10/4 NEWSBREAK: Mace among 8 in House GOP to vote to oust McCarthy

Eight conservative Republicans, including Lowcountry Rep. Nancy Mace, joined Democrats in a historic vote to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. She was the only South Carolina Republican to join the GOP-led revolt that resulted in the removal of McCarthy, the first speaker in U.S. history to be ousted.

Legislators left Washington on Tuesday with no clear sense of who might lead the House of Representatives, although familiar names have been cropping up since the 216-210 vote.

Mace, who was endorsed by McCarthy when she ran for reelection in 2022, said her vote Tuesday was not about politics, but about broken promises regarding women’s issues and community safety.

“This isn’t about left vs right. This isn’t about ideology. This is about trust and keeping your word. This is about making Congress do its job,” Mace wrote in a statement posted on social media. “I came here to take difficult votes and do the right thing, regardless of the pressure and regardless of the threats (bc there’s been plenty of both). Today I’m voting against 95 percent of my party in the hopes of fixing how Congress operates.”

Mace’s vote, the seventh Republican to vote against McCarthy on Tuesday, was considered a bellwether of the outcome. The New York Times reported it put him in a “bad spot” when the roll call vote was about half done. “She’s known as a flip-flopper, and it would have been in line with her style to vote for the motion to table and then change her mind. But she didn’t.”

Mace was among nearly all Democrats, including U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, who moved to drop McCarthy as speaker. No Democrats voted to keep McCarthy in the job.

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