Notice of payment came after journalists asked her office about the unpaid fines
By Abraham Kenmore
SCDailyGazette.com
COLUMBIA — Six months after her state ethics fine was knocked down to a fraction of what she initially owed, U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace says, literally, that her check is in the mail.
The two-term Republican representing the coastal 1st District notified staff with the state House Ethics Committee late Wednesday afternoon, June 19, to expect her $1,200 payment.
“Ethics Fee Paid in Full,” reads the subject line of her two-sentence email to House staff provided to the S.C. Daily Gazette. “Just a quick note to let you know I cut a check this week for the ethics fee in full.”
The email was sent at 4:44 p.m., just over three hours after the Gazette left a voicemail message — and about an hour after the outlet sent follow-up text and email messages — asking Mace’s spokesperson, Gabrielle Lipsky, for comment on why the fine hadn’t been paid yet.
House staff responded to Mace’s email by reminding her of the mailing address to send the check. “Yes ma’am. Sent out this week,” was the quick response at 5:11 p.m.
The Gazette was asking about it after updated House Ethics Committee records showed Mace still owed $1,200 stemming from fines that accumulated in 2021 and 2022, when she repeatedly failed to file quarterly campaign disclosures for her then-still-open state House campaign account. (She closed it out in December.)
The fines were initially $16,700.
But in December, her former colleagues in the state House voted unanimously to drop the fines down to $1,200, or $200 for each of the six missed disclosure deadlines dating as far back as 2020, when voters first sent her to Congress. Mace did not attend the House Ethics meeting, but in her written explanation to the committee, she said she couldn’t afford to pay the fines. By law, they can’t be paid with campaign donations.
According to a House Ethics letter sent to Mace in January, she was supposed to start paying 3½ months ago.
“The Committee considered the fact that these fines occurred during COVID, the substantial personal and family issues you were dealing with, and that your Final Campaign Disclosure was filed on December 12, 2023. However, the Committee noted the long period this matter languished, and that staff bent over backwards to reach out to you to handle this,” reads the letter dated Jan. 23 provided to the Gazette.
It allows for a payment plan of $100 a month, to pay in full over a year, with the first payment due by March 1.
Explaining why Mace hadn’t paid yet, her spokesperson sent the Gazette an earlier letter from House Ethics, dated Dec. 14, which set the first due date as Jan. 15, 2025. But that was simply a typo. That letter was supposed to set the first payment as due Jan. 15, 2024. The second letter sent in January, which Mace’s office never mentioned, corrected that typo by resetting the initial due date as March 1.
“After a very busy couple of months, Mace is catching up,” Lipsky wrote in an email Thursday morning to the SC Daily Gazette. “She planned on cutting the check this week.”
Mace was in the state Legislature a single term before she defeated Democrat Joe Cunningham in 2020, flipping the coastal 1st District back to the Republicans after a one-term blip.
Last week, Mace easily won a primary challenge — collecting 57% of the vote in a three-way contest against Catherine Templeton, a former director of two state agencies, and longshot candidate Bill Young.
She faces Democrat Michael Moore in November.
In the week before the primary, Mace caught national media attention for being one of the top users of a new reimbursement program for House members. The New York Times reported that the U.S. House Ethics Committee will look into Mace’s spending under the program.
Members of Congress are paid annual salaries of $174,000 but many maintain residents in both their district and Washington. Mace co-owns a townhouse in the district, and expensed $27,817 from the reimbursement program in 2023, according to the Washington Post.
Abraham Kenmore is a reporter covering elections, health care and more. He joins the S.C. Daily Gazette from The Augusta Chronicle, where he reported on Georgia legislators, military and housing issues.
S.C. Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
