“Proud transphobe” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) announced that she is running for governor of her state, and her campaign announcement video makes it seem like her campaign’s central message is going to be her hatred of trans people.

Mace, who has been expected to announce a run for governor for a while now, posted a video to social media earlier this week in which she announced her campaign.

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The video starts with some clips from the media of people vaguely praising her as “resilient” and a “fighter,” but the first fact about Mace the ad mentions is that she was the first woman to graduate from the Citadel, a military college in South Carolina that was forced by a court to start accepting women in the ’90s.

“Mace became the first woman to graduate from South Carolina’s famed military college,” a voice says and then immediately cuts to Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy, telling Mace, “You’ve taken a lot of abuse for standing up for the rights of women.” The clip is from November 2024 when Mace introduced resolutions to ban trans women from using the women’s rooms at the Capitol complex just after the first transgender member of Congress, Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE), was elected.

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“Women’s rights,” in this context, is a euphemism for transphobia; Mace opposes traditional women’s rights issues like reproductive freedom and voted against the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act (VAWA) in 2021.

The next clip in the video shows Mace talking to Fox host Laura Ingraham and linking her time at the Citadel to her fight against transgender people’s rights.

The next several news clips in the video are, again, about her resolutions to keep McBride from using the women’s room at the Capitol.

“We will be prepared to take on the challenges of this historic moment,” she says at the end of the video.

The video does not present Mace’s views on any other issue facing the state of South Carolina.

South Carolina’s poverty rate is higher than the national average, and many of its workers lack access to basic resources like paid sick leave. The state’s infrastructure —including roads, bridges, and water systems — is aging and in need of repair. The state’s violent and property crime rates also exceed the national average.

The video reflects Mace’s social media presence, where she has been posting several times a day for months now about transgender people. She has identified herself as a “proud transphobe” on social media and has repeatedly used anti-trans slurs to stress her hatred of trans people.

She also gave a speech at the Citadel on Monday where she announced her campaign in person. That speech also involved attacking transgender people’s rights.

In that speech, she promised to “ban pronouns in the classroom.” While South Carolina already has several laws attacking the rights of transgender students – including a ban on using the appropriate restrooms, a law requiring teachers to out trans students to their parents, and a trans sports ban – it does not yet have a “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” law banning classroom discussions of LGBTQ+ people.

“I don’t want to see any glitter parties. I want kids coming home with A’s and B’s, not they and them,” she said in her speech, perhaps referring to the online myth that teachers are somehow turning students transgender.

“We will not fund any schools that allow biological men in women’s bathrooms or locker rooms, that allow men to compete in women’s sports or schools that push gender ideology,” she continued.

“I hold the line on women and kids… by vetoing funding to any college that pushes gender ideology and refuses to define what a woman is. If a school erases women, it erases its right to your tax dollars,” Mace said.

Mace will face South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson (R) in the GOP primary, and she has already been attacking him. In February, she gave a speech on the House floor where she accused her ex-fiance and three other men of rape and sex trafficking. She said they committed “some of the most heinous crimes against women imaginable.”

In that speech, she said that Wilson didn’t prosecute the men even though she claimed that she gave Wilson evidence of their crimes.

All four men deny the allegations and Wilson called Mace’s claim that she told him about the crimes “categorically false.”

The reason Mace made these accusations in a House floor speech is the Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution. She could have been found liable for defamation for making these accusations if she can’t prove them true, but the Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution protects members of Congress from lawsuits for anything they say during legislative activity.

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