the deeper, fully sourced page: her early life, her congressional career, her legislative record, her personal finances, and her faith.
Overview
Nancy Mace (born December 4, 1977) is the U.S. Representative for South Carolina’s 1st congressional district, a coastal seat covering much of the Charleston area. A Republican first elected in 2020 and now in her third term, she is the daughter of a career U.S. Army officer and, in 1999, became the first woman to graduate from The Citadel’s Corps of Cadets. In 2025 she launched a campaign for Governor of South Carolina.
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The Citadel
In 1999, Mace became the first woman to graduate from The Citadel’s Corps of Cadets, three years after the South Carolina military college was ordered to admit women. She recounted her four years there in a 2001 memoir, In the Company of Men: A Woman at The Citadel, which documents extensive harassment during her cadet years. Graduating the Corps does not entail military service, and Mace did not serve in the armed forces; her father, J. Emory Mace, was a decorated Vietnam veteran and the Citadel’s Commandant of Cadets during her time there.
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Congressional Career
Mace has represented South Carolina’s 1st district since January 2021, winning in 2020, 2022, and 2024. She chairs an Oversight subcommittee on cybersecurity and sits on the DOGE subcommittee. She voted to impeach Donald Trump after January 6 and later became a strong supporter; she was one of eight Republicans who voted to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023; and in November 2024 she introduced the Capitol restroom resolution aimed at Rep.-elect Sarah McBride. Rather than seek a fourth House term, she ran for governor of South Carolina in 2026 and lost the June 9 Republican primary, finishing fifth. When Sen. Lindsey Graham died that July, opening a U.S. Senate seat, she did not enter the special election to fill it; that race, its field, and her own dated statements are cataloged in the 2026 South Carolina Senate special election hub.
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The Legislative Record
A neutral, public-record catalog of every bill and resolution Mace has sponsored in the U.S. House, drawn from Congress.gov and the Government Publishing Office, with the text and official printed version of each and how far each one traveled. Across her House tenure she has sponsored well over a hundred measures; three have become law, all post-office renamings from the 117th Congress.
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Personal Finances
Members of Congress report assets and liabilities in broad ranges, so any net-worth figure is an estimate. Across Mace’s filings, reported assets stayed roughly flat while reported liabilities climbed; in June 2026 she amended three years of disclosures, mostly changing how her Isle of Palms beach-house rental appears. Her final House report, covering 2025 and filed August 14, 2026, lists no liabilities and no real estate.
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Faith & Religion
Mace publicly identifies as a Christian and regularly invokes faith in her politics, describing herself as “a woman of faith” who draws “strength from the teachings of Jesus Christ” and citing scripture on the House floor. Commentators on both the religious right and the secular left have questioned the consistency of her public conduct with her professed faith; she has answered that she goes to church “because I’m a sinner not because I’m a saint.” Maceopedia takes no position on the sincerity of her faith.
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