South Carolina Republicans Vote on Graham's Senate Successor
Ten candidates, including the late senator's sister Darline Graham, are competing in Tuesday's special primary, with a runoff on August 25 seen as the likely outcome.
South Carolina Republicans vote Tuesday in a special primary election to choose a successor to the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, with 10 candidates squeezing a normal year of campaigning into roughly two weeks.
If no candidate wins an outright majority, the top two advance to a runoff on August 25. Polling suggests that is the most likely outcome.
Graham died July 11. Gov. Henry McMaster appointed the senator's sister, Darline Graham, to fill the vacancy on an interim basis, and she is on Tuesday's ballot. Because Lindsey Graham had already won the Republican primary for his seat, the party must hold a special election to name a replacement on the November general election ballot. The winner will face Democratic nominee Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, in November.
Darline Graham had President Trump's recommendation for the appointment and carries his endorsement. She spent decades as a public administrator and disability advocate, serving as commissioner of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind from 2019 to 2026, and inherits her brother's extensive state political apparatus.
That endorsement matters but is not decisive, said Frank Tiller, chair of the Spartanburg County Republican Party. "It's very important, but a lot of people are saying Donald Trump does not know South Carolina politics," Tiller said. "South Carolina politics is different from a lot of places. Everybody here is fiercely independent."
The compressed calendar has upended the state's tradition of retail politics. "There are not enough people that know the candidates," Tiller said. "Everybody's calling around trying to find out who to vote for."
Rep. Russell Fry worked a crowd Friday at Savage Craft Ale Works in West Columbia; Darline Graham shook hands Monday morning at a Lizard's Thicket breakfast restaurant two miles away. Former Gov. Mark Sanford and Rep. Ralph Norman campaigned in Aiken on Friday, said Eaddy Roe Willard, a longtime Republican activist.
"South Carolina politics is very local," Willard said, recalling a former party chairman's line: "We don't decide whether or not we're gonna vote for you until we've had a chance to shake your hand at least three times."
Norman, in the House since 2017 and a member of the House Freedom Caucus, ran unsuccessfully for governor earlier this year and retained much of that campaign's infrastructure. Fry, an attorney representing the Myrtle Beach area, ousted then-Rep. Tom Rice in the 2022 primary with Trump's backing after Rice voted to impeach the president. Sanford, a former governor with two stints in the House, briefly challenged Trump in the 2020 presidential primaries. Businessman Mark Lynch, the strongest of Graham's June 9 primary challengers, is running again as a populist outsider.
This article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI), in accordance with our editorial policy.
