'I don't owe an apology': Rep. Nancy Mace defends expletive exchange with South Carolina constituent

Alexa Jurado, The State on Apr 22, 2025

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U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace was buying facewash at a South Carolina Ulta Beauty store when a constituent asked her about town halls.

The expletive-laced exchange that followed was captured in a video Mace filmed and posted on X. She was simply standing up for herself and would not apologize, Mace said Monday at an event at University of South Carolina.

“When someone’s coming at you, and they’re aggressive, they’re harassing you in public, to try to invade my space, as a rape survivor and domestic abuse survivor ... our instinct as women is to protect ourselves,” Mace said Monday.

The video of Mace showed the congresswoman calling the constituent, identified as Ely Murray-Quick, “absolutely (expletive) insane.”

“Are you going to do any more (town halls) this year?” Murray-Quick asked with a smile.

“You want to keep going? You want to keep harassing me?” Mace replied. “If you want to get in my face about town halls, you should have shown up to one last year.”

It quickly devolved into insults, before Murray-Quick walked off.

“Goodbye. (Expletive) you,” Mace said.

When asked about the incident Monday, Mace defended her behavior.

“I will stand up for myself, just like I will stand up and hold the line for any woman around the country,” Mace said Monday. “It’s not the first time I’ve used that language, and it certainly won’t be the last time I use that language.”

Mace also said she wouldn’t be apologizing to the constituent.

“I don’t owe an apology to any mentally-ill man who’s harassing me or threatening me,” Mace said.

Murray-Quick took to social media to share his perspective of the exchange too.

“Nancy Mace, South Carolina’s national embarrassment, has two real talents: lying her way into a Fox News segment and bending over backwards for political sugar daddies with deep pockets,” he wrote on Facebook. “She doesn’t get to spin a narrative about me when the receipts are plain as day — I was polite, she threw a tantrum.”

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