House Republican Wears Letter A on Shirt After 'Being Demonized for My Vote'
Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina usually wears her politics, like her emotions, on her sleeve. On Tuesday, she wore them on her shirt.
Mace wore a white shirt with the letter “A” in bold red print, referring to the practice Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about in “The Scarlet Letter” of adulterous women being forced to wear an “A.”
Mace was among the eight Republicans who sided with Democrats last week to remove former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Mace: I’m wearing the scarlet letter after the week I had being a woman and being demonized for my vote and voice. pic.twitter.com/guVpxGHUq7
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 10, 2023
“I’m wearing the scarlet letter after the week that I just had last week being a woman up here and being demonized for my vote and for my voice,” she said in a video clip posted to X.
“I’m here to let the rest of the world know and the country know, I’m on the side of the people. I’m not on the side of the establishment,” she said.
Mace added a brash statement of her first principles.
“I’m gonna do the right thing every single time, no matter the consequences ’cause I don’t answer to anybody in D.C. I don’t answer to anyone in Washington. I only answer to the people.”
On Tuesday, Mace said she plans to support House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio over House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana in the contest to succeed McCarthy, according to The Hill.
In an interview with the Post and Courier, she said she will not be pigeonholed.
“This is my signal to others that I don’t answer to anybody up here,” she said. “I only answer to the people back home. And I don’t care what you throw at me. I don’t care what the establishment throws at me.”
She said the vote was not a publicity stunt.
“I turn down more interviews than I actually do. And I don’t need to be performative because I am a serious legislator,” she said.
Mace said she will take what critics throw at her and keep going her own way.
“I’m always going to do the right thing, no matter what. It’s what they taught me at The Citadel — that I will deal with the consequences and dive into it, and I’m not going to back down,” said Mace, the first woman to graduate from The Citadel.
Mace said that if Jordan does not become speaker, “I’m going to be a team player.”
Mace told CBS on Sunday that a trail of broken promises led to her vote to remove McCarthy.
“Well, first of all, he made a promise to our country that he would follow the law and present a budget and 12 spending bills. There’s a law from 1974, the Budget Impact and Control Act, that says we were supposed to do that. But Congress always manufactures that emergency every year, like they don’t know that September 30 exists. And they skirt the law with CRs,” she said, referring to continuing resolutions that keep the government operating while Congress debates overdue budget bills.
Mace noted that although she was frustrated with progress on some issues, her vote on McCarthy was about “someone that will keep their promises, that will keep their word and not keeping- not kicking the can down the road. And it was a matter of trust, not just for me, but there were other members in our conference, there were members on both sides of the aisle. And it’s very important that when we make a promise to the American people, we really ought to keep it.”
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