By Mike McCombs, Delayna Earley and Amber Hewitt
The Island News
Congresswoman Nancy Mace’s Beaufort County constituents have been clamoring for some time for the Charleston Republican to hold a Town Hall meeting at this end of South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District.
While a members-only Town Hall event in the gated Dataw Island community might not have been the ideal solution, her constituents, both supporters and opponents got some of the answers they wanted.
However, what Mace had to say before and after the Wednesday, April 23, Town Hall is still being talked about as much as anything that may have been said during the meeting.
Mace, who drove past protesters at the intersection of Sea Island Parkway and Polowana Road on the way to Dataw, addressed the media in a “gaggle” on the patio prior to the meeting.
Isabella Douglas of the Island Packet asked what prompted Mace to finally hold a Town Hall meeting after a long stretch without one.
Mace cited a tight schedule — “We’re in D.C. three weeks out of four” – and said she’d rescheduled numerous times. She also said she simply hadn’t been asked.
“Dataw Island was the first community to actually invite us to do a town hall this year,” she said. “The first and only one until today. So, we just got a second invitation to come back down to Hilton Head Island. So, we’ll be doing that, working on scheduling that.”
And then Mace went on the offensive.
“And there are more media here today than we’ve had at any other Town Hall,” Mace said. “And it would have been really nice if you guys in the fake news would have covered any of our Town Halls over the last four years. But you’ve just refused to.”
Douglas pointed out that Mace had not been to Beaufort County for a Town Hall since “June of 2024.”
Mace claimed that was not true, citing numerous meetings in the county she has attended.
For clarity’s sake, The Island News has, in some fashion, covered every Town Hall meeting in northern Beaufort County over the last four years, at least five – March 22, 2022 in a climate change panel at USC Beaufort; a Sept. 2022 event at Shellring Ale House in Port Royal; a Feb. 22, 2024 event again at Shellring Ale House; a a May 13, 2024 event at Bricks on Boundary in Beaufort; and a June 7, 2024 event again at Bricks on Boundary.
This list doesn’t include a Dec. 16, 2021 media trip to Morgan Island on a boat with Mace to discuss ending animal testing.
Mace again pointed out how tough scheduling can be. And then she, again, unprovoked, went on the offensive.
“But we really appreciate it when communities invite us and help us put it together,” she said. “It’s a lot of resources, particularly when people who are requesting fake town halls for your fake news coverage are threatening to blow up my office, are threatening to kill my employees, are threatening to kill my family, threaten to kill me.
“That’s what’s been going on. And that’s why you guys are here because you want to see something bad happen. And quite frankly, it’s B.S. You should have been here any time over the last four years for any number of town halls. We have over a dozen a year. But you’re here today because you want to silence a conservative woman. You want to hopefully show that I will be embarrassed today. And I carry no shame. And as a woman, you ought to think about that and how you report on conservative women.”
Then Mace attacked the protesters.
“And a lot of the protesters that are out there today, they’re part of a socialist group called Indivisible.
But you all know this,” she said.” “These are the people who are organizing calls and flooding the office with thousands of calls a week over a fake town hall. Their outrage is fake. These are people who’ve never been to a single town hall in four years. And we’ve hosted over a dozen every single year.
“These people don’t show up. They’re just doing it for attention.”
The people’s questions
Once inside the meeting, Mace was businesslike, answering questions that clearly came from people on both sides of the aisle.
Before the questions, she discussed the four committees she sits on and how much legislation she passes.
“Most members of Congress sit on one or maybe two committees, she said. “I’m a masochist. I like pain. … I have four. So I sit on the House Armed Services Committee. I sit on the House Veterans Affairs Committee. And then I sit on the House Oversight Committee. … Oversight actually is the most non-partisan committee we have.
“I actually pass a lot of legislation out of there that everybody votes for. Most of it is cybersecurity. My fourth committee is that I chair the committee on Oversight called Cybersecurity Tax Innovation. And so we do a lot of cyberspace. There’s a lot of obviously talk about AI or artificial intelligence. So a lot of legislation that I work on comes out of that committee. Almost every Republican, Democrat usually votes in favor of it … believe it or not, in spite of the fake news … I’m actually the 20, ranked the 22nd most bipartisan member of Congress. So if you are willing to work with me, I am willing to work with you.”
She said she spends a lot of time in the House advocating for women.
“I find as a female lawmaker, I have an inherent duty to speak up and speak out and show that we have got to do better for women and girls,” she said. “And it starts by banning men from women’s restrooms. It starts by banning men, uh, people to watch women undress in the locker room. And I got very angry when Tim McBride got elected. And he wanted to use the women’s restroom on the hill. And he wanted to use the women’s locker room on the hill. And I said, not on my watch. And I admitted it.”
Mace said she recently worked on an American Fisheries Act, “a bill recently that will protect commercial fisheries and shrimpers. We have a lot of competition, particularly from China and other countries that are dumping in fish and shrimp into the market that is undercutting American fisheries. And so we can have a debate on tariffs. We probably will. I’m sure that’s a question that’s coming up. But tariffs for our commercial fisheries off the coast of South Carolina actually help level the playing field for our fishermen and shrimpers off the coast of South Carolina.”
Mace was asked if she supported without limits, the work of Elon Musk and DOGE?
“If he can find all the unlimited waste product use, I am 100% all in on DOGE. I love Elon Musk,” she said. “And the kind of waste that he’s uncovering, the kind of efficiencies that he’s finding … are incredible. And I support it 100% and wish he could do more.”
Mace said she supports President Trump’s position on Ukraine.
“If Zelensky wanted to keep Crimea, he should have fought for it 11 years ago, 2013-2014, when Obama was president, was when Russia went in and took Crimea,” she said. “So I agree with him on that. I want to see peace, but in order to have peace, there has to be a negotiation. I’m concerned that if there is not peace, that American troops are going to be on the ground in Ukraine. You don’t want that. I don’t want that. But Zelensky is going to have to come to the table, and he’s going to have to negotiate. Is he going to be able to get the Donbass region back? I don’t know, but there has to be some give and take here.”
‘Out-of-state agitator’
On Thursday, April 24, the day after the Town Hall, Mace’s office put out a release titled, “Mace exposes out-of-state agitators behind Dataw Island protest.”
In the release, Mace takes the media to task, claiming one of the protesters present on the way to the Town Hall event is not even from South Carolina.
“Despite misleading media coverage, one of the most vocal protestors quoted by Live 5 News, Kevin de L’Aigle, is a New York transplant who recently ran for office in Augusta, Georgia, before dropping out of the race. He is not a resident of South Carolina, much less the Lowcountry. Even the Augusta Chronicle describes him as a “political activist,” the release reads.
“Let’s call this what it is — a political stunt by out-of-state agitators pushing a national leftist agenda,” Mace is quoted as saying in the release. “Kevin de L’Aigle doesn’t live here, vote here, or represent anyone here. If the media bothered to do five minutes of homework, they’d know that. South Carolinians see through this nonsense.”
The only problem with the release and Mace’s comment – they’re not true.
The Island News spoke with de L’Aigle and viewed his S.C. Voter Registration card, confirming his residency.
He wrote Mace a letter in response to her release and gave it to us when we asked for comment.
“I am indeed a resident of Beaufort County, and I have lived here for the last several years. I spoke with Live 5 News news yesterday, and they confirmed my residency (not fake news!). I was born and raised in the south, and I returned here in 2022 to help care for my mother during a health crisis.
“I pass by your Beaufort office every day. You and your team may ask my minister, friends, people with whom I have attended classes over the last several years, if you would like to fact check.
“My father and grandfather’s construction company laid all the pipe work out on Robert Smalls Parkway back in the 1980s, when it was a two-lane road. You and your team obviously did not do your homework. This is simply a tactic to deflect from the fact that you are unwilling to meet with your [constituents] unless behind closed gates or at a ticketed and carefully curated event.
“Yes, I was not born in South Carolina, but neither were you. I was born in Georgia, lived and worked in NYC for 28 years, and returned south to care for family.
“I have attended the protests in Beaufort since January of my own free will and certainly nobody has paid me for those hours I spent. I have done this because I do not agree with the actions of this Congress or this Administration. This is my right as a proud Citizen of the United States. I would open a respectful discussion with you, if you would like to discuss these matters further.”
Mike McCombs is the Editor of The Island News and can be reached at TheIslandNews@gmail.com.
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
