The scarlet letter 'A' (Oct. 2023)
On October 10, 2023, a week after voting to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Rep. Mace walked into a closed-door Speaker candidate forum wearing a white tank top printed with a large red letter 'A', her self-described 'scarlet letter', saying she would not be 'demonized' or shamed into silence for her vote.
Photo above: Rep. Mace wears her red "A" "scarlet letter" past the press outside the closed-door Speaker candidate forum, Oct. 10, 2023. Photo: The State / McClatchy, via AOL.
The episode was covered by the Post and Courier, Mace's hometown paper, whose reporting frames the central facts below.
A week after she became one of eight House Republicans to vote out Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the first removal of a sitting House Speaker in U.S. history, Rep. Nancy Mace arrived at an October 10, 2023 closed-door forum for the candidates vying to replace him wearing a white tank top printed with a large red capital "A." Asked by reporters in the hallway what it meant, she called it her "scarlet letter."
Mace tied the shirt directly to the backlash over her McCarthy vote:
"I'm wearing the scarlet letter after the week I just had last week being a woman up here and being demonized for my vote and my voice."
She cast the "A" as a badge of defiance rather than shame, telling reporters she answered only to her constituents:
"I'm here to let the rest of the world know, the country know, I'm on the side of the people. I don't answer to anybody in D.C., I don't answer to anyone in Washington. I only answer to the people."
Mace said the gesture was about not being "shamed into silence." According to The State, she had a plain tank top custom-printed with the red letter at a shop near her Charleston-area home before bringing it to Washington.
The literary reference cut both ways. The "A" invokes Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter, in which the letter is a mark of public shame for adultery that a Puritan town forces the heroine, Hester Prynne, to wear. Commentators and outlets, including The Washington Post, The New Republic, and Salon, noted that the symbol Mace chose to wear as a statement of defiance is, in the book, a punishment imposed on a woman, and argued the stunt undercut its own message. Mace's office stood by it as a deliberate signal that she would not be silenced.
Sources & related coverage
- US Rep. Nancy Mace wears 'scarlet letter' after facing criticism for McCarthy vote, Post and Courier
- Mace wears red letter 'A' after McCarthy vote, The Hill
- Nancy Mace and the scarlet 'A', The Washington Post
- Nancy Mace Wears 'Scarlet Letter' After McCarthy Vote, The Daily Beast
- Nancy Mace wore a 'scarlet letter' to Congress, but not for the reason you might think, The State / AOL
- Mace mocked for seemingly not understanding her "Scarlet Letter" stunt, Salon
- Related on this site: Mace's McCarthy ouster vote (Oct. 3, 2023)
On the Record
Mace explains McCarthy ouster vote: 'This isn't about left vs right. This is about trust and keeping your word.'
On October 3, 2023, Mace was one of eight Republicans to vote to remove Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker, citing his failure to keep his word on women's issues legislation and a balanced-budget amendment.
Mace wears scarlet-letter shirt: 'I will do the right thing every single time'
On October 11, 2023, one week after voting to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Mace wore a red 'A' T-shirt to Congress and described feeling demonized as a woman for her vote.
Mace tells CNN 'I have not been fundraising off of this', contradicted by her own timeline
On October 5, 2023, Mace denied fundraising immediately after McCarthy's ouster on CNN, but reporters had been tipped about a fundraising appeal she sent within one hour of the vote, the same behavior she had condemned in Matt Gaetz nine months earlier.
Mace on congressional trust: 'If you want a friend you can trust, get a dog'
On January 8, 2023, Mace summed up the difficulty of trusting colleagues in Congress after the chaotic McCarthy speaker votes with a line that became widely quoted as a pithy summary of Washington dysfunction.
Mace calls Matt Gaetz 'a fraud' for fundraising off speaker votes, then does the same nine months later
On January 8, 2023, Mace attacked Rep. Matt Gaetz for sending fundraising emails after each vote against Kevin McCarthy for Speaker; nine months later, Mace sent her own fundraising appeals within an hour of voting to oust McCarthy herself.