Nancy Mace Set ‘Quotas’ for Staff of How Many Times She Wanted to Appear on Television Per Day: Report
AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib
If you’ve been seeing a lot of Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) lately, it’s not an accident, it’s actually her plan. Jake Lahut of The Daily Beast got his hands on Mace’s staff handbook, which reads more like a public relations campaign than a policy outline.
In addition to perusing the staff handbook, Lahut spoke to three former staffers of the freshman representative. And their feedback was consistent — Nancy Mace is more about promoting Nancy Mace than making laws:
In the document, the responsibilities and expected deliverables listed for the position of communications director are extensive; the person is expected to send out at least one press release per day, for example, a frequency rarely seen on Capitol Hill.
Beyond drafting press releases, website posts, and tweets, staffers on the communications team were told they needed to book Mace on a national TV outlet between one and three times per day — a staggering nine times per week, at a minimum, according to former staffers who had seen past handbooks — and on local TV channels at least six times per week.
The most recent version of the handbook is notable in how much more detailed it is in explaining communications roles compared to legislative or constituent-oriented ones.
The former staffers who spoke to Lahut also confirmed that Mace wrote the handbook herself.
Mace’s omnipresence on various media platforms is by design, but according to other staffers with experience working on Capitol Hill, it’s unusual how Mace’s communications strategy forced her actual legislative work into the backseat, maybe even the trunk:
…[A]spects of the internal Mace materials stood out to current and former House staffers who reviewed some of the content. One House Democratic aide noted in particular that Mace allocated over one third of her office’s allotted annual budget — $500,000 — for “marketing,” a phrase that is rarely used in politics or by members of Congress.
“Everyone here sees her as a show horse — when she’s spending over a third of her office budget on ‘marketing,’ that’s ‘yikes!’,” the aide said.
To be clear, there is some legislative work being done in Mace’s office, though not much of it has made it to the floor. Mace, whose presence grew after her vote to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as Speaker of the House, had introduced a bill with McCarthy that focused on cybersecurity. It was called the MACE Act.
A spokesman for Mace, Will Hampson, also told Lahut that criticism about her communication strategy is just speaker-related sour grapes: “Congresswoman Mace is being attacked for taking a strong stand against the Washington establishment. They didn’t like a vote she recently took, so now they want to silence her. Good luck.” He added, “Anyone who suggests she is not focused on legislating is lying.”
Mace also claimed (on TV, natch) that her vote to oust McCarthy was based on her lack of trust in the former speaker, but a former senior aide had a different take: “[S]he saw the votes on the board and said, “Fuck it, I’m just gonna vote for it just so I can go on TV and talk about it.”
Read the full story on The Daily Beast.
