This article was featured in New York’s One Great Story newsletter. Sign up here.

Right up until she lit the fire, some of Representative Nancy Mace’s own staff and advisers didn’t know what she was going to say on the House floor in February 2025, let alone that it would be a pivotal moment in her life. That speech now appears to be a before-and-after moment, separating Mace’s once-promising (if often bizarrely colorful) career from the seemingly irredeemable mess it has become.

Flanked by a metal safe and an in-home security camera, with Representatives Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Anna Paulina Luna of Florida seated behind her, Mace wore a white dress and three necklaces, one with her Congressional member pin and another with a thick cross. She also had crosses on her earrings, but her engagement ring was nowhere to be seen. Mace proceeded to accuse her ex-fiancé, Patrick Bryant, of secretly filming her, physically assaulting her, and engaging in a conspiracy to drug, rape, and film other women. She declared she was going “scorched earth” on Bryant and three of his associates.

“So,” Mace declared, “let the bridges I burn this evening light our way forward.”

It is not customary for lawmakers to make such personal accusations on the floor, even if Mace, a rape survivor, had made countering sexual abuse and trafficking an integral part of her political identity. Bryant would go on to vehemently deny Mace’s allegations and sue her for defamation (though by making her remarks on the floor, she could ostensibly retain immunity from a defamation lawsuit under the speech and debate clause of the Constitution). He did not return a request for comment and is under a gag order, as is Mace, barring them from discussing their ongoing legal battle. Many of her former staffers are inclined to believe her allegations of abuse against Bryant, even if they never saw anything untoward, but the chaotic and highly public fashion in which she has gone after him makes them question her judgment and overall well-being. “She’s not okay,” said a former staffer. “There’s nothing here I can point to and say, ‘Oh, this is normal.’”

“Looking at the floor speech and what went on there, it’s very clear that that was the breaking point to me,” the former staffer added. “Because you’ve now gone from standing up for people — whether rightfully, wrongfully, performative or not — you were on this mission, and now this is about you. The whole frame shifted, and she centered herself in it all. That’s when it became apparent to me that this is broken.”

A second former staffer told me they had concluded that “she’s deteriorated, and it sucks.”

Mace has continued to shed much of her staff, torched her relationship with President Donald Trump, and torpedoed her bid to become governor of her home state of South Carolina. Her erratic behavior burst into view in October when she had a meltdown while going through security at the Charleston airport during the government shutdown. Irate at her police escort for not meeting her at security, Mace started “loudly cursing and making derogatory comments to us about the department. She repeatedly stated we were ‘Fucking incompetent,’ and ‘this is no way to treat a fucking U.S. Representative,’” according to a police report I obtained.

Airport-gate has since become a major news saga in South Carolina, hurting her standing in the Republican gubernatorial primary. In the polling since October, Mace’s support has been cut nearly in half, and she has slipped from nearly tied for the lead down to third or fourth place.

Mace is also now the subject of a House Ethics Committee inquiry. The committee did not release any specifics........

© Daily Intelligencer