Appointed Sen. Darline Graham was forced into a Republican Senate primary runoff by Rep. Ralph Norman on Tuesday, raising the prospect that GOP voters will again reject a candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump.
Graham, who was appointed by South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster to fill the remainder of her late brother Lindsey Graham’s term in July, is looking to also take his place on the November ballot for a full six years in the Senate. Trump encouraged her to run and then endorsed her in a primary that featured 10 GOP candidates, including Norman, Rep. Russell Fry and former Gov. Mark Sanford.
The winner of the Aug. 25 runoff will face Democrat Annie Andrews, a doctor who won her party’s primary in June.
Graham, the first woman ever to represent South Carolina in the Senate, has never held elected office before, and her thin résumé appeared to cost her with some voters in the first round of the primary, calling into question the power of Trump’s imprimatur.
“I understand that she’s lost a brother and lost someone very special to her, and I sympathize with that, but at the same time, I don’t think that it’s necessary just to give it to her,” Republican voter Bob Howell told NBC News in Lexington, South Carolina.
Asked about Trump endorsing Graham, Howell said, “I like President Trump, but I don’t think that that’s necessarily what sways my vote.”
Earlier this year, Trump’s favored candidate for governor, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, got pushed into a runoff against state Attorney General Alan Wilson. Trump then issued a rare dual endorsement of both candidates in the Republican primary runoff, which Wilson won. That was one of several races across the country this year in which Trump’s preferred candidate failed to win the Republican nomination for a high office.
The winner of this Republican runoff will be heavily favored to prevail in November in a state where a Democrat has not won a Senate seat since Fritz Hollings’ re-election in 1998.
Darline Graham, 62, replaced her older brother in the Senate after Lindsey Graham died July 11, after emergency personnel responded to a “cardiac arrest” call at his Capitol Hill home. The elder Graham had been seeking a fifth term in November and had already won a competitive primary in June.
Trump wasted little time in throwing his weight behind the younger Graham, issuing his “complete and total endorsement” on Truth Social on July 17, less than a week after her brother’s death.
In her brief tenure in the Senate, Graham has been centrally involved in one issue: passage of a measure, earlier this month, that would impose new sanctions on Russia and Iran. Lindsey Graham had been the chief proponent of an earlier version of the legislation, which focused on applying pressure to Russia. At Trump’s request, Iran provisions were added before the Senate re-named the measure for Lindsey Graham and passed it, 86-11.
“I think I’ve accomplished a whole lot in three weeks,” Darline Graham said after she cast her vote Tuesday, pointing to the sanctions bill and her vote to confirm Attorney General Todd Blanche. “I’m not being handed the seat. I realize that I have to earn votes, so I’m working really hard to do that.”
Graham added that she expected the race to move to a runoff.
Norman, who finished a distant third in the state’s Republican gubernatorial primary earlier this year, consistently supports Trump’s agenda in Congress. But Lindsey Graham was one of the president’s closest allies — Trump eulogized the late senator during a service at Washington National Cathedral — and that loyalty was reciprocated in the endorsement of Darline Graham.
Now, with most of the state’s Republican voters having cast ballots for her rivals, Graham will need to consolidate support quickly in order to keep a seat that has been in her family since 2003.
