Nancy Mace's Top 5 Political Failures: dead last for governor, the Speaker she toppled for nothing, and one law in nine years, a post office

Nancy Mace has spent nine years in elected office selling herself as a fighter, a disruptor, and a woman on her way up. The record tells a plainer story. When South Carolina Republicans have actually been handed a ballot with her name on it for anything bigger than her House district, they have said no, and the one time she had real leverage inside the House she spent it blowing up her own party's leadership and walked away with nothing to show for it.

Here, on one page, is the scoreboard.

The Top 5

1. She ran for governor and finished dead last, fifth of five. She gave up a safe congressional seat, ran a statewide campaign built almost entirely on one bathroom fight, and got 12.1 percent, last among the major candidates, in the June 2026 Republican primary.
2. She helped throw out a sitting Speaker of the House and got nothing for it. One of only eight Republicans to vote out Kevin McCarthy, she delivered three weeks of a paralyzed House, a more hardline replacement in Mike Johnson, and a McCarthy-backed primary challenge against herself.
3. She lost to Lindsey Graham, then ducked his seat when it finally opened. She challenged Graham in the 2014 Senate primary and finished fifth. When his seat came open in 2026, she polled at 10 percent, quit the race, and then told her own audience she "regrets" not running.
4. In nine years and 192 bills, the only laws with her name on them rename post offices. Not one substantive policy bill she has authored has ever been enacted.
5. The Trump endorsement she rebuilt her entire career to win went, twice, to her opponents. After January 6 she said Trump's legacy was "wiped out." She then remade herself as his loudest defender and asked for his blessing. He endorsed Katie Arrington against her in 2022 and Pam Evette against her in 2026.

Every one of these is drawn from public election returns, public roll-call votes, the Congress.gov legislative record, and Mace's own dated, public statements. Here is each, in detail.

1. Dead last for governor

On June 9, 2026, Mace ran in the South Carolina Republican primary for governor and finished fifth of five, last among the major candidates, with 12.1 percent of the vote and 57,380 ballots. She placed behind Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, Attorney General Alan Wilson, Rep. Ralph Norman, and businessman Rom Reddy. Evette and Wilson advanced to a June 23 runoff. Mace did not qualify for it. (NBC News, Forbes, Roll Call)

She did not back into last place by accident. She gave up a safe U.S. House seat to run, and she ran the campaign on a single theme: keeping Rep. Sarah McBride, Congress's first openly transgender member, out of the Capitol's women's restrooms. Newsweek reported that in one 72-hour stretch Mace posted about the bathroom fight 326 times across her accounts. (Newsweek) The voters she was performing for put her behind a candidate who had never held elected office.

The coda came that night from the very colleague she had built the brand attacking. At the LGBTQ Victory Fund's gala in Washington, McBride took the stage: "my colleague and Congress's top bathroom sheriff, Nancy Mace, is on the ballot. And while not all of the votes have been counted yet, she is in a respectful fifth place... So all I will say is happy Pride, Nancy." The room stood. The clip traveled further than anything in Mace's own campaign. See Maceopedia's full account: Bathroom sheriff, fifth place.

2. The Speaker she toppled for nothing

On October 3, 2023, Mace was one of only eight Republicans who voted to remove Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House, joining every Democrat to pass the motion to vacate 216 to 210. McCarthy became the first Speaker in American history to be removed by the House mid-term. The other seven Republicans were Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, Ken Buck, Tim Burchett, Eli Crane, Bob Good, and Matt Rosendale. Mace was the only South Carolina Republican to join them. (The Washington Post, CBS News)

Mace cast it as a matter of honor. "This isn't about left vs right. This isn't about ideology. This is about trust and keeping your word," she said, telling reporters McCarthy had broken promises to her, specifically to move women's-safety legislation, and adding that "we were promised we would move on women's issues and legislation to keep our communities safe. Those things never happened." On Fox she put it bluntly: he "was fired for not keeping promises." (Post and Courier, Fox News)

Then came the bill. Removing McCarthy left the House with no Speaker for 22 days, from October 3 to October 25. Steve Scalise won the Republican nomination and withdrew a day later for lack of votes. Jim Jordan lost three floor ballots. The chamber finally landed on Mike Johnson, a more hardline conservative than the man Mace had helped remove. She got no gavel, no leadership post, and none of the concessions she said she was owed. McCarthy pushed back on her stated reason directly, noting that her own chief of staff had told him "you have kept your word 100 percent," and even a fellow Republican, Rep. Steve Womack, called her fundraising off the vote "disgraceful." McCarthy's allies then bankrolled a 2024 primary challenge against her. She survived it, but the arc is the point: her single biggest swing at reshaping the House left her weaker inside it, not stronger. (Washington Examiner, The New Republic, NBC News)

3. She lost to Lindsey Graham, then ducked his seat

Mace's history with Lindsey Graham's Senate seat is a study in bad timing and worse odds. In 2014, as a first-time federal candidate, she challenged the incumbent Graham in the Republican primary and finished fifth. Graham won the nomination outright. It was her introduction to statewide politics, and the voters filed her near the back. (Congressional Career, Fox News)

Twelve years later the seat finally came open when Graham died on July 11, 2026. This was the opening, and Mace's first instinct was to want it. On July 12 she toured the networks and told Fox, "I would be an idiot not to at least look at it." (Fox News, via Maceopedia) Then the numbers arrived. The first poll after Graham's death, an Emerson College survey released July 16, put Mace at 10 percent, tied for third, behind Ralph Norman and Mark Lynch, in a field with no front-runner. (Emerson, The Hill) On July 20 she posted a video: "I'm not running for the US Senate." (Fox News) She endorsed Norman instead.

The postscript is the most telling part. On August 21, 2026, on her Facebook show "Get Maced," Mace watched the runoff she had skipped and said, on camera, "I'm now regretting I'm not running for the US Senate." She was regretting a decision she had made herself, out loud, with her name on it, after the polling told her where she would finish. See She "regrets" not running for the Senate.

4. Nine years, 192 bills, one post office

Maceopedia's Legislative Record hub catalogs every measure Mace has sponsored, computed directly from Congress.gov and the Government Publishing Office. Across three terms she has sponsored 192 bills and resolutions. The only measures with her name on them that have become law are post office renamings. The emblematic one is H.R. 6042, which named the Caesar H. Wright Jr. Post Office Building in Hilton Head Island, signed as Public Law 117-288 in December 2022. Post office renamings are among the most routine, uncontested measures Congress passes.

Not one substantive policy bill she has authored as lead sponsor, on any of the culture-war issues that fill her feed, has ever been enacted. The rest of the record, as public data: 11 of the 192 were reported out of committee, 7 passed the full House, 2 failed a floor vote, and 172 saw no recorded action at all after being introduced. See the full breakdown at One of 192.

The enrolled text of H.R. 6042, signed into Public Law 117-288. It renames a post office. Source: GovInfo (GPO).

5. The Trump endorsement that never came

The through-line under all of it is a bet that did not pay off. The day after the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, days into her first term, Mace said Trump's presidency was finished: "Every accomplishment that Republicans have had over the last four years of President Trump's presidency has been entirely wiped out." (Live 5 News) Within three years she had reversed course completely, rebranding as one of Trump's loudest defenders and openly seeking his endorsement for higher office.

It kept going to the other candidate. In 2022 Trump endorsed former state Rep. Katie Arrington against her; Mace survived that primary on her own. In 2026, with the governorship on the line, Trump gave his "complete and total endorsement" to Pam Evette, on May 29, less than two weeks before the vote that would leave Mace in fifth place. (The Hill, Maceopedia) Mace attributed the snub to her vote to release the Epstein files: "I know I put the likelihood of an endorsement on the line when I demanded transparency on the Epstein files." When Trump then co-endorsed both Evette and Wilson in the runoff, Mace answered on X with a single word: "LMAO." The woman who reengineered her public identity around Trump could not, when it counted most, get Trump to pick her.

Dishonorable mentions

The list could run longer. A few that did not make the top five:

• She cannot keep a staff. The Daily Beast reported that nine staffers left her office in roughly four months in 2023 and 2024, a stretch that included the firing of her chief of staff. A George Washington University expert on congressional staffing called the churn "ridiculously high" and said he would be "shocked" to find another member with turnover close to it in so short a span. A former aide, reacting to a staff handbook that demanded daily press hits and multiple TV bookings a week, asked: "Are we in a PR firm, or working for a member of Congress?" (Daily Beast)
• Unpaid ethics fines. After leaving the South Carolina House, Mace let state campaign-finance fines pile up to $16,700, one of the largest delinquent balances on the books, before the committee cut it to $1,200 and she still had not paid months later. See State ethics fines reduced from $16,700 to $1,200.
• The bill that listed one country as two. A Mace immigration measure referred to "Antigua and Barbuda" as two separate countries. See Mace's bill lists Antigua and Barbuda as two countries.

The pattern

Take the five together and a shape appears. Mace is very good at becoming a headline and very bad at converting it into anything durable: not a governorship, not a Senate seat, not a Speaker's concession, not a body of law, not her own party leader's endorsement. In our view, disclosed as opinion and grounded in the public results above, the gap between the brand and the ballot box is the real Nancy Mace story. Readers can weigh it against the numbers, all of which are public and dated.

Sources & related coverage

• Governor primary: NBC News · Forbes · Roll Call · Maceopedia: Bathroom sheriff, fifth place.
• McCarthy ouster: The Washington Post · Post and Courier · Washington Examiner · NBC News, revenge tour.
• Graham seat: 2014 fifth-place finish via Fox News and Congressional Career · 2026 timeline via Maceopedia's July 12 and August 21 dispatches · Emerson College poll.
• Legislative record: Congress.gov (Bioguide M000194) · H.R. 6042, P.L. 117-288 · Maceopedia: The Legislative Record and One of 192.
• Trump endorsement: The Hill · Live 5 News, "wiped out" · Maceopedia: Trump endorses Evette over Mace.
• Dishonorable mentions: The Daily Beast, staff turnover · Maceopedia: ethics fines and Antigua and Barbuda.

This dispatch compiles public election results, public roll-call votes, the public Congress.gov legislative record, and Rep. Mace's own dated, public statements. Where it characterizes that record as a pattern of political failure, that is stated opinion, disclosed as such and based on the cited public facts; readers can weigh it against the figures. It makes no claim about her mental state and takes no position on any pending litigation.