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- Nancy Mace’s Capitol Hill antics are frustrating her GOP colleagues and could hurt her re-election.
- But Michael B. Moore, the Democrat challenging her, says his campaign is about more than just Mace.
- Moore has a storied family background and wants the district’s racially gerrymandered lines redrawn.
You’ve probably heard about Nancy Mace by now.
The GOP congresswoman from South Carolina is frequently in the spotlight, often because she’s transparently seeking it out. Earlier this week, she strode through the halls of Congress wearing a shirt emblazoned with the letter “A” — a reference to Nathaniel Hawthorn’s “The Scarlet Letter” — in response to being “demonized” as a “woman” for voting with a handful of her Republican colleagues to boot Kevin McCarthy from the speakership.
It’s just the latest round of drama for Mace, whose tenure has included contradictory positions on former President Donald Trump’s future in the party and hand-wringing about her party’s stance on abortion.
She now faces potential electoral consequences back home in the wake of her speakership vote, not just from a potential Republican primary challenger, but from Michael B. Moore, the Democrat who launched a campaign to unseat her earlier this year.
“The case for this is becoming clear — that she’s really out of touch with the district in terms of her own political orientation,” said Moore during an interview with Insider in Washington, DC this week.
But there’s far more to Moore’s campaign than simply not being Nancy Mace.
For one, Moore is a descendant of Robert Smalls, a Civil War hero who escaped slavery and later served in the House of Representatives during the Reconstruction Era. And he has several other ancestors who’ve engaged in public service, including a judge and civil rights lawyer who played a key role in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that banned school segregation.
“Going back to 1868, people in my family have been serving in elected office,” said Moore. “If I’m elected, I would be the fourth in the last five generations of people in my family to serve this way.”
A soft-spoken businessman who helped found the International African American Museum in Charleston, Moore traveled to Washington this week for a different Supreme Court case — one that has the potential to redraw the boundaries of the district he hopes to represent.
In January, a federal district court in South Carolina found that Mace’s district had been unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered. Republican state lawmakers appealed that ruling, kicking the final decision up the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, where oral arguments were heard on Wednesday. Moore spoke at a rally outside the court that morning.
If the Supreme Court re-affirms the lower court decision, the district would be redrawn to include more Black voters, likely turning the race into a toss-up overnight. Absent that, Moore’s in for a tougher fight, and he conceded that he’s “not confident” about the outcome of the case.
“I thought it was important to be here to talk about the principle behind all this,” said Moore. “I’m a black man in a district where 30,000 African Americans have been, according to the federal courts, unconstitutionally stripped of political voice.”
Prior to Mace, the district was held by Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham, who cut a more moderate profile during his two years on Capitol Hill. While Moore was careful to avoid ascribing any labels to himself, he came across as a standard mainstream Democrat, frequently referencing his business career while expressing distaste for “hyperpartisan divisiveness.”
“I’m kind of a no-nonsense, common sense kind of person who just wants to make things better,” said Moore, later saying he’s “not someone who’s going to plant a flag and reject anything that’s not on that position.”
He named health care, climate change, and abortion rights as his top issues, and he said he fully supports President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.
“I think he’s earned the right to be our nominee, and to do his thing for another four years,” said Moore.
Moore has raised more than $237,000 since launching his campaign in March, and as he gears up to take on Mace, he’s making the case that she’s growing too extreme for the district, citing her recent appearance on Steve Bannon’s podcast and frequent protests about legislation that she ends up supporting.
“She says one thing, she votes another,” said Moore. “People are getting tired of that kind of thing.”
And he’s making an argument that even some of Mace’s Republican colleagues are also making — that she’s too eager to get in front of a camera.
“I think [voters] look at Nancy Mace and believe that she is probably more motivated to get on national TV and create headlines for herself than to actually work for the people,” said Moore.
A representative for Mace’s campaign did not respond to Insider’s request for comment.
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