Congressional Career

Fox News coverage of Mace's November 2020 victory over incumbent Joe Cunningham, the election that launched her congressional career. (Source: Fox News segment, via Rep. Mace's YouTube channel.)

Nancy Mace has represented South Carolina's 1st congressional district in the United States House of Representatives since January 3, 2021. She is currently serving her third consecutive term, having won elections in 2020, 2022, and 2024.

State legislative background

Before her congressional career, Mace served in the South Carolina House of Representatives, representing District 99 in the Charleston area. She won that seat in a special election held January 16, 2018, and served until her 2020 congressional run. Prior to the state house, she had run once before for federal office: in the 2014 U.S. Senate Republican primary, she challenged incumbent Sen. Lindsey Graham, finishing fifth in that contest.

2020 election

In November 2020, Mace defeated Democratic incumbent Joe Cunningham in one of the most expensive U.S. House races in South Carolina history. The final margin was narrow: Mace received approximately 203,619 votes (roughly 51%) to Cunningham's 192,387 (roughly 49%), a spread of about 11,000 votes. The race attracted national attention and significant outside spending from both parties. The district covers coastal South Carolina including Charleston, Hilton Head Island, and Beaufort County.

Re-election

2022. In a primary heavily shaped by Mace's vote to impeach Donald Trump following the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, Trump endorsed her opponent, former state Rep. Katie Arrington, in advance of the June 14, 2022 Republican primary. Mace defeated Arrington and went on to win the November general election against Democrat Annie Andrews by approximately 14 percentage points.

2024. Mace won a third term in November 2024, defeating Democrat Michael B. Moore by approximately 17 points (roughly 58% to 41%). That same month she introduced a House resolution barring transgender women from using the Capitol's women's restrooms, a measure targeting Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-DE) before McBride was sworn in.

Committee assignments

Mace serves on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. She chairs its Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation, the first named chair of that subcommittee when it was established in the 118th Congress in early 2023; she was reappointed to the chair for the 119th Congress in January 2025. She is also a member of the Oversight Committee's DOGE Subcommittee (Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government in prior congresses; the DOGE subcommittee was organized in the 119th Congress under a separate mandate).

Legislative record

According to Congress.gov and GovTrack, across the 117th through 119th Congresses Mace has sponsored more than 187 bills and resolutions. Of those, three have been enacted into law, all post office renamings from the 117th Congress:

H.R. 264 -- Joseph Hayne Rainey Memorial Post Office Building in Beaufort, SC. Signed as Public Law 117-34 on August 6, 2021.
H.R. 6042 -- Caesar H. Wright Jr. Post Office Building at 213 William Hilton Pkwy in Hilton Head Island, SC. Signed as Public Law 117-288 on December 27, 2022.
H.R. 6040 -- Robert Smalls Post Office Building in Beaufort, SC. Folded into the year-end omnibus and enacted as part of Public Law 117-328 on December 29, 2022.

Post-office renamings and similar commemorative designations are among the most routine measures Congress passes and make up a substantial share of enacted legislation across all members. No substantive policy bill Mace authored as primary sponsor has been enacted. See the full bill-by-bill record at Legislative Record.

Mace was an original cosponsor, not the lead sponsor, of the Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act, which was sponsored by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and enacted as Public Law 117-260 on December 21, 2022. That law does not count as her own sponsored legislation.

Notable votes

Kevin McCarthy ouster (October 3, 2023). Mace was one of eight Republicans who voted in favor of the motion to vacate the chair, removing Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as Speaker of the House. McCarthy was the first Speaker in U.S. history to be removed by the House.
George Santos expulsion (December 1, 2023). Mace voted against expelling Rep. George Santos (R-NY), citing the presumption of innocence. Santos was subsequently expelled on a separate vote that month.
2023 debt-ceiling deal. Mace voted against the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, the bipartisan agreement to raise the debt ceiling and avert a federal default. The bill passed and was signed into law in June 2023.
McBride restroom resolution (November 2024). Days after the 2024 election, Mace introduced a resolution declaring that only "biological women" may use women's restrooms and changing facilities in the U.S. Capitol, a measure widely understood as directed at Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender person elected to Congress. The resolution attracted national coverage.

Political alignment

Mace is a conservative Republican. She was publicly critical of Donald Trump during the 2016 election cycle and, following the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, said Trump had "no political future in the GOP" and was among those who briefly discussed the 25th Amendment. She voted for Trump's second impeachment. She subsequently became a strong Trump supporter, endorsing him on January 22, 2024 after he wrapped up the Republican presidential nomination.

Ethics

State campaign-finance fines (2020-2024). After leaving the South Carolina House in 2020, Mace never closed her state campaign account, allowing ethics fines for late filings to accumulate. By March 2023 her unpaid balance stood at $16,700 -- one of the largest delinquent accounts on the S.C. House Ethics Committee's books, despite years of staff outreach she did not respond to. In December 2023 she finally closed the account and appealed for a reduction, citing financial hardship, COVID-era family health issues, and post-January 6 death threats. The committee voted unanimously to cut the fine to $1,200 -- about 7 percent of what she owed. Six months later, in June 2024, public records showed she had still not paid the reduced amount; she told the SC Daily Gazette she had "cut a check this week." See: State ethics fines reduced from $16,700 to $1,200.

Federal reimbursement investigation (2025-2026). In March 2026, the Office of Congressional Conduct referred Mace to the House Ethics Committee over her practices in claiming reimbursement for House lodging allowances. The referral was publicly reported; the committee had not issued findings at the time this entry was written. See The House Ethics reimbursement investigation (2025-2026) for the full chronology, and Litigation Overview & Court-Filing Index for related matters involving Mace.